Who's your daddy?

Captive care and husbandry.

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Nature Nate
Posts: 510
Joined: August 24th, 2010, 10:14 am
Location: San Diego

Who's your daddy?

Post by Nature Nate »

Skip to the TL;DR if you're not a reader...

As some of you know I frequent Santa Catalina island (off of LA county) each year for the past six or so years and a couple years ago someone gave me a kingsnake that they had caught at one of the camps. She adjusted well to captivity and I've been looking for a locality mate for her. Unfortunately no mate was to be found. I ended up pairing her with my aberrant North San Diego County male king that I collected a few years ago from the near some condemned habitat.

About the same time I was asked to do a reptile presentation for a local elementary school and obliged. Part of the demo was showing the different colors and patterns of our native kingsnakes. I brought along the Catalina king as a representative of the banded morph, another female of the striped morph, and the aberrant king to show an anomaly type. I kept the male aberrant in a separate bag but put both the females in a tub. Both were well fed and I kept a close eye on them. Unfortunately not close enough. The female black belly striper turned out to be a male and they locked up before I knew they were even courting. The striper is a (mostly) black belly San Diego locality that a friend gave me which he found near his house in the Black Mountain area.

The show went as planned and I paired her up with the aberrant again the same week. A few weeks later my Catalina girl dropped seven healthy eggs which brings us to last week. All hatched out healthy and beautiful and, as I hoped, there were a couple surprizes and one stunner! The following pictures are the Catalina girl, the male striper and the male aberrant, and the babies. So, who's the daddy?

TL;DR Accidentally bred my Catalina Island female banded king with both an aberrant north San Diego County wild caught male and a striped black belly San Diego male from the Black Mountain area. Which snake fathered which babies?

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Catalina Girl

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Aberrant male from north SD County

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Male Black Belly Striper from Black Mountain area in SD
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Belly shot of accidental breeding partner


The Babies:
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Some nice bandeds:
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Higher than average band count, cool!
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Baring, that's neat!
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Then a newporter-like pattern! Where did that come from?!?
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Thanks for the look! And yes, I'm looking for homes for most of them.
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Kent VanSooy
Posts: 1100
Joined: June 7th, 2010, 7:51 am
Location: Oceanside

Re: Who's your daddy?

Post by Kent VanSooy »

The aberrancies in the hatchlings make me think it's the aberrant North SD male who did the deed. Nice to see a pic of a Catalina king! I would have expected to see more bands, in the one other pic I've seen of a Catalina snake there were LOTS of them.
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Nature Nate
Posts: 510
Joined: August 24th, 2010, 10:14 am
Location: San Diego

Re: Who's your daddy?

Post by Nature Nate »

True Kent, all five of the kings I've seen on the island had more than 28 bands.
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SurfinHerp
Posts: 653
Joined: October 18th, 2010, 8:55 pm
Location: San Diego, CA
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Re: Who's your daddy?

Post by SurfinHerp »

Hi Nate,
I agree with Kent and think that the aberrant male fathered the clutch. Thanks for posting pics of all of them! You got some interesting patterns for sure.

Jeff


PS - my clutch of kings looks ready to hatch any day now
Kfen
Posts: 413
Joined: June 17th, 2010, 5:51 am
Location: CT

Re: Who's your daddy?

Post by Kfen »

I would also GUESS that the aberrant male is the father because there is no striping in any of the babies.

I'm not sure of the breeding biology of kingsnakes, is it possible to have babies from the same clutch have different fathers?

I have bred cal kings in the past. My first pair was a striped male and aberrant female. I would get striped, aberrant, partial striped, and even banded babies from them! It was fun to see what would pop out. I do not know what the parents' lineages were, maybe there was a banded ancestor in there somewhere.
Thanks for sharing.
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