I bought these as normals

but I'm thinking they might be oketee - their color gets better and lighter each shed.....any ideas?

heres another pic

here's another pic

Last one...........

i promise

HMMM I could see how they could resemble Ok. cornsnakes... but Im not a expert in the Ok field so Ill leave it to someone else to decide... sorry about my lack of knowledge on Ok...

The criteria for the dorsal pattern of "Okeetee phase" are:
1- Solid red saddle coloring
2- saturated orange background color
3- Thick, bold borders

IMO that snake doesn't even come close on any of those criteria. In addition, it has white stippling around the black borders.

I agree with Serpwidget's assessment of the animals in every degree, with one minor deviation.

Okeetees (by this we mean the phase) need to have brick red saddles, dark orange backgrounds, surrounded by thick dark black outlines, and dark black chekering on a mostly white ventral side (going toward orange oftentimes toward the tail).

However, I have a line-bred, no joking around yearling okeetee from a lineage of animals that were originally captured in Jasper County, S.C., and my female (pictured) has ALL of the above AND has some white stipling around the black borders. I don't believe that this eliminates her from being an okeetee.

They are very pretty normals!

i brought this one as a okeetee and as he was my first i didnt have a clue!

definatley normal!! but he's my baby!!

sorry crappy pic!!

Hey Darin, you've got a locality okeetee then. There's a difference between okeetee phase (based soley on appearance) and okeetee locality. But yeah, I think dartguy's normals are just normals, IMO.


I've noticed alot of people will post and say, "I have an amel/normal that looks vaguely like I've heard --insert morph here-- is supposed to look. Could it really be an --insert morph here--?"

Odds are, no. On occasion some less-experienced breeders will sell animals as less than they are, but chances are that won't happen. Also, if your animal only vaguely resembles a line-bred morph, it doesn't qualify. There's no absolute way to tell for sure until the snake reaches full adulthood and can be judged for it's adult appearance, but odds are it's just a very pretty normal/amel/whatever. That doesn't make the snakes in question any less special, they just don't usually fit into the line-bred categories.

I know this sounds strange, coming from me, but I am a bit of a stickler when it comes to calling animals okeetees. I understand that there are okeetee phase snakes (appearance) and locality okeetee snake (location of origin), but I think that these are too distractive for most of us.

This is why I appreciate the distinction that Kathy Love has made with her animals. As she says, okeetees are her flagship morph, but not all animals that look like okeetees are so called by her. She insists that they have that "look" AND be locality specific before she'll call them okeetees. In my opinion (and it is JUST that), this is the proper way to identify okeetees. I mean, I don't get all upset if someone uses it to describe the appearance of their snakes, but I wouldn't buy them for breeders and then call their offspring okeetees either.

Snakes that look like okeetees but do not have the locality specific bloodlines are "classic corns" in my mind, just as Kathy advertises them. I think that description gives a more accurate idea of what the snake is without muddying the waters as to its genetic heretige.

Of course, this all just my opinion. Everyone is free to do or speak as they wish, obviously. I just try to be as accurate as I can in the identification of my snakes.

I'm sure I'll catch flack for this, but IMO a lot of the extremist "locality nuts" are messed in the head. The reason I say this is they think that, after taking animals from a certain locality and then selectively breeding them to enhance specific traits over generations, they are still locality animals.

At some point, you cannot even take animals from that locality and put them into your breeding pool without making relatively "ugly" offspring, because you've deselected everything that was "undesirable" about the animals from that locality. I think Kathy Love is already at or beyond that point, and I think her Okeetees are by far the most attractive non-morphed corns I've seen. But by my own definition I don't consider them "locality-specific animals" any more than I would a German Shepard or an Irish Setter.

Then again I put zero value in "locality" anything, so it would be wise to take it all with a big grain of salt.

I actually agree with what you are saying concerning how introducing locality specific w/c animals is often a step backward in bringing out the beauty in many animals. And, there is no question but that you are right concerning Kathy's status concerning her okeetees vs. her classic corns.

I have no real axe to grind about locality specificity except in the sense of labeling animals for what they are. I am not against having classic corns anymore than I am against having creamsicles. But, and for the same reasons, I believe that both classic corns and creamsicles ought to be accurately labeled and advertised. There are those who do not want creams and there are those who want their okeetees to actually be okeetees and not simply look-alikes. I just think that it is the responsibility of all breeders to label their animals in way that is clear enough to let anyone and everyone know what they are getting for their money.

That's all I'm saying.

I agree in concept, but my question is this:

Let's say that Okeetees are an actual locality. (I don't agree with that statement because there aren't any barriers to isolate that gene pool, but I'll go along with it for argument's sake.)

Let's say that the typical Okeetee Locality wild corns are, for example, 10% different than the rest of the wild corn population.

Now, let's say that someone breeds locality okeetees in captivity to the point that they are more than 10% different from the wild Okeetee Locality corns.

At that point, aren't <B>all</B> wild corns "more" Okeetee-like than the ones that are being called "locality" Okeetees?

So are those people--thinking that they are true "locality" animals despite knowing what their history is--really in their right mind? And should they be catered to? (Kinda reminds me of McDonalds' changing their foods for "health conscious" people, LOL... only in America.)

I also disagree with the name Okeetee having a primary meaning of locality. I wonder if more "Okeetees" on the market are not actually locality animals, and I think most people looking for "Okeetee" corns are concerned with the phenotype rather than the locality. IMO if it's important to the buyer, I think it's the responsibility of the buyer to ask about it.

Heh heh, not trying to pick a fight, I think you're on the same "side" as me. It's just a subject where I think extremist attitudes have skewed the "center" so far off that common sense has gone out the window.