Okeetee Corn Snakes
The Okeetee is a corn snake with thick black borders around every red saddle on an orange ground. Most animals sold today are line bred for the look rather than descended from the South Carolina hunt club corns, and hatchlings start duller than the adults they become.
About the Okeetee gene
The Okeetee is the classic line-bred corn snake look. It has a bright orange ground with deep red saddles and black borders heavy enough to frame every blotch. This line started as a locality from the corn snakes of the Okeetee Hunt Club in Jasper County, South Carolina. Now, it is mostly a standard that breeders select toward.
Appearance
An Okeetee is defined by its border. The ground is a bright orange with deep red saddles and heavy black rings. A snake looks more like an Okeetee if that black is thick and clean. While bright, clean colour is typical, it is not required because thick borders qualify a snake on their own. The belly has the usual black and white checkering and some yellow shows on the sides, mostly near the neck. The borders become even thicker on Extreme Okeetees. Hatchlings are duller and darker than adults, but they brighten as they grow and shed. To see how bright the adult will be, the colour just behind the head is usually the best early guide. Lines differ. Abbott's Okeetees from Lee Abbott are known for very thick borders, while the Love line from Kathy Love is known for clean, sharp patterning.
Genetics
Because Okeetee is not a single gene, there is no het and nothing recessive or dominant to track. The look comes from many small genetic differences that breeders have concentrated by pairing the best-bordered animals over generations. This look dilutes when an Okeetee is bred to a corn without it. These are normal corn snakes underneath, which is why Okeetee has no het or super form.
Keepers use the name in two ways. Okeetee in the strict sense means locality stock traced back to the Jasper County snakes. Okeetee phase means a line-bred animal with the look, whatever its ancestry. The hunt club has long been closed to collectors, and most Okeetees in the hobby now are line bred for the look. Ask the seller which of the two you are buying if provenance matters to you.
The same selection on an amelanistic gives the Reverse Okeetee, with thick white borders where the black would be. The Extreme Reverse Okeetee takes those borders wider again. Other genes also sit behind Okeetee stock. Sunkissed first appeared in Kathy and Bill Love's Okeetee breeding in the 1990s, and some Sunkissed have since been bred back to thick borders as Sunkissed Okeetees. The first Lavas came from Okeetees bred down from wild-caught Jasper County corns. Miami is the other well-known locality line, with a grey to silver ground and dark red saddles.