hey everyone hope you guys are having a good day today and then you're enjoying everything going
on this world right now and making the best of it i just wanted today to give you guys a little bit
of an update about how things have kind of been going on here at jz's reptiles this year like
difficulties good things happening hopes for the future as well as you know just a little bit of
transparency with you guys so well i'm gonna talk a little bit about transparency just for
a second then i'll get to it transparency means that i'm just going to be completely
open with you guys i'm not going to hide anything i'm not going to keep anything away from you
there might be a surprise or a secret like ooh surprise clutch or oh hey i have this breeding
or there's a clutch of eggs that i'm not gonna tell you about the pairings that way when you
hatch you're gonna see it for the first time stuff like that but i'm never gonna hide anything from
you guys and you know i make mistakes and i learn from them and i will be open about those things if
i've ever missed anything like that and i'll talk a little bit about that in the video down the road
but i just want to be open and upfront with you guys and i will get to all of that in just a
minute but i want to talk a little bit about just kind of how the world with you know how 2020 has
been going for us here at jz's reptiles here in colorado and dealing with everything like that
with me today is wash he is our bamboo ball python he was not in this year's spring breeding but
hopefully he will be a breeder to be paired up this coming fall so hopefully like that i love
the bamboo ball pythons when i first showed up i thought they were so cool because they have this
really cool almost spider pattern down the back of them and you can do things like that to adjust it
to make it even more kind of more spider webby really thin kind of webs and things like that
which i super love the spider ball python pattern but all everything it kind of comes with it keeps
me from really getting into spiders too much and i do have a couple spider ball pythons but
i'm not really breeding them and if i ever do i'm certainly going to hold on to anything or
anything like that if something ever does pop up with that or if there's something that i just know
isn't going to thrive but i'm not going to talk about that too too much so 2020 it's been super
crazy right so you know the beginning of this year we started this channel hopefully try i want to do
interviews with people because it was suggesting me that you don't do a whole lot about that i
wanted to visit a bunch of different facilities i had interviews with people lined up in georgia at
at the reptile symposium before it was canceled with people in uh uh in uh in tinley park for
the nrbc show people from a couple different states people from even here in colorado who are
amazing reptile breeders and doing great things because i want to share their passion knowledge
with you guys on my channel as well as you know talking about them on their stuff too
but as we all know that didn't really go so well so since then during quarantine lockdown
whatever you want to call it we were doing just a bunch of just different species spotlights
and fun little videos here around here around jz's reptiles but the world's starting to open up a
little bit a little bit again and moving forward with the rest of the year and into next year
you know maintaining safety first and foremost for both us and our reptiles what are some
things you guys want to see i'm still wanting to do interviews and visiting different reptile
facilities and things like that but if there's anything that you would like to see me do if
it's possible i certainly would like to do so let me know what you guys want to see um
with that in mind you know we've also somehow managed to acquire a number of animals this year
before stuff kind of really got crazy um as you've all probably noticed colubrids have been featuring
very heavily lately that's because i am getting super into colubrids you guys especially north
american calibrates they are so so cool they are amazing like they're varied their personalities
are all different they're so cool i've been getting into asian rat snakes a lot too you
guys have seen our rhino rat snake now not quite sure what i want to name her just as of yet
not really quite sure i like to do the different themes as you guys know the ball pythons are the
50 states finally have a name for our pastel gravel he's going to be nashville or nash
but that was really cool super excited looking forward to all these cool new animals a lot of
them are going to be breeding projects a number of them are just really fascinating individual
species that i just really think are amazing and i want to learn to keep with that in mind
we also have been breeding ball pythons this year haven't done really anything else where i had one
pair of boas get together never saw a lock i think i missed my window to be completely honest um but
we'll try again this next year so ball pythons right now we have at the time i am filming this
video right now we have one clutch out which was a split clutch between an orange dream mama and then
two males one was a ghi mojave and the other one was another orange dream in that clutch it seems
like we got a super orange dream which means that orange dream dad got there and we also got a ghi
which means that glacier the ghi mojave also got in there and the rest of it was mixed between
orange dream and normals so split clutch hooray we have five clutches sitting in the incubator
right now including one that we are super excited looking forward to you guys there were two there
were two pairings that i was really really excited for one for which was proving out a gravel or
yellow belly female we're 99 sure she's a gravel but we won't know totally approved her out we put
two different ivory males to her so we will find out whether or not she is going to be yellow belly
or she is a gravel as soon as her as soon as she lays eggs or they hatch she hasn't laid yet
we're pretty sure she's gravid i don't have uh i don't have a sonogram here i can't check i'm not
super great at checking and every time i touch her she touches up she's not a happy camper 90%
of the time you guys the other one was another really cool pairing that i've talked about in
previous videos and this is going to be that one that i'm not going to tell you exactly what it is
but it is a really popular snake it has gone down in price but it's still really popular it's still
a great combo if she proves out to be uh in fact heck for that individual morph and once they lay
i'm gonna do a video about it you guys don't worry and hopefully she'll get quite a few so some will
