Hey guys, this is really just an FYI for all of you, kind of an update, and a big THANK YOU!

I got a lot of help / feedback from my original thread, Good Eater Goes Bad, and am very happy and relieved to let everyone know that Vinny, my 2 yr old Okeetee corn, seems to be back to himself (fingers crossed that I didn't just jinx that...). Since he had been giving me trouble eating out of his tank, I took the all the advice I got here (changed his schedule, changed his food, etc) and decided to offer him his adult mouse in his tank last week. What a shocker! I have never used tongs to feed him before because he has always been a gentle eater, taking food from me readily but without the startling "lightning strike" I read about everywhere. That's changing now! He stuck his head out of his hide when I opened his tank, and as soon as I dangled the mouse by it's tail in front of him, he coiled back into his hide and then BANG! He struck out faster than I've ever seen him move before and ripped that mouse right out of my hand. I guess that's what he wanted all along. Adult mice and some privacy!

I also got some great suggestions from some of you on a the General Snakes board about ordering frozen mice in bulk. After some research I decided to go with The Mouse Factory and I got my shipment this afternoon. The mice are vacuum packed on a meat tray and look much healthier and cleaner than the mice I have been buying individually from the local (hah! twenty minutes away) pet store. I am totaly psyched to feed Vinny on Sunday and can't wait to see how he responds to the higher-quality food.

Thank you all so much again! I have always had cats and consider myself more than well equiped to deal with any problem my kitties might have. Thanks to all of you, I feel like I can get the advice and help I need to deal with anything that might happen to Vinny now, too.

Im glad to here that things are going better for you! Its such a relief when we solve these issues, isnt it!

Oh, and also, a few people surmised that he may be searching for a mate because he is between two and three years old and this is the season for that behavior... it has indeed been something like six weeks since he started giving me problems and suddenly he's back to himself. Does this mean I can safely assume that he really is a he? I have not yet found any pro herpers in the Las Vegas area, although I am sure they are here : / I don't actually know anyone else in my area who has reptiles so I'm on my own as far as finding someone goes, or I would just go and have him sexed already!

Glad you ordered from The Mouse Factory. You've bought the best mice out there---and when buying f/t---price is directly tied to quality. So yeah, you spent more, but your snakes will thank you for it.

Can you post a picture of your snakes tail? From just above the vent down? If so, and the snake is 2-3 years old I can give you a pretty conclusive opinion on the sex. Not 100%, but better than just guessing.

Thanks so much for the offer, I really appreciate it! I hope these pictures are what you need, I had to take them without help while keeping an eye on my two cats :evil: . If there is another angle that I didn't get that might help, feel free to let me know and I'll post it ASAP. I'm excited to know if I've misnamed him! And, yes, he is a little over two years old.

1] closeup on the vent area from underneath

2] wider shot of whole undertail region

3] taken with Vinny in a Pyrex dish (I thought it would make it easier... it didn't)

4] shot of vent/tail region from the side because...

...I noticed that his tail tapers quite abruptly at the vent and thought that might be important. He did just use the bathroom (in his water dish! pig) about two days ago so that is his natural shape, no bloating.

Again, thanks for your generosity, let me know if there's anything else you need!

Based on those pictures I'd feel rather confident in saying that's a male. Females normally have much shorter tails, and the taper is extreme. Males normally have the same width after the vent for about 10 or so scales.

Of course visually sexing isn't 100%, but I'd be shocked if that was a female.

Sorry I didn't get to these sooner, I only check around here every few days.

Horray, I don't have to rename him! After having him for two years that would've been rough. I see from your website that you breed so I feel really confident in your oppinion and again I really appreciate it. I'm sorry if it seemed like I was trying to rush you, I just thought you might've forgotten about us & I was anxious to know what you thought .

You know, he hasn't always had that orange color on his underside either -- when I got him, he was all pearl white underneith, and after we moved here to NV (at least thats when I noticed it) he started to get all orangy underneith on his lower half. Looking at the picture in the Pyrex, it just looks so starkly different, like two different animals! Since he got over his eating problem, he's totaly normal and in fact, he's just about to shed in the next day or two. I've had some other people (from different herp sites, although I can't remember them now, that was over a year ago) tell me that the color change is normal and okay.

Okeetees are pretty common right? Have you (has anyone?) seen this before in them? Is it something that happens to all corns as they get older, or is it just unique to his color patern? After posting 8 (?) pictures of him in the last few weeks I assume if it was something horrible I would've heard an "Oh my god, he's got ______!" so I'm not really alarmed, just wondering...

i bought a yearling abbott's okeetee at a reptile show last september that looked like that already. i had only seen the b&w bellies before but his gets orange a little ways down also.

Actually I did forget, and probably wouldn't have looked at the thread if you hadn't sent me a PM. I get easily distracted and tend to miss threads since I only visit every once in a while.

