I know I haven’t posted in a while, and this one is going to be short, but I wanted to post a shot of what has been taking up so much of my time. This is the neew Aldabra tortoise pen that I have been building. It is about halfway done, and I will continue to put some updates here as I take pics.

I also wanted to put up a picture of the official start to snake season. It is normally a Corn Snake Clutch that wins the title of first, but this year we ot our first Ball Python clutch about 7 weeks early, and it happens to be the first clutch of eggs in the incubator this year. This was 5 eggs and 1 infertile from a Pied male bred to this Pastel Het Pied girl. I can’t wait for some Pastel Pieds.

Per my last post, I have been wanting to be a bit more active here. Well, since it is a holiday weekend, and I have more time to take pics, here is one I have been wanting to post for a while. This is a pic of all of the recessive/Dominant crosses that we either produced or aquired this year. Most of them we made either here, or in a joint venture with Sean. Below is a list of everything pictured.

Albino Cinny – traded with EbN

Pastel Clown – traded with Suffolk Selects

Hypo Super Cinnamon – produced here

VPI Axanthic Enchi – produced here

Hypo Cinnamon – produced here

Pastel VPI Axanthic – traded with EbN

Albino Spider – traded with NoCo Reptiles

VPI Axanthic Pinstripe – produced here

Lesser Genetic Stripe – produced here

Pastel Genetic Stripe – joint breeding with EbN

Cinnamon Genetic Stripe – joint breeding with EbN

Hypo Mojave – produced here

Here is the pic:

Thanks for stopping by, and I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving!

Once again, it has been a while since I visited here. I am finally getting caught up with hatchlings, pictures, updating the available pages and posting some ads. I needed to get all of that done, to keep the money flowing. Now, I finally feel like I have some free time to post more on the forums and on the blog. Of course, I had to make the breeding plan, as that season is right around the corner. I will start breeding at the same time that my last clutch is hatching. Speaking of the last clutch, I cutg the eggs yesterday, and I have 4 Caramel Albinos out of 6 eggs. Hopefully these guys and gals come out kink free. That’s about the jist of what has been going on around here lately.

You can’t do a blog post without some pics, so I have included a few of those below. First up is the pair of KillerBees that we produced last month. Following them are the Pastel VPI Sugars that we also produced last month. Lastly, are two new male additions that we were looking forward to picking up this year. I would like to say thanks to Brian at BHB for the beautiful Super Chocolate male, and a big thanks to Kevin at NERD for the Lemon Pastel Hidden Gene Woma Granite. I can’t wait to plug these guys into some fun stuff. Now that I have a bit more free time, I will be posting some updated shots of a few things as well. The Hypo Super Cinnys and VPI Axanthic Enchis come to mind. Also, out Lesser Genetic Stripe is growing like crazy as well. Keep checking in, as I will make a very good attempt at throwing some pics and posts up at least once a week now.

Thanks for visiting.

It’s been longer than I wanted between posts, but it’s been busy around here. First thing I want to mention is the title of this post. We had our first shot at VPI Axanthic Enchis, and was fortunate enough to hatch a pair. Below is the pic.

Also in this post, I wanted to post a pic of our new Pastel Clown. We did a trade in Daytona and were fortunate enough to pick up this girl. She should make a nice addition to the breeding season in a couple years.

Next up is our new Orange Dream female. I have been wanting one of these for a while, and happened to see one on an USARK auction hosted on Bush League Breeders Club. Well, we bid, and were lucky enough to win. Thanks to Oz at Ozzy Boids for donating this beautiful animal.

Lastly, we have some more cool stuff hatching in the next couple weeks, so stay tuned. I can say that I just cut a clutch of eggs, and after about 30 eggs, we finally hit on the Axanthic Pinstripe. This is myt second year trying, and I finally hit it. I do have one more clutch later in the season, so maybe we can get another.

Thanks for stopping by.

We got lucky this year, and bred our Hypo Cinnamon male to a Cinnamon 50% Poss Het Hypo girl. Well, we hit three Hypo Super Cinnamons. Because of the excitement, I failed to notice that one of them had a small curl at the end of his tail. Upon further inspection, both of his penes were hanging out, and he has a strange merging of scales below his belly button. I think he will end up being euthanized, but if his penes fall off, and he doesn’t get an infection, and eats well, my daughter wants to keep him as a pet in her room. I think he will be fine, so he will probably just be a cool pet. We were also able to produce our first ever Super Cinnamon in this clutch that happens to be a Het Hypo. I wish it were a female so that I could keep it, but you can’t win them all.

