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CS.com Guide to Corn Snake Cultivars & Cultigens A collective field guide to the cultivars and cultigens (morphs) of corn snakes.

Cinder Corn Snake
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Old 05-08-2018, 12:30 AM   #1
Rich Z
Cinder Corn Snake

A section from my retired SerpenCo.com website and some following recent commentary.

Well, for some reason I can find any writeup I specifically did on the Cinder (which incidentally I originally just referred to as a "Type C Anerythristic" and later referred to as an "Ashy Corn"). But I did find the below concerning the Upper Keys Corns where I made brief mention of it.

Quote:
Upper Keys Corn Snake

I will be the first to admit that I have NO idea what a 'Lower Keys' corn snake looks like. Every corn snake I have ever heard about coming from the Florida keys seems to be called an Upper Keys Corn. Not sure exactly why that is. Either the Upper Keys are just teeming with corn snakes that the Lower Keys lack (which is sort of consistent with the fact that the corns from the Lower Keys are protected), or many people think that the Upper Keys begin with Key West and extend to the mainland. Seriously, I do suspect that each of the major keys in the Florida Keys might have it's own minor variations in the way the corn snakes coming from them appear, but unless you yourself go down there and catch them, or get them from someone entirely trustworthy, I would take such information with a big grain of salt.

The Upper Keys Corn is kind of hard to describe. In some instances it looks like something inbetween a hypomelanistic corn and a regular Miami Phase corn. There is usually very little contrast between the blotches and ground color. And often the abdomen can be pretty much patternless. Kind of long and lanky of body shape, looking a bit more streamlined that the typical corn. Nearly all of my examples are very mellow acting animals, and in some respects act very similar to the Amber corns in personality.

One interesting bit of information is that I have had some apparently Anerythristic looking babies hatch out of the line I have. The guy I got them from (Craig Boyd) said they were wild caught animals, so this is an interesting development. This is probably just some 'A' Anerythrism popping up, but I have never heard of them coming from the Keys. I certainly hope so, since the last thing we need is yet another genetic form of apparent Anerythrism!
Now what is interesting is that my memory of the source of those Cinder/Ashy corns was not what I am stating here. A long time ago I did one of the Birmingham, AL reptile shows, and there was a guy there looking to trade a female Upper Keys Corn for something, and we wound up agreeing on a trade for an adult leopard gecko we had on surplus. Come to find out that the corn was gravid, so I hatched out the babies and kept some around for a new blood line. When they grew up, I bred them with snow corns to see if there were any of those particular genes lurking around in that gene pool. Nope. But I kept some of those babies, raised them up, and bred them together. So of course, I got anerythristics and amels, and certainly a snow or two, but some of the anerythristics just looked a little different to me.

So I am not sure about the real actual source of the animal(s) I got that actually produced this new gene for me. All that seems evident is that it did originate from the Florida Keys. But if my life were on the line, I would have to say what I wrote back then would have to be more accurate than my actual memory right now. This is not the only incident I can note where my aging memory does not jive with actual history.

So I spent years growing up those odd looking anerythristics and cross breeding them to Type A anerythrism and and also Charcoal, since it was quite possible that this was just a different expression of either of those known genes. In the meantime, of course I sold off a bunch of related offspring, and apparently Carol Huddleston hatched out some of those "odd" anerythristics as well. Since I still was not convinced 100 percent it was a unique gene and declined to give them a new name, Carol started calling them "Cinder" corns and marketing them as such. Personally, I saw a striking resemblance in their coloration to the endemic ashy geckos found on the Florida keys, once I had finally concluded that this was a new gene type, and wound up preferring to call them Ashy Corns. But I guess the marketplace preferred "Cinder Corn" and it stuck regardless of what I liked as a name.

I guess any snows out of that gene pool I sold off could have been amelanistic forms of the Cinders, but when you are hatching out thousands of baby snakes, subtle differences sort of become insignificant and easily slipped through the fingers.
 
Old 05-08-2018, 02:01 AM   #2
Rich Z
ADDENDUM from my 2005 SerpenCo.com website listings.

Quote:
C Anerythristic Corn Snake

Last year I bred an animal that is proven het for this particular gene to several Charcoals and several A Anerythristics. NONE of the babies came out as being Charcoals nor Anerythristics, which is leading me to strongly believe that this is indeed a new anerythristic looking genetic type. This year I bred two C Anerythristic males to Silver Queen Ghosts (based on A Anerythrism) and Charcoal Ghosts (based on Charcoal). So I should get pretty definite results this year.

