- You guys may remember when we produced this No eyed,
Albino ball python.
Unfortunately, this one is certainly a little bit messed up,
but just like Helen, we didn't know that she was going to
survive and now she's two and a half years old and thriving.
So we have another, no eyed albino, with a little bit of
lip problems but hopefully if everything goes well,
it'll eat and we can actually baby it.
I'm sure it's going to take a few months of babying it,
but I'm not going to give up on it.
Just like I didn't give up on Helen.
Well, now it's about a month and a half old or so,
and it hasn't fed.
And you might remember with Helen, our no eyed albino
that's at the Reptarium, we had to assist feed her
for about six months before she went on her own.
Mind you, she didn't have some of the facial deformities
that this one has, but I'm still very hopeful that we can
get this guy going.
Today is going to be the day that we want to try to assist
feed and get some meal into it cause its' starting to get
a little bit thin.
We don't want to wait to the point where it's thin
and it's hard to get back, right?
You want to be proactive when it comes to assist feeding.
I never assist feed until something is refusing food,
for at least three weeks after a shed.
It's been about four weeks for this one, so I think
it's about time and I'm going to share how I do it
with this guy, with you.
Now, the animal itself looks pretty healthy to be
totally honest with you without obviously,
the exception of that little deformity in the face
and the actual eyes.
So, what we're going to do is take a fuzzy,
a frozen fuzzy like this.
We thaw it out in warm water.
Now I'm going to very gently just kind of hold its face like
this and I'm going to just open its mouth
with the actual nose of the fuzzy, just like that.
See how easy that is.
Now, it's not going to take it just right away,
so what I have to do is just push it just a little bit in.
I don't want to push it too far in,
but just a little bit in and then I'm going to just kind of
just close it's mouth.
Almost like hooking its teeth on the actual animal.
Then this is the important part.
Let it go.
Whoops!
See, and it dropped it.
That happens.
It's all about patience people.
So what you do, you try again.
Again, very gently.
Now I always preference by saying don't assist feed your
snake if it's already fed.
Don't assist feed your snake if it's a year old
and off food for awhile.
Only babies that have never fed before.
And it's just a matter of kind of patiently doing this until
it eventually hooks on it.
Again, push it in there, hook its mouth, and then
this is the important part,
oh, keep on dropping it.
We're going to get this.
I promise you.
Once you actually let it go, it will actually
stop trying to spit it out, right?
So basically you want that kind of thrash to be over,
and when it finally gets to a point where it's not
spitting out, that's when you might actually get it
to eat on its own.
This guy is a little bit rough.
I'm not going to lie to you.
Some of them fight a little harder than others,
so I'm just trying really gently to do this.
And I'm going to try again.
Okay, that's what I was looking for.
See, now it's dangling and it's not spitting out.
Now this is the next point.
Very gently put it down, back into the tub.
Very gently.
And then the hopes are is that it will eventually go well,
this is in my mouth,
I might as well go ahead and swallow it.
Now I'll be honest with you.
Just like spit it out a couple of times,
it could potentially do the same thing here.
Sometimes it'll take 1, 2, 3 times and it'll spit it out
inside of the enclosure as well by saying I'm not going to
eat it, but eventually if you continue to be
really persistent, they usually will eat it.
See how it's opening mouth right now,
that's not what we want.
We don't want it to open its mouth cause as it's opening
its mouth, it's trying to push it out of its mouth.
Once it finally says, okay,
and you see that can of like chomp chomp,
that's when you know there's a success.
So we're going to sit back and watch and see what happens.
And as you can see this time, it's spit it out.
So again, right back to square one,
we're going to take it back and we're going to do the exact
same thing over and over until it eventually
eats on its own.
Now if it had eyes, I'd probably want to close the enclosure
because any kind of motion is probably going to actually
disturb the animal a little bit.
But in this case it doesn't have eyes,
so I think we're going to be okay.
Again, put it in its mouth, kind of squeeze it a little bit,
hook it, let it go, oh, spit it out again.
Patience guys, this is just what it's all about.
You gotta be patient and very gentle.
You gotta remember, you don't want to hurt the animal
at all, right?
But again, with patience, we'll get the sucker to eat.
I promise you that.
Okay, it's kind of in there.
I'm going to wait for it to stop kind of going crazy.
And then we're going to set it down gently again.
All right, So if you see what's going on now,
it's actually opening its jaws a little bit,
then closing, almost like it seems like it's testing.
