Hi, Back in the day when you could only get wild caught I acquired some Greenish rat snakes.
(Black/yellow intergrade species).
I managed to breed a pair and produced some offspring.
I bread them back to each other and produced a pair of Hypos. (see the pictures below.)
The hypos combined breed true and it worked like a recessive gene when bread out. So this was not just a colour difference.
However, due to life taking a bite out of me I had to give up keeping snakes for a while. I lost the line and could not find it again.
Question: has anyone seen any of these? are any still around, or did the line die out.
Greenish Rat Snake picture below. ( From the internet. I don’t have any scans of my old chemical photography handy.)
My old chemical photograph of my hypo Greenish Rat scanned.
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I have never seen these offered for sale. I wonder who has the originals now? They are very beautiful.
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This guy is super nice!!! I’ve seen these before but geez it’s been years!!! I hope your able to find some!
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@saleengrinch
Yes they are nice, a nice temperament too. Yep its been years but glad someone else recognises them.
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I had one , just like the first pic, in the mid 1990’s.
Thinking back it was likely a w/c import. A very beautiful snake and a sub adult when i got it.
I found one just like you described in our chicken coop. Hes somewhere still hanging around. You’re welcome to have him.
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Firstly, welcome to the forums with your first post. Hope to see more. Interesting picture, Looks like its just started to swallow one of your eggs. I didn’t know they liked chicken eggs so much.
Defiantly, looks like one no doubt, you must be in the intermediate area between black and yellow rat snake.
I bet you wouldn’t mind loosing him. I would love him, but I’m in the uk.
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Eastern rat snakes (especially black rat snakes) are often called chicken snakes because they raid coops and eat the eggs or chicks.
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@ashleyraeanne thats interesting I did not know that.
Yeah, I did only hear they would take eggs occasionally back in the day and tried them. But they were not ever taken, probably because my supermarket eggs were washed and chemically treated and lost the chicken scent.
But I did not know they actively sought them out in coops and liked them that much.
Maybe next time i will keep my own chickens and use real un sanitised eggs. Eggs are as nutritious as a rat afterall and much easier to digest. Makes sense. un sanitised eggs does risk salmonella though.
True, but I suppose wild animals survive well enough with a reasonable load of parasites or other things like salmonella.
its just us who are weak. or overly cautious. There were no salmonella precautions for chickin eggs for human consumption until recently.
That snake from @scrubmel looks health enough,