Butter

Butter corn snakes are a double-recessive combination of amel and caramel in Pantherophis guttatus. The amel gene removes black pigment, while caramel shifts the warm red-orange palette toward yellow, gold, and cream, producing a snake that often looks pale buttery yellow as it matures. Eyes are typically red or pink from the amel component, and the belly markings are much lighter than in a normal corn snake. Because butter is a genetic combination rather than a single mutation, its appearance can vary with line breeding and with additional hidden or visible genes.

Husbandry is no different from other corn snakes. The enclosure must be secure and provide a temperature gradient that allows the snake to digest without overheating. Clean water and appropriately sized rodent prey round out the routine. Young butters may look cream or peach before their adult yellow develops, making parent photos useful for buyers. Breeding plans require both amel and caramel to be present on each side if visual butters are the goal; a butter paired to a normal corn will usually produce normal-looking offspring that are double het, assuming no other shared recessives.

Colors: Albino, Amel, Amelanistic, Anery, Anerythristic, Bloodred, Butter, Candy Cane, Caramel, Charcoal, Cinder, Creamsicle, Dilute, Fire, Ghost, Granite, Hypo, Lava, Lavender, Masque, Miami Phase, Motley, Normal, Okeetee, Opal, Palmetto, Pewter, Plasma, Reverse Okeetee, Scaleless, Snow, Stripe, Sunglow, Sunkissed, Tessera, Ultramel, Wild Type