If this proves out to be a new gene, I will be selling a limited number of them this year, simply because I don\'t really need as many of them as I will likely produce.

Not only will I be selling the C Anerythristics themselves, but I will likely sell some of the multiple hets that I expect to produce as well. These will include the following:

C Anerythristic
C Anerythristic x Charcoal Ghost
C Anerythristic x Silver Queen
Upper Keys het C Anerythristic


Inquire if you are interested in them prior to my offering them for sale. Of course, if this turns out to be a wild goose chase, then I guess the whole lot of all those babies get bagged up and shipped off to a wholesaler.

Oh, in case you are wondering, if this does prove out to be a new gene, no, I am not going to be selling these animals cheaply.
 
Old 05-08-2018, 02:23 AM   #3
Rich Z
ADDENDUM from my 2007 SerpenCo.com website. (Which confuses the issue about the actual source of this genetic line.)

Quote:
C Anerythristic Corn Snake (Ashy Corn)

Yep! Definitely a new gene from all the breeding tests I have done. In 2004 I bred an animal that is proven het for this particular gene to several Charcoals and several A Anerythristics. NONE of the babies came out as being Charcoals nor Anerythristics, which is leading me to strongly believe that this is indeed a new anerythristic looking genetic type. In 2005 I bred two C Anerythristic males to Silver Queen Ghosts (based on A Anerythrism) and Charcoal Ghosts (based on Charcoal) and in NO occasions did I get any results that would disprove this being a new gene. None.

Very limited numbers will be available this year. To be honest about it, I have been outcrossing this line extensively for the last few years, and not made much effort to produce many for sale. I think the potential for future projects just greatly outweighs the monetary gains of selling of this new genetic stock prematurely. I REALLY want to see what some genetic combos look like with this one combined to them!

Het animals will most certainly be offered as well, as I have been combining this gene with other genetic traits all along.

For an "anerythristic" looking animal, these guys are rather interesting looking. Seems to be two different flavors of them. On one hand you get pretty much a gray looking animal with little or no other coloration but shades of gray. Then on the other hand, some will have rich mahogany blotches to them on the more typically seen gray background. At this point, there is no evidence for or against there being another genetic type floating around in there. If there is, it is nothing that has jumped out in me from the normal Upper Keys stock that have been part and parcel with this development. But perhaps outcrossing into other genetic types will give a clearer picture of what is going on. Or maybe not....

Body structure is kind of odd on these guys. Somewhat high ridged backbones in some examples. I've noted that the babies seem to have high metabolisms and need feeding more often than other lines, so perhaps this is just my fault for not keeping them on a more progressive feeding schedule into adulthood. But that would be tough to do around here, anyway.

As for the history of how this cultivar came about:

This genetic line came from a single animal that I got from a guy and his son who were at the ONLY Birmingham show we have ever attended. This was 1996, I believe. He said he lived in the keys and was visiting the area, had a gravid female corn he said came from the keys and wanted to trade me one of our leopard geckos for it. It was an interesting looking enough corn snake that I accepted the trade.

That animal was gravid and laid a clutch of eggs that season, but I do not think I kept any of them. I had wanted to breed hypomelanism into the Keys line, so the next season, I bred her with one of my hypos. And, of course, kept some of the babies back from that project.

Of course, I didn't breed one of those sons back to her for a few years as they grew and matured, but I don't recall what I bred her with in the interim. So figuring it was probably two or three years later before breeding back one of her sons to her. The hypos that came from breeding the het hypos together were nothing special, so I was about ready to call that project a complete bust. Just happened to have a couple of her sons around, and didn't have anything else special that I wanted to breed the original female with. So what the heck, I bred one of her son's back to her. That's when those first "anerythristic" looking animals appeared. Serendipity at work, yet again. And of course, I had already sold off most of those het hypos (likely carrying this new gene as well) along the line....

At the time, they looked more like Charcoals than anything else, but there was a slight difference to them that became more pronounced with age. And as it turned out, subsequent test breedings proved them to NOT be Charcoal nor 'A' Anerythrism at all. Well that's just ducky! Just what we need, another anerythristic looking gene........

And for the record, I have heard there are some people who believe this line is a hybrid of some sort, regardless of any evidence to back up that claim. But lately this seems to be the battle cry for quite a few people when something new arises genetically in the corn snakes, it seems. Personally, I don't believe it for an instant, if for no other reason than the argument FOR it being a hybrid just doesn't hold water.
 

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