The other excitement for us this year was proving out 2 66% Possible Het Lavender girls that we got from John Piro. We still have two that didn’t lay this year, and one that we either disproved or missed on this year with 5 eggs. Either way, we finally have a trio of Lavenders to watch grow and develop color.

I hope everyone enjoys the pics, and stay tuned, as we will be posting another first ever cross next week. We actually have two of them in the egg right now.

We finally started hatching some animals, and once they started, we can’t stop them now. We went from no hatchlings, to 9 clutches out in a week. I have taken a picture ofour first clutch (which was a much anticipated clutch), but haven’t taken any other photos yet. Although we didn’t hit the holy grail in the first clutch (a Killer Spinner), we did get some nice animals and 2 of them will stay right here in the permanent collection. We bred a BumbleBee to a Lemon Blast and ended up with a female Super Pastel, a female Lemon Blast, a female Super Blast and a male Spinner Blast. The Spinner Blast and Super Blast are going to stay with us. We have also hatched out some Sables, Sulfurs, Het. Clowns, Sugars, Womas, and proved out our first Poss Het Lavender girl. We produced one Lavender Albino from a Het to Poss. Het. We also proved out our second Poss Het Lavender breeding, but the Lavenders in that clutch are crawling out right now. The first one out is a male (we needed that) and there are 2 more in the clutch of 6 eggs from Het to Poss. Het. We smoked the odds on that one. We also have some Yellow Bellys, Pastel Yellow Bellys, more Sugars and a clutch with 3 brand new crosses yet to be seen (they are all the same, and we killed the odds on that one too). I hope we haven’t used up all of our luck yet. Stay tuned for the new crosses, as they should be crawling out around Sunday or Monday.

Lastly, I am posting a pic of our newest addition. Below is an Albino Cinnamon girl that we picked up from Exotics by Nature. I love how these things mature.

Thanks for reading, and come back and see us, as now that new stuff is happening every day, I am hoping to update the blog at least once per week (although I have been updating the birthing record about 3 times a week).

I haven’tposted in a while, and I was hoping to get to the blog a bit more often. At any rate, egg laying has been in full swing for a while now, and I have three clutches that were of specific interest to me, so I thought I would post them up here.

The first clutch to show happens to be my son’s first clutch. The female is a Pastel that he picked out in 2006 from some babies we produced. Even though she is a girl, he named her Nemo. At the beginning of breeding season, we thought she would go, so Bryce took a trip over to the male racks to pick out the male he wanted to breed to his Pastel. He picked the Spinner. So, his first clutch of seven eggs made it into the bator from Spinner to Pastel. I hope you get some Spinner Blasts buddy.

The next clutch that was a ball of fun was the clutch contest clutch for Ball-Pythons.net. This is a clutch that we do every year, in which we put as many males in with the female as possible. When she lays, we post up her clutch on the web, and let the members guess what the first snake to hatch will be. The correct guesser wins the snake. The contest can be viewed here. 2010 BP.net Clutch Contest Below is the pic of the girl on 8 huge eggs.

Lastly, I will post a clutch that was anticipated, but did not have the desired outcome. My wife has always loved Caramel Glows. So, we thought we would start our project this year. But, I wanted a little something extra in the project. So, I put my Hypo Cinnamon male in with a Caramel Albino female. Many people have doubted the fertility of Caramel females, and while I have seen a few Caramel girls on eggs, I wanted to see it with my own female. I was excited about this pairing, but half way through the season the girl started looking thin (she went off feed long before most of the other girls). I pulled her out of the breeding program in February, and thought her follicles were shrinking. After her last shed, I palpated her, and still believed that her follicles were shrinking (what I was actually feeling is displayed in the pic below). I didn’t mark down her shed as a POS, because I didn’t think that was what it was. However, I checked on her from time to time. Well, she finally laid, and it was not what I wanted to see. We will still try again next year with some more Caramel girls, and we have one egg that might make it, but the baby will be tiny (the boob egg weighs 32.3 grams).

We’ll see you again next week, and we should have some pics of our first clutch of eggs cut. I think there might be a couple very cool animals in there.

I took this picyure about 10 days ago, but I forgot to post it. My wife has always been a fan of Butterflies, and I happened to be walking around the back of the barn the other day, and saw this butterfly trapped in a spider web by our rodent room a/c. It’s an eastern tiger swallowtail. I got e-mailed a link to a site that shows you how tomount butterflies, so when I get sometime and have some patience, I might give it a shot. I hope you enjoy the shot.