What's in my mouth?
But what we really want to see is when it actually starts
doing that side to side motion, undulation,
with actual eating.
Right now it's just kind of testing it out and
we'll have to see what it does.
Again, this may take us two or three more times,
but hopefully it'll take it.
And that's the movement we want to see,
see how immediately it's starting to do a little undulation,
side to side.
That means that it's actually ready to eat.
It looks like it's actually going to take it.
This is so exciting.
And there it goes, that's right.
It's actually eating on its own.
Look at that.
The first meal for that thing.
That is absolutely incredible.
And that's it, that is such a good thing.
I mean, it's a great feeling too to know that
because it has some nutrients in it.
The fact that it did eat.
It gave me a little bit of a problem in the very beginning,
but the fact that it did eat on its own,
with just a little help with an assist feed,
this is exactly how Helen started, right?
So the fact that if I could do this every week,
you know, again, we'll offer food first.
If it doesn't take food and then we'll go ahead and actually
do this.
You know, probably, you know,
it takes four or five, six months.
I think this animal is going to do just as good as Helen,
And it's just too cold.
I can't give up on an animal like this.
I can't give up on any animal for that matter.
So I am super excited.
This is one step to this animal being healthy and happy.
I am so stoked about it.
And good morning reptile army and welcome to the vlog.
You guys know the movement.
You got to join the movement.
Go over to Reptilearmy.com.
Get your swag!
Join it, wear it proudly!
Be out there with our soldiers.
Again, 10% goes to USR, the rest goes to education.
Reptilearmy.com .
For those of you guys that watch the podcast,
you'll know that my buddy Mac and Jason are in the house.
These guys are huge supporters.
It's been so great to represent.
But I want to know from you guys is,
have you guys ever handled a giant snake before?
- No.
- Yes, but there's never enough time.
- All right. Good.
How big was the largest snake you handled?
- only fourteen.
- Fourteen, Okay.
Well I think we're going to try and give it a go with Gemma,
our giant reticulated Python.
Now, thankfully, she's very nice.
I didn't want to do Lucy cause I'm a nice guy.
What do you say We jump in ?
- Let's do it.
- Yeah.
- Guess what guys?
I'm leaving it all to you.
I'm not even going to help.
The way how I'm going to help,
is I'm going to open the cage.
Super catchers, standing there, letting Mac do all the work.
Oh my gosh.
All right, there you go.
Oh, there it is.
What's the biggest snake you've held before.
- Eight feet burm.
- eight feet burm, okay.
Just a little bit bigger.
- Whoa. Oh my God.
- What do you guys think?
- You make it look easy.
- Yeah, that is some weight to that.
(laughing)
- You're starting to turn purple, silver cat.
- Yeah, this ain't no pizza.
- No pizza, Oh my god!
(laughing)
- Beautiful, absolutely beautiful.
- It's a heavy snake though, isn't it?
Gemma is absolutely gorgeous.
We love her to death.
She's amazing, man.
Good job!
I tell you what, I'm pretty impressed, man.
These guys did good like pros. You know what I mean?
So, so I'm going to let them put Gemma back and later on
actually silver cash, who is a pizza connoisseur.
He is, he claims top hundred pizza makers in the country and
I believe him cause I, I really do believe him.
So we're going to make some amazing pizza as well. So I'm,
I'm counting on you Okay.
- Oh, Imma make it.
- So obviously Mac, my friend here, is the one that donated
the scrub Python sublime in Dublin.
So this is the new enclosure they're it.
You wanna Check em out.
- Yes please.
- All right! I know that you miss them.
Don't bite me please.
Step out !
Scaring the hell out of me.
Look at this beautiful snake right here.
You take that one.
Boy they are strong, Aren't they?
- Oh my God!
For such a slight build, this Aboreal build, man,
do they pack some power with it?
- It's unbelievable.
I think the other one's back here too.
Look at that beautiful snake.
Got them out.
And this was actually the first time we've taken him out
since they've been in there.
So basically what happens, we set them up,
we let them just kind of settle in.
And they're cool though. Huh?
- I love these animals so much.
I was in the hobby as a kid, returning to it as an adult,
I decided that instead of getting a lot of animals,
just pick my dream snakes.
- This is a beautiful, stunning, these are some dream
snakes.
There's no doubt about it.
Like max said, these are, you know,
maybe the sublime is maybe pushing eight footish or
something like that, but can eventually get, you know,
12, 13, 14 foot.
