Nelsons vs honduran?

Hey all, question is pretty much in the title. I'm looking for a new snake as I have a BP (2 years old) and a MBK thats under a year and I was looking for a new snake. I was thinking of getting either a FWC or a Hog nose but I'm shying away from a FWC because I think it would be to stressful for me to handle, maybe in a few more years who knows. Anyways I like my MBK quite a bit and I've got him to the point to where when I take him out he just sits and looks at me like "sweet free ride" and I know milk snakes are a close relative to them and they have some pretty cool morphs that wont break the bank as much as a BP morph. So I came across these two types of milk snakes and I really couldn't find much that compared the them. Is there really any difference between them other than a few slight physical differences and possible color morphs? I also noticed the Honduran cost about 2x as much, is there any reason for this other than maybe being more rare or something?

Any suggestions/comments about these two would help me a lot, thanks!

Hondurans get much bigger than a nelsoni.

Hondurans can be hard to handle as youngsters even into adult hood.

Nelsons are smaller, still squirmy when being handled, my vote would be an albino nelsoni.:)

My Nelson goes against the grain. She is docile, never musked. I will keep her forever. Her nice, red coloring is just icing on the cake.

Most nelsoni in the hobby are crossed with sinaloans...and I've never seen a flighty sinaloan in 23+ years of keeping milks. Hondos on the other hand are the complete opposite 95% of the time.

Don't let the stereotypes scare you away from the Honduran though. The truth is that getting one as a baby and handling at least once a week can work wonders in taming them down. They are gorgeous too. My Blossom has outstanding color but was sold to me for $50 because nobody wanted to handle her. It just took a little patience on my part to get her to recognize me and now she is one of my most polite and sweet snakes.

http://i439.photobucket.com/albums/q...7/100B1470.jpg
http://i439.photobucket.com/albums/q...7/100B1221.jpg

I am a novice keeper and I had the most wonderful Honduran. I handled her quite a bit in the reptile shop before I bought her and she was great. She was very squirmy every time I initially would pick her up (which was good practice for me) but would always settle down almost instantly. She would settle so well being held sometimes it was hard to get her off to go back in the tank :)

She never once tried to bite/strike at me. I named her Oblina after the Nickelodeon show Aaahh!!! Real Monsters :P Sadly she escaped about 5 months ago and I haven't been able to find her. I would love to get another one but still hope I'll find her instead-she was that great of a snake.

Even when Blossom used to flail and bite it was only when I initially picked her up. After 5 minutes she wasn't even head shy. I could just tap her on the nose and she didn't mind. I find the look of all Milks to be adorable and beautiful so it's probably the more impressive size of the Hondo that makes it my favorite.

I'd like to bring this conversation back up and see what else people have to say about Nelsoni. How long do they get? What size enclosure do they need as adults? Do they climb at all? What are the best care sheets? Most of the care sheets I have found are for milk snakes in general, not species specific. Thanks! :D

I've been doing some hunting trying to find answers to many of these questions. Here is what I've found.

Most milksnakes that you are going to find in the pet trade are not pure. There are 25 or so of the Lampropeltis triangulum. The divisions after that are subspecies. So your Nelson's is probably a different locality with slightly different characteristics than say a Sinaloan, Pueblan, or Honduran. There are some general trends it seems, but because of the high degree of crossing between subspecies, its really hard to pin down a for sure length, behavior, width of bands, etc.

Nelson's if you can find a pure type, do tend to be a bit smaller. Many of these are actually Sinaloan x Nelson hybrids.

Your Honduran milk snakes will be longer, but again its hard to say how much longer. Many of these are crossed with L.t. polyzona. It seems as though Hondurans are capable of being one of the larger types.

A Sinaloan or Pueblan will be in the middle between Nelson's and Hondos.

I don't know much about behavioral traits. I've generally heard that proper handling over time can reduce their squirming. Milk snakes to tend to be flighty, as are kings.

Here are some links to info, and a link to a thread over at kingsnake.com that has a photo of a giant Hondo. I would ask those guys, they seem to know a lot.

http://www.kingsnake.com/king/ssp.html
http://www.pitt.edu/~mcs2/herp/Lampropeltis.html
http://www.herpnation.com/hn-blog/th...-milksnakes-2/
http://forums.kingsnake.com/view.php?id=1975212,1975234

Awesome! Thanks!