I cannot think of a single morph of corns that does not undergo a DRASTIC color change from hatchling to adulthood---even amels, anerys and snows. Bloodreds by far have the biggest color change, going from grey hatchlings to solid red adults---but everything changes in some level.

With that being said, do you mind telling me where/who you got that snake from? I ask because first off, your snake looks like it's a hypo. Secondly, it doesn't look like an okeetee to me. Now, IF your snake is hypo then it's possible you have a hypo okeetee, but if it's not homozygous for hypomelanism then IMO you do not have an 'okeetee phase' snake.

The eternal debate that will rage on is focused on 'okeetee phase' and 'okeetee locality'. Phase being the look that most of us expect our okeetees to look like: dark orangish/red ground color, deep red saddles, thick black borders and lots of contrast. I'm not seeing that on your snake, but if it has traceable ties to the Okeetee Hunt Club than you can always say you have a 'true' okeetee.

Here's a picture of my okeetee het sunkissed and charcoal (debatable on the okeetee bit). Of course, since sunkisseds came out of Kathy Love's okeetee stock I suppose you could technically say that all sunkisseds are okeetees...but anyway....





See the difference?

Well it's great to know that a) some snakes just come with the orange belly and they all change color with age. It's a relief to know that he doesn't have some weird pigmentation problem.

That aside, I'm sure you know you have gorgeous animals! I deffinately see the difference between them & Vinny -- he is much less red, in fact he looks kind of dark tan-ish in comparison, and his "black" is really more of a dark brown. He was a little brighter when I got him but he never looked like the examples you posted, not quite.

As far as who/where he came from, unfortunately I can't give you a name because I got him from a little small-town pet store, but it was only two years ago and I remember it was in Englewood on the SW coast of Florida (it is a little town right on the coast, west of Port Charlotte in Sarasota County if your looking on a map). I wish I could say I got him from a reputable breeder at an expo or something like that, but he just came out of a little ten gallon tank where I picked him from about 6-8 others who were about the same size & similar colors. I was told he was an Okeetee when I got him and when I looked at some pictures in books & online, it looked close enough so I went with it. I didn't realize at the time that there were so many subtle color differences in corn snakes! I can see now that he doesn't match your examples at all : / How embarasing! Unfortunately I don't know who bred him (althought when I got him they did say he was hand-reared and he never was agressive so I don't think he was wild caught...) or where, but I believe it was deffinately pretty local to the store. The man who sold me the pinkies to feed him always asked how he was, I got the impression they might have been his hatchlings...

I wish I could give you more info. I'm sure that's not much help. If it matters, I think one of his clutch-mates (litter-mates?) was some sort of albino version of him... Now I can say hes a boy, but I don't know what color to call him!

I know it, but it's nice to hear it from time to time---so thank you. I've tried to limit what comes into the collection as being a great example of it's morph---and I think overall I've succeeded quite well.



Well, there are plenty of okeetees het amel and or anery out there, just like there are 'reverse okeetees' out there which are nothing more than amelanistic varities of okeetees (same principle applies except where you should have thick black borders you have thick white ones instead). However, I would personally call your snake a normal (or classic, wild type, etc etc--whatever you prefer). Imo, it doesn't meet the standards that I personally have of what an okeetee truly is.

Here are some better pictures from Don's website (you'll have to forgive me, I don't have any 'normal okeetees' (not a big fan of 'normals'.)

Okeetee (Abbotts):

Reverse Okeetee with Regular Okeetee:

Sunkissed Okeetee:

You'll notice that the sunkissed doesn't really look like what I've told you an okeetee is. That's because sunkissed is a single recessive gene that has a hypo effect and also changes the pattern up quite a bit. However, that single gene was found in Kathy Love's stock of okeetee corns that is/was traceable back to the Okeetee Hunt Club in Jasper, SC---so they hold the 'okeetee' name because they are in fact true 'locality' okeetees.

I hope that's not too confusing, lol.

Wow, that certainly is a lot to take in, but I think I understand. The traits that seperate the different morphs are so much more subtle than those that seperate, say, for example, the colors of rabbits (which I used to breed & show). I only have the one snake right now, but I really appreciate your time and patience trying to explain to me what makes him different from your examples. Of coarse I want to be able to correctly idenfity my own animal, and I certainly have a lot to learn if I ever want to (read: have the money & space!) persue keeping them as a hobby in the future!

So after looking at the pictures and reading your explanations, the differeneces are more obvious now. Even on the Regular Okeetee, the borders are darker, a real black instead of a washy brown... and without having a tracable liniage back to the Okeetee Hunt Club, the color differences bar him from being called a real Okeetee corn. Am I getting it right lol? Like I said, herps are a lot different than cats & rabbits, and much more diverse than I originally thought! At the end of the day he should really be called a Normal/Classic/Wild-type Corn, right?

Thank you again for your time and patience, I would hate to have gone on calling him the wrong morph and guessing at his sex -- I hope I've got it all right now! You've been a great help, it's obvious you're really dedicated to your hobby & your snakes are lucky to have you!