So it's going to be pretty impressive, man.
- And this, this is Somalia Amethystine, specifically a
Jayapura barneck scrub python.
There are five species of scrub pythons and they are just
all gorgeous.
- Yeah all gorgeous.
- One of the reasons that I was so excited to bring the
sublime and Dublin here was for you to be able to introduce
the species complex to the world.
- Oh my gosh! When I tell you I, I'm love with them.
They're just such unique animals.
Absolutely gorgeous.
I tell you what, it's so awesome.
They're doing well.
I'm glad that we were able to take them out and they didn't
bite the heck out of us.
So that's a good thing cause I would love to be able to have
people handling these sometimes.
It's going to take a few months for us to get really
confident in them but as you can see, they're pretty docile.
So I'm pretty excited about it.
Did someone turned the lights out?
Oh, okay.
Yeah.
(laughing)
Well thanks so much Mac.
I appreciate it, brother.
- Thank you, Brian.
- Like I've been mentioning ball python breeding season is
right around the corner.
Literally, we're starting to gear the females up.
It's going to be before you know it, we're going to actually
be putting males and females together, which is wild
because literally we're collecting eggs still, right?
It's a bizarre year.
The fact is, most stuff is ready to go
and most stuff is already hatched out.
But this is actually some of the males that we're going to
be breeding next year.
I'm super excited about.
Starting with this banana leopard clown ball python.
Whoo doggy!
That thing is going to be a ripper.
I can't wait to put this with some females.
Another clown ball python that I am so excited about
getting in with females is this one here.
It's actually a super pastel, lesser
leopard clown ball python.
I love the snake so much and I have a lot of really
cool plans and that's what's exciting, right?
It's every year you kind of upgrade your males,
you switch your breeding plans.
So every year there's something new and exciting and this
guy is going to be busy this year.
I don't even know what to say about this animal here.
Remember that mystery ball python that I have and the
mystery clutch and then all six animals that hatched out
last year, all look completely radically different.
This is one of those animals that came out of that clutch.
I don't know what the heck is going on.
What is your problem?
You a little feisty, little monkey?
But wow!
What a crazy snake.
I've never seen a ball Python that look anything like this.
Have no idea what that mystery gene is.
But the good news is, we have like four or five males that
all, each one of them looks completely different.
This one being kind of the most bizarre of all of them,
but we're going to be able to breed all four of those males
to different things and just start to decipher what the heck
is going on with this mystery gene.
Whatever that gene is, we had a couple more babies hatch
this year from it too.
So we know that it's floating around our collection.
We just don't know what it is.
Is it a single gene?
Incomplete dominance?
Is it allelic?
Is it just one animal?
Have no clue, but I am super excited about it.
And this thing is an absolute ripper.
Obviously the Barney ball python and the direction I was
going with the Barney ball python was certainly
a little bit of a disappointment.
This is definitely not a purple snake whatsoever.
It's a yellowish, orange-ish snake.
There's no doubt about it.
But again, this is actually a banana super chocolate,
pin stripper and banana camo.
We were hoping it was going to be an all purple snake.
But listen, the fact that I have this male,
now I can go into other things like black pastels
blackheads, all their dark morph animals to start to
really pull out that purple coloration.
So, although I'm disappointed with the results of this
particular breeding, the fact is this is going to be a
powerhouse male to get into other stuff.
And we're going to eventually produce that Barney ball
Python.
High ball, ball pythons are amazing, but black and white
piebald ball pythons are even more amazing.
And of course, those are what they call Summa pies.
Well, this is a Summa that is head for piebald ball pythons,
which is basically the super mahogany, right?
So when you breed mahogany mahogany,
you get the solid black snake.
And then of course this one happens to be head for piebald.
Now we did produce some mahogany pies this year too,
but this male can go to some female pies and as well as my
mahogany head pies to potentially produce summa pies,
which are just absolutely incredible.
Super excited about it.
I mean, this animal is a ripper in its own, right?
But to get it into a pie to have that black, white snake,
I tell you what I am so excited.
And this animal is going to really be a key to increase my
odds and producing that Summa pie.
Anyone that follows ball pythons know that, clown
ball pythons are all the rage.
You know, every mutation.
So we brought up a lot of clown ball pythons here, recently.
This happens to be a Banana Enchi Mojave clown ball python.
Absolutely wonderful snake.
So again, we're working on a bunch of
different clown stuff too.