Next up is our first addition of the 2010 year. Here is our new Pewter Mojave female. I don’t know what she will breed first, but I have some time. I am thinking something in the Mystic complex.

Lastly, we have been getting eggs non-stop. On averqage, we are getting 1-3 clutches per day, and will probably have about 47 clutches in the incubator before we even hatch our first clutch to hatch will be our only shot at a Killer Spinner this year. It is going to be exciting. Today we put a clutch of Mojave to VPI Axanthic in the bator, so that will be a fun one as well in about 60 days.

Stay tuned for more updates and pics as the season progresses.

On a final note, we will be vending at the following shows coming up: Repticon Baton Rouge this weekend, WARE in September, NARBC Tinley in October and NARBC Houston in October. Make sure to check out our first published advertisement in the NARBC program.

Sean and I started talking about getting some Aldabras on a trip home from a reptile show in December of last year. We decided to make some calls and get some. Well after almost 7 months, they finally got here. The Icelandic volcano caused 2 delays in shipping from the Seychelles, but the wait was worth it. I just got these guys today and got them home. They are a bit lite for their size, but we found out that they do like Mazuri tort diet, and I have a bag full ready to go. They area that they are in was also seeded with Bermuda about 6 weeks ago, and is full of clovers. So, I think they will be happy in their new home. I also found some kudzu growing on my property, so they will get some of that as well. Lastly, I have a planned visit to the local market to get old fruits and veggies from them on disposal day.

Here is a pic of them both when they got home. A good soaking, and a light scrub of the shells to clean them up a bit. They both drank a good bit when they hit the water, which is good, because they both urinated on the way home.

Meet Pong. It is the larger one of the two.

Meet Ping. The smaller one.

Here is a shot of Pong’s imperfection.

Ping’s imperfection is shown here.

Here is a shot of Ping and Pong when I introduced them to their new enclosure. (p.s. They are named after a teacher of mine in highschool that had a pair of ducks with the same name. I thought the names were great, since they aren’t gender specific, and we don’t know the sexes yet). Sorry the grass is so long, but we just got back from vacation and haven’t cut it yet.

This last pic is of the enclosure for the time being. It is made out of 1″ PVC and 1″ x 1″ mesh on the side and 1″ x 1/2″ mesh on the sides. The mesh is attached in the corners with fence ties, and UV resistant zip ties in the middle. There is some expanded PVC on 2 sides and one half of the top for shade. They are positioned under a tree that allows them shade for about 75% of the day. The full sun is early morning sun, which should not get them too hot, although we will watch it closely over the next couple weeks. The enclosure is secured to the ground with U-stakes, so that they cannot lift it, nor can animals get in. We made this enclosure for now, so that it could be moved if they start to demolish too much flora in the area. I will start building there next enclosure in the next couple weeks. Next up is a 16′ x 16′ cinder block enclosure, that will eventually be the corner of a one acre pen. That will take some time, but time is one thing I have with these guys.

We actually took these photos last weekend, and I am just getting them up on here now. In the past week, these guys have eaten ravenously. They both like Mazuri tort chow, and turnip greens. They love yellow squash, and Ping hates pears. They both like peaches and mango. They seem to be settling in nice, and I am sure I will post some more pics of them in the coming weeks, months and years (centuries too if I lived that long).

After a long wait for our first eggs (I have been seeing people hatch stuff already, and we didn’t even have eggs to look at), they are finally in the new incubator. Our first clutch this year was from a Bumblebee bre to a Lemon Blast that we produced. When that Lemon Blast crawled out of the egg, I knew what she was going to breed first. It’s been a few years, but she finally has the shot at making that Killer Spinner for us. I have included a pic of her on eggs below.

I did lie a bit, as our first eggs came about a month ago, but those were corn snake eggs, and I was really meaning Ball eggs. On that note, our Anery Kenyan Sand Boa looks like she is going to give us a litter this year as well, and she was bred by our Paradox Snow male. We will get our first Anery hatchlings ever. We did not breed our Nic boas this year, and obviously our Blood python stuff is not to size yet.

With all of that said, I hope to come and update blog posts more often that I have been, as it is starting to get interesting. We took last off, and went on the family vacation. While we were there, I had a good friend of mine, Sean Bradley, helping with all of the animals, and pulling eggs as they cam. Sean pulled another 6 clutches for us, and we got another 2 when we got home. So we are up to 9 in the bator, and it looks like we will have in the neighborhood of 70 clutches this year.

Until next time, thanks for coming, and good luck to all with their eggs this year.