- Good morning everybody and welcome to the blog.
I hope the start of your day is absolutely incredible.
We're gonna start our day off with collecting
a ball python clutch.
This happens to be a lemon blast,
which of course is a pastel pinstripe,
it's possibly a vanilla, and it was bred to
this amazing monkey right here,
which is a black pewter lesser cypress,
so it's a pastel, it's a black pastel,
it's a lesser and it's a cypress,
and again breeding it to that lemon blast,
possible vanilla should be some pretty good stuff,
let's go ahead and see how many eggs mama has.
Okay mama, let's see how many eggs you have little girl.
There we go, looks like a beautiful clutch,
one little slugger in here, other than that really good.
And you know, the fact is guys,
is that I started the first, you know,
26, 7 years of my career, working with animals,
really working with snakes like this, right?
Basically breeding them on a commercial level
for the pet trade, right?
And so basically the only time that I really came
and kind of encountered with them
was that I was feeding them,
cleaning them or breeding them, of course,
and that's when we were typically
opening up a box and stuff like that.
So it was like never really easy to see what they were doing
inside the enclosures when you keep them in tubs.
And that's what's really amazing
and I want to talk about today
is how The Reptarium really changed
my entire perspective on keeping snakes
and how awesome it is to be able to see them
in an enclosure that comes around.
But in the meantime, let's see how many eggs mama has here,
which is 2, 4, 6, 8 beautiful eggs.
Now don't get me wrong, I still love breeding snakes,
they'll always be part of my future,
but there's no doubt that my perspective has changed.
And believe it or not, that happens to be
the very last ball python clutch laid of the year,
so the 2021 season officially over
when it comes to laying eggs.
I'm certainly not saying that you shouldn't
keep reptiles in racks.
As a matter of fact, I think some animals
do well in rack systems, in particular ball pythons.
I think that putting them into a larger enclosure
sometimes really stresses them out so they do well.
So I'm not saying that.
What I'm saying is that my perception has changed a lot
since we opened up The Reptarium.
I mean with an enclosure like this with