So it's just cool and the future is definitely bright.
Whoo Doggy!
I tell you what this animal is one of my favorite animals
that we produced last year and it's definitely going to be
ready to breed this year.
This is actually a banana cinny Lori ball python.
And again, it's like, I was talking about that purple snake,
that Barney ball python.
When you start mixing more genes into it,
you get different color palettes, right?
With the cinny and the lori mixed together,
and then the banana, that is an absolutely
beautiful purple snake.
Or if I get that into the banana camo, this actually could
be a really good thing.
So again, just layering things, right?
But wow, I tell it.
The lori project is going to be a banger and this next year
we have some great animals up to size.
And speaking of the lori project, I mean, come on,
this is the first year we'll have a super lori leopard male
up to size to breed.
What can we do with that animal?
I mean, it's going to be amazing to be able to produce
the super lori leopards into other things,
because you got to remember now everything
is going to be Lori.
Half them are going to be leopard ball pythons,
and I can start bringing it to all kinds of different color
combinations.
So I am so happy that we're going to have a super Lori
leopard ready to breed this year.
For some reason, I just love this animal.
I think it's going to be a good breeder too.
This is actually a banana, cinny, enchi woma ball python.
I just love the color palette and this particular snake.
It's not like a really rare, crazy animal, but again,
you know, maybe getting it back into Enchi,
maybe orange dream, it's going to be absolutely ridiculous.
So a lot of potential things we can do and that's,
what's going to be fun coming up this year is with all these
new males and all the other females that we have up the size
here, all the new combinations.
I am so excited to get started.
In a way I wish it was happening right now.
We still have about six or eight weeks before the first
males are going to go on with females, but oh my gosh,
is it going to be a fun year?
And of course, I am over the moon that we're going to be
back into the sunset project this year.
I have a bunch of possible hats that are ready to breed
female wise, and I'm going to be able to take this cinni,
sunset male into those, to prove out which ones are
actual hats.
And Hey, listen, just producing a normal sunset for me
is going to be absolutely amazing.
I can't be more happy to be back into that project.
This is another Lori gene right here that I'm excited about.
It's a banana extreme gene Enchi Lori ball python.
I just love that purple Stripe down its back.
You know, when it was younger, it was super purple.
Now, it's kind of faded a little bit, but again,
thinking of what I can breed this into dark Mars,
everything is dark as possible to really bring out that
purple is going to be really fun to see the results.
And take a look at the head stamp on this
little monkey right here.
This is actually a banana enchi Bango
hat for clown ball python
on, right?
So we can get some Enchi clowns, Bango clowns, Bango Enchi
clowns, banana bango enchi clowns,
when we breed this into clown stuff.
So this is going to be a really cool male.
I definitely am excited about it.
And this is just a small sample.
That's about maybe a quarter of the males that I raised up
that are going to be breeding, but some
that I'm super excited about.
So definitely this next breeding season is going to be one
for the books.
I can not wait to get started.
And like I mentioned, you know,
we're gearing up for breeding season,
but the fact is we're still having eggs slave.
This happens to be pewter B, which is a pastel, it's a cinny
and it's a spider and it's bred to this banana
cinny enchi pinstripe.
I mean, oh my gosh!
That's some good combinations.
I cannot wait to see.
we could even get some bananas, super cinny,enchi
stuff in there not to mention all kinds of other stuff.
It's going to be amazing.
Let's go ahead and see how many eggs mama has.
And here we go.
Hi mama.
Let's see what we got here.
Oh, it looks like a couple of slugs and only
a few good eggs but that's okay.
Hey, listen, That's just part of the deal, right?
I mean, sometimes you have good stuff
and towards the end of the year, I've told you guys this.
You know, the end of year the fertility always kind of
wanes a little bit.
But we have one, two, three, four good eggs.
I can't complain, four eggs.
And then we had four slugs too.
So a 50% clutch.
Few more clutches to go and that's it for the year.
So it's exciting then we're gearing up for next year.
This clutch is going to be really cool.
I can't wait to cut it in 57 days and then hopefully
there'll be some bangers in there.
Hope you enjoyed today's video.
If you did, can you do me a favor,
Right over here is a playlist, can you hit one
or two of those?
It would mean the world to me.
You know what else would mean the world to me right over
here, You can hit that subscription button.
Thank you guys so much.
Have an absolutely wonderful day.
Remember be kind to somebody reptile army and I promise I'll
see you in the next one.