I have a pair of legally collected gopher snakes I caught on Black’s Creek Road just a bit west of Boise Idaho, looks like the female is about to drop a clutch. I don’t know if she was caught gravid or if my male, Jimmy Kimmel, got to her, but I am certain she’s gravid and about ready to drop. They are both dark, tipped-out, arguably ugly gopher snakes. I love them. I wonder if there’s a market for them? I have 1.2 gophers I collected on Black’s Creek Rd. over the past three years, the other female is a yearling, all caught live on road, moments before they would have been run over. I heard a rumor that someone saw what sounded like amelanistic snakes out there, and this person claimed to have seen them more than once in the same area. If, by some crazy miracle, I get some amels, they should be gorgeous. There’s a lot of color hiding under all the black…but that’s a pipe dream, likely. I am primarily excited because I have always loved Pituophis yet never bred my local gopher snake form before.
I am waiting on Peppermint Patty Hearst to do her thing.
Anyone else out there have a breeding project that nobody else probably gives a rip about?
I don’t think this project is worth much money, maybe a few bucks at the local pet shop, I don’t care about making money on this project. I just think gopher snakes are great snakes and I wanted to try it. I plan to selectively breed them for maximum pigment, just because.
I mis-typed “west” of Boise in my original post, Black’s Creek is off I84 East of Boise, she was caught less than a mile off the exit, north of the interstate just past the returning westbound on-ramp. Picture from May 29th below:
They will get posted and tracked in this thread, I’ll probably keep most or all of them, I have a selective breeding project I want to try. I’m going to breed them for maximum pigment over a few generations to see if I can make a nearly solid black line. Eventually I’ll breed them back to Jason Nelson’s amel GB gophers, if he’ll ever sell me a visual. (I have some unproven poss hets)
They are taking their time, all very uniform, high pattern density, big fat babies, I have seen yearling corn snakes that were smaller, could probably start them on small fuzzies!
More pics soon!
Worth noting We were served a 30 day notice to vacate our rental home that we have been in for the last eight years, right now we have 13 days left to move and we just signed a new lease yesterday. I also had to find a new job and that amount of time, but I happen to have landed the best job I’ve ever had in my life by a wide margin so everything’s gonna be super cool going forward, but it is totally crazy right now.
Thanks, it has been fun. The gopher snakes up here are different than the ones in the main stretch of the Great Basin, they are darker, smaller, and I have a feeling they might key out differently. I am going to do some line breeding and scale counts in the future when life calms down a bit.
