Greyband Kingsnake Caresheet HERE

Greyband Kingsnakes come from the Trans-Pecos region of Southwestern Texas & Northern Mexico where they can be found in Rocky canyons, limestone ridges & rock piles and occasionally in desert flats. The Greyband Kingsnake is a medium sized colubrid reaching adult lengths of approx 3-4 foot. Hatchlings emerge from there eggs around 7-10 inches and some hobbyists have reported problems getting these to except rodents as there first meal. I am lucky, the majority of my Greyband hatchlings readily except defrosted pinkies immediately after there neonate slough.

Two Wild Type phases are known.

A typical "Blairi" phase Greyband can be characterized as having between 12-15 wide red/orange saddles bordered by narrow black, which in turn is narrowly bordered by white, on a grey background.
The typical "Alterna" phase Greyband has 17-33 black bands that may or may not be split with red/orange, alternating with between 10-25 broken black bands, on a gray, background.They may also have a speckling of black pigment over part of all of there bodies.

It has been suggested that the Greyband Kingsnake has evolved into two phases to mimic the venomous species in it's range, the "Blari" phase is similar to the Copperhead Agkistrodon contorix, and the "Alterna" phase mimics the Rock Rattlesnake Crotalus lepidus



Locality Greybands are bred in large numbers in the USA, including those from the Christmas Mountains, specimens from this locality include animals with a jet black ground color and bright neon orange saddles. Another popular collecting location is the Black Gap again high contrast animals are found here. In the early to mid 90's hundreds of herpetologists would make there way to Western Texas where the collecting of Greybands took place between the months of April to July. It is because of there efforts then, that the Greyband is widely available today as captive bred specimens. At the peak of the collecting years animals would be sold at the sides of the roads for hundreds of dollars to herpetologists wishing to pair similar looking animals up. This pilgrimage is still practiced today by dedicated "alterna" hobbyists, which has been christened "Alternaculture"


The Albino Greyband has been achieved in captivity by breeding the Albino gene from the Ruthvens Kingsnake into this species. To the best of my knowledge an pure albino specimen has not been found in the wild. Albino Greybands are beautiful snakes in shades of oranges, yellows & whites. It is my intention to reduce the percentage of Ruthvens influence until 75% and above are Greyband. Only then can we see a true reflection of an albino greyband giving us another amazing looking snake.
We will also be working towards producing Snow Greybands in the future.I will be calling these snowbands, expected in 2009, these will be pure white with pink eyes, were the bands are normally, we should see a slightly different white.This will be the result of yet another very long term goal.

I'm working with a pair of the Alterna phase Greybands, which I am hoping will help us produce our first Albino Alterna.

The Hypomelanistic gene reduces the amount of black pigment. Greybands exhibiting this trait are shades of grey/lilac/purple and orange. My snakes have a georgeous lilac background with deep purple bands and flashes of orange.This year I have bred my hypo greyband to a wide banded greyband normal, the babies being really nice looking and het for hypo. I'm currently working to widden the bands of the hypo, ghost, and anery by breeding them to wide band blairs like they one pictured above.This will happen in 2009.It's taken many years to get to this point with them, at least 2 years asking the breeders in the USA to send them to me, another 3 years until they were ready to breed, then another 3 years of selective breeding to widden those bands.

Ghost Greybands are a combination of the Anerythristic gene and the Hypomelanistic gene, they are shades of grey and white, with ruby red eyes. I am currently growing up specimens and hope to be producing them in the future.

The Anerythristic Greyband The first Anerytristic Alterna Greybands were produced by Dan Johnson in 1998. He hatched a pair of anerythristic alterna. These were produced from a wildcaught male bred back to his daughter. I am currently growing up specimens from this lineage and hope to be producing them in the near future. Anerythristic Greybands are typically shades of black, grey and white.