Peanut Butter

PB is a recessive mutation.

The story of the Peanut Butter Brooks begins with Tom Mills of California visiting his good friend Stephen Strasser in Florida in 1992 or 1993. Tom asked Stephen to arrange a trip to Glades Herp to look around and buy some snakes. So they did just that, and left with some Dade County Brooks Kingsnakes.

Tom took these snakes back to California with him where they eventually bred, and produced a clutch of babies for him two years later. Of the eggs, only one baby looked different than the rest, and was immediately nicknamed “Raw Meat” because of the odd pinkish purple color it displayed, very similar to the sheen on a raw steak. The name stuck, and they began calling it the Raw Meat snake.

This first Raw Meat snake was the only one like it in a fairly large clutch, and so they thought it was an odd event. The snake was also a very picky eater, and eventually died, so Tom and Stephen both thought it might have been some kind of fluke.

The second year those same snakes were bred, they hatched out yet another male Raw Meat! This time the young male was vibrant, ate well, and survived. Tom sent this male as a yearling back to Steve along with all the siblings, and the original pair from Glades Herps. Stephen bred this group for six years and never produced a female.

Stephen showed the snakes to many people, including Bill Love and Len Krysco, who believed it might be a sex linked gene, thus only being produced in males. Stephen said he produced over 15 clutches, and only males were ever produced. He also noticed that the snakes went through a very quick change in appearance losing that pinkish-purple color in a matter of a couple of months. They transformed into a more orange, almost sulfur color, resembling the common Hypomelanistic Brooks that had already been established in the hobby. The Raw Meat male was also bred to the classic Hypo, but only double hets were produced.

Stephen eventually sold the group to Rainer Weishauptl, who went on to produce them, and eventually breed them to the T-Neg Brooks he had also acquired, producing the first Jelly Brooks. ^[1]