be available with that in mind it also hasn't been the best year for us here at jz's reptiles
we've had a number of veterinary issues when it comes to the health of our animals
nothing's super super crazy but that's kind of part of the deal when it comes to having animals
is sometimes not everything goes right plans go astray we took in a rescue ball python a couple
years ago huge swelling all over her head she's a lithium so that means that she's a cinnamon lesser
she and she was only eating live very sparingly she was getting pretty thin
and so we were keeping on here keeping her clean she was starting to pound rats more and more the
swelling was starting to go down and then at the beginning of this year it just kind of the
the swelling uh regression just stopped and it got a little bit bigger and then it kind
of halted right there not nearly as big as it was when we first caught her in as a rescue
but we didn't know what was going on because she's she was starting to act more like a regular ball
python her attitude is great she's very personable her body weight is amazing her poops are fine
she's shedding great but there's all this swelling all over her face it doesn't look good and we
don't know what's going on so you know we're okay it's time time to go to the vet you know there's
a lot of stuff we can do for kind of home care and things like that but i'm always a big person
to say just go to the vet you guys i know it can be expensive and especially times like this and
i'll get to that in a second it doesn't always work out great and you know sometimes you can't
but always go to the vet if you if it's you know beyond your knowledge beyond your skill you know
that it's going to take something to help with that so we had we okay we need to make a plans
for this snake to go as well as carlsbad or orange dream ball python something happened we don't
know what his head just overnight just swelled a lot and we don't know what's going on with that
so now we have two ball pythons who heads are super swollen we take them to the vet they we
drain some fluid from the cinnamon lesser the lithium ball python we do blood cultures for
both of them we do antibiotic tests for both of them we test both of them for arena virus
negative for both negative for all these different pathogens and bacterial infections and fungal
infections and viruses other than the fact that at some point the lithium girl who we're just
going to call cinnamon because that's what we have to call her for the vet cinnamon did in
fact have some respiratory infections earlier in her life there's still a lot of that when
ball pythons get respiratory infections they tend to always kind of have them they can never really
fully kick them and i'm probably miss saying that a little bit but i'm just going to go with
that because it's kind of nomenclature because respiratory infections are a really big broad
subject that everything just kind of gets grouped together like that but i'll keep this quick
long story short they're both getting different antibiotic injections carlsbad's
head it's completely unswolled we still don't know what's going on with it he's in you know
his own quarantine he's on paper we're watching him but his health is doing really good okay i
guess you're just going to be up there wash go for it and uh and cinnamon she's doing really good she
is very healthy like if you just saw her body you would think it's a perfect ready-to-breed
ball python she's great her weight is great her attitude her personality her behavior it's all
amazing but the swelling is starting to go down again hopefully it continues if you guys are
interested i'll keep you updated things like that um we had an iguana self-cycle she laid
a bunch of eggs some of them look like they might be fertile we're like holy moly a pathogenic green
iguana this is crazy none of them went full term that's kind of a thing that's what happens but she
passed all the eggs it's fine we had another corn snake omega she was one of my very first snakes
just a normal some people call her okatee that's that kind of black like broad black banding on
their splotches she's just a normal red corn snake she has self regulated and laid in fertile eggs
three years in a row and we don't know why but this year there were a couple that were really
small and we didn't catch and i think it started to go a little septic we helped her pass him
through she was on the road to recovery but she just didn't fully recover and that's unfortunately
a lot of things that kind of happen when you're breeding snakes you know we we had a ball python
happen a number of years ago where she went to the vet as well she had the surgery because
they kind of got glued to the inside of her they were removed she had to have stitches antibiotic
shots all this stuff she's luckily recovered since then unfortunately omega did not which
was really sad she was wondering like where are you going bro um she was one of my first snakes
it's really i'm really sad to see her go she was doing really well we moved her into one of our new
larger 71 quart colubrid tubs and it seemed like she was doing great she was eating really well
she was pooping fine but i think just the stress of everything that kind of came out of her because
it looked like she had passed all of them but we just missed it and unfortunately that's something
that kind of happens with you guys and i'm being open and honest with you that i'm doing everything
in my power to make sure my animals are happy and healthy sometimes you miss stuff sometimes
there's just things you can't that are out of your control which is really sad to see that go we had
our redfoot tortoise betty lay three eggs she's a little young but she's a great size i don't
know what it is that i'm doing with my turtles but they seem to be growing very quickly overall she's
at a she's a good breeding size for a redfoot tortoise but she's a couple years young but
supposedly it takes a number of weeks for the embryo to kind of form in the veins to kind
of form at the top of the egg so i'm going to be candling them next week to see if any
of them are viable and even then it takes over a hundred days for red foot tortoise eggs to hatch
and they're just these really adorable pure white ping pong ball eggs which are really cool to see
and those are going to be uh maybe we'll have some baby red footwork so there's an almost and
i'll be uh you know a red foot tortoise breeder all of a sudden which will be kind of cool to see
no you won't get any baby tortoises still or at least three inches long
so good and bad of this year i look forward to everything that we can do from now on it's been
crazy there's been a lot of stuff out there out of our control things hopefully we can do
to kind of move forward with this there's been a lot of state and federal regulation trying to
