I have never seen a Lavender Cal King like mine, and I have a question about it.

[X-Relic-X]

Hey guys, I'm new to the forums, and relatively new and inexperienced when it comes to herpetology and the genes of different snakes. I was hoping there would be more experienced people here to help me.

I have a Lavender Albino California Kingsnake that I acquired at a reptile expo last year. I was happy because this, in my eyes, is a beautiful snake. I was looking around at other lavenders and albinos in general, and I have never seen one like mine. Instead of the eyes being reddish or pinkish in color, they are black with a lavender(almost the same color as the body) color. I am unsure if this is normal or rare.

Here are some pics to help people out:





Thank you for the help!

-David

[gonesnakee]

Looks to have the nice dark red that true Lavender Albinos have. Regular albinos in CKs are a different strain of Albinoism from Lavender Albinos. When you breed them together you don't get any Albinos, just double hets for both different strains. All the regular albinos have the traditional pink/red eyes, there are ones that even appear to be Lavenders, but have the pink/red eyes. To be a "true" Lavender Albino they must have eyes like yours does the deep ruby red, but there are also supposed to be 2 starains of the Lavender albino, ones with regular albino eyes & the true Lavenders with eyes like yours. Some folks call the regular non albino Lavenders "blue eyed blondes" because they have different eyes & appearence as well. I currently still keep Lavender Albinos & also have hets for both strains combined which also appear different than a regular phase CK. I have kept/bred all types of other regular & albino CKs in the past & the Lavender Albinos are the nicest IMHO. The hets I refer to above will be breeding either this year or next & are actually triple hets. Het for reg albino, het for Lavender albino & het for patternless. So basically the dream snake they could produce is a patternless lavender albino, an all purple snake with dark ruby red eyes. Can't wait to see one of those babies, Mark

[X-Relic-X]

Thanks a lot for your help Mark. I was going to feel really bad if I had an extremely rare snake and was going to donate it to the SD Zoo or something like that. It makes me feel better to know that I just have a true Lavender. Thanks again, for your help, and best of luck to you with the breeding pair.

-David