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Goins snake info wanted

Jonathan P

Jonathan P

New member
I did some searching on the internet and didn't turn up any solid information on this breed. One of my local pet stores has one and it looks gorgeous and has a fairly mild temperment.

Can anyone help me with a good site that has information on them? I have seen them described as kingsnakes and milksnakes. Other than that I haven't found much.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.
 
I have one and she's just like my other kings. Mine has a good temperment, really good feeding response and has the same requirements as corns and kings for housing, heat, etc. Here's a link...

http://www.reptileartistry.com/collection.html

It states that "goini" is no longer accepted by taxonomists, but that's what I still call it, or a red blotched king.
 
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They are very similar to a FL king or Eastern Chain king. I've worked with them for the past 4 years and now have some albino bloodline I'm working with.

Great feeding responses and great attitude...just make sure your hands don't smell like mice.
 
Yeah seriously, lets see some pictures Jeff.

I plan on picking some of these guys up next year, but it doesn't seem like too many people are working with them.

Jeff, what other phases do you have? Striped? Blotched? Patternless?? Are the albinos a cross between true goini and brooksi?

Jonathon-

Goini or 'blotched' kingsnakes are actually a locality kingsnake found only in the Apalachicola National Forest in Florida. Taxonomists can argue at length about them being an intergrade between florida kings and eastern kings, but I could care less. They are definitely very different looking from both easterns and florida kings.

Try searching for 'blotched' and 'Apalachicola' kings.
 
Thank you all for the information.

After looking at the suggested site and being able to more accurately search I think the one at the pet, if it's a blotched king afterall, is a bit unusual. I didn't find anything like it in the photos or descriptions. All the patternless ones I saw had color, and my understanding is that if it were albino, then it would have ruby eyes. Instead this snake appears to have no pattern or color at all (it's all white), with black eyes. It reminds me, coloration wise of, a leucastic (hope I got the spelling at least close)ratsnake.

I'm going to have to go back and give it another look. They also have 2 beautiful and very mellow Kenyan sand boas, 1 for $50 (not a good eater) and 1 for $100 (voracious eater).

There are just too many beautiful snakes. :shrugs:
 
We used to be pretty heavily into blotched kings back in the late '80s and early '90s, when they were still pretty rare. We spent quite a bit of time discussing them with some of the first people who collected them, bred them, and researched them, mainly Art Meyers and Bruce Means. After a lot of discussion, it is my opinion that the "true" goini was a striped / patternless king that was separated from the other populations, such as the eastern king, by geographical features a long time ago. But when the geography changed, it interbred and became diluted. So I believe that now only a relict population occurs in the panhandle of Florida, and has been pretty well intermingled with other kings from the surrounding area. I believe that is why you will only occasionally find a striped or patternless animal. In my opinion, the blotched king that is usually shown in photos in books is really an intergrade, and is not the "true" goini, which should be the striped or patternless snake, with a speckle on each scale.

Interestingly, the striped / patternless appearance seems to be at least partially sex linked. Almost all of the wild caught animals with that pattern (or lack of pattern) have been male. And if the patternless wild caught is bred to a typical blotched, almost all of the stripey babies will be males. However, if you breed the most atypical, stripiest individuals (esp. the few females) together for a few generations, you can start to weed out the blotched patterned snakes and start to get more babies (including females) that are striped / patternless. It was a fun project for several generations. But once we started producing plenty of the non-blotched babies of both sexes, the project lost a lot of the excitement to see what could be done.

Of course, all of my info is many years old, since I have not been folowing what is going on with them since I stopped keeping kings many years ago. And of course, I am not a taxonomist, so the above is just my own opinion of what they are / were.
 
I've produced both the stripes and the blotched. I'm on my F2 generation and my founder stock came from a few different sources...mainly in CA and the names don't come to me right now.

As far as the albino, I believe it is a hybrid of some sort as the details were very sketchy on it. Most likely it is a Cal King cross as the "story" with the snake was that it came out of some breedings from the early 90's. Apparently it either popped up (doubtful in my opinion) or was bred to albino cal king and then they kept breeding it back to Goini following the albino gene (more likely...but the seller gave me both stories! :() I picked him up at the SC show a few years back because he looks VERY goini. I've seen several albino "goini" but it is very easy to see the Cal king, brooksi, or FL king influence...this guy just didn't have that. I'll try to get pics soon...but he is brumating so it may take a while.
 
Now that is exactly why this site is so fantastic!! Those in the know are willing to share their vast knowledge and experience. Thank you so much for the information.

Turns out I will be waiting to add to my collection. The blotched king's temperament wasn't very mellow when I went to visit it today. In addition the weak eating Kenyan Sand Boa I was told was lost for 2 hours during it's feeding last night, and when it was found and returned to an enclosure they think they might have put it in with one of the kings. They can't find it now and are sure that, that means it's been eaten. The voracious eating Kenyan, apparently isn't so voracious the pinky they put in the enclosure with it yesterday evening was still stumbling around at 7pm this evening.

While some of the employees on the surface appear to know a fair amount about snakes, the different breeds and basic care, the more you listen the less they know. When they have weak eating kings, boas, pythons, or corns they force feed them small fish. They feed the young snakes that are eating by putting pinkies in their enclosures directly on the aspen, and I heard one of them say that "Ball pythons are so mellow that they will never bite you. It's just not ever going to happen. It doesn't matter whether or not you have ever handled a snake it's the best 1st snake anyone can buy."

These guys do seem to genuinely care about the animals, the cages are relatively clean, well secured, sufficiently warm, and with accessible clean water. It's too bad that they don't know more, and don't want to. I did try to gently offer a suggestion that small fish isn't really the way to go and the response was it had worked so why not.

You can only educate those that are willing to learn. Hopefully the purchaser's will have more knowledge than the sellers.
 
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