impose animal right and animal welfare things there's a bunch of stuff going on in florida
right now as i'm talking about this about a lot of conditional species being made prohibited
all these things usark is fighting hard for us on that there was stuff going on alabama
here in colorado we had the traveling zoo uh legislation get put on the table again which
sounds like a good thing it's made to stop you know private zoos and things like that
for moving it but it also means that essentially unless you're an aza certified you know animal
handler educator facility it's illegal for you to transport anything exotic and those are the words
exotic animals anywhere so people who do the animal education shows a teacher bringing
a russian tortoise to the classroom to talk about is technically illegal it's not really
being talked about right now i did reach out to a number of senators and governors here in colorado
uh and they said that they would in fact you know say yeah we have plenty of animal welfare
uh laws here in colorado i will you know fight for this about this right here which was amazing
um you know the tiger king came out this year which was a little scary for all of us reptile
people because it opened with tom crutchfield like the granddaddy of granddaddies of reptile
keepers here in the united states and he was here for tom and somebody just happened to roll up with
a snow leopard in their van buying snakes from tom crutchfield so that was a little bit scary because
it's unfortunately a bit of a you know a parallel leap to the improper keeping and everything that
was going on with all the people with tiger king and inappropriate keepers and breeders
and irresponsible people with reptiles too so that was a little bit of a scary thing and so
now with all this federal regulation that's trying to be lumped in with like all the covid and corona
legislation stuff like that there is a very focused eye on anything animal related and
the tiger king kind of let the world know that there are a lot of exotics out there and a lot
of people who don't realize that you know there's there's millions of reptile keepers here in the
united states and not all of them are little ball pythons there's big snakes and and big monitor
lizards and even some states where it's legal to keep crocodilians not all people are really
should be having those and thanks to shows like that and the scrutiny of you know animal rights
uh groups out there that it's now there's a there's an eye on us guys and so that's why
i want to continue with this moving forward doing the best we can for open honest discussion proper
keeping proper information so that way you know we can move forward being a great industry that
can continue our livelihoods here in this country and before when i said i talk about transparency
i'm going to wrap this up really quick guys but i want to talk about that when i said i'm going to
be open and honest with you guys i absolutely mean it i kind of shoot from the hip when i do a lot of
these videos i make sure that i i look up terms i check different people i check different websites
when i start throwing out numbers or information and stuff like that another reason why i don't
like to do care guides because at some point i'm going to say something that isn't quite right and
i usually catch it uh post-production and you'll see like the little numbers and stuff thrown
around but i don't always check it and there have been a couple times where i have been acknowledged
in the comments which i really appreciate you guys please keep doing that where i misspoke
and said that uh bull constrictor imperator it is in fact a new species its own individual species
bullet imperator is its own species separate from boa constrictor but i accidentally said
subspecies and someone would correct me down the comments and i greatly appreciate that
he wasn't jerk about it he just let me know about the taxonomy change and things like that i knew
about it but i misspoke there you go guys i openly admit i said something wrong i was incorrect about
in another video i gave like a basic lifespan of a snake someone corrected me down below absolutely
really big thanks to you guys um i recently put out one about the amazon melt frogs i love those
judgmental little cute little froggy faces um i had talked to several people about it before
i got them themselves someone let me know down below about other couple uh credible breeders
who keep them about their dietary habits where i was told that small dubia roaches
you know because they have those hard shells they can't really digest them frogs are kind of soft
they're they're inside's a little soft they can't handle really hard stuff digesting wise
and but small like baby do your roaches were okay but someone let me know down in the comments you
know that's not necessarily the best idea it's hard for them to get them eventually they're
going to outgrow because they can hide and burrow and they're tree frogs they can't find them that
easily so just to avoid them outright along with super worms because those hard shells and
you know really thank you so much for pointing that out absolutely i'll admit that growing
alloying together all sorts of ways that we can improve we don't have to be awful to each other
we can move forward and learn take anything that was miss said misspoken not necessarily understood
not necessarily the best practices and move forward with that hopefully you guys enjoyed
this little bit of a ranty video you got to see wash be kind of a nut ball for a second
if you guys have any questions about anything i said in this video today questions about jz's
reptiles hopefully by the time this comes out i'll have some snakes available you can let me know
uh you can private message me uh you can hopefully by this point i'll have an email up too
you can email me about it and if not i'll let you know where to private's message me about it
so hopefully you enjoyed this please let me know if you have any questions any of
you guys out there that are watching and commenting on this thank you so much i
really appreciate it i know it's not anything great we recently passed 100 subscribers for me
that was amazing it's been really kind of slow going for this channel but it seems like there are
a consistent number of you guys who are watching it and are taking this to heart thank you so much
hopefully you are enjoying this hope you guys are doing okay out there in this crazy world that we
live in right now and you're having an okay time and you're moving forward with you can i know
things are hard it's certainly been hard for us here just with the animals like you heard about
hopefully everything's going great for you guys and i'll catch you next time