Actually, the rumor that the Takata animals were purchased from Bruce and sold as different stock isnt true. I can definitively vouch for that since I am Takata. There WAS a rumor that the last year of Seib's animals were purchased from Bruce and sold as Seib's and that may be what you are thinking about. Robert Seib's breeders stopped producing back around 2004, and thats around when that occurred. Since Robert Seib tried to buy my babies (and actually the EGGS!), this does not strike me as especially implausible. If youre in doubt that I was producing dozens of animals per year, and they are not Bruce's line (which I applaud you for avoiding), you can verify that with any of the old timers at the East Bay Vivarium if it makes you feel better about the animals.
However... I would stay away from Bruce animals like the plague. If you havent been in indigos long, you can search the Kingsnake forums back in maybe 2005 or so, where Robert Bruce and I engaged in a fairly heated debate about his severe inbreeding practices, of which he apparently understands nothing. As a biologist by profession, I tried to educate him about inbreeding depression but it didnt work... Now to be fair, two of my original 15 adult breeders were from him, but were produced in the early 2000s (2001, I think) before his "red throat" kick, when he began inbreeding in a big way. I got a couple of his black animals when he was purging them from his colony, which was also before I realized how he was beginning to inbreed his snakes. The rest of my breeders were from Dean, Doug Taylor, Seib (produced in the 90s), and some of unknown origins from the east coast, so extremely unlikely to be Bruce's animals. So although I want to begin another colony, Im very hesitant because so many of his animals, likely with very high levels of homozygosity, are out there, and I dont want any of them in my collection. Thats my 2 cents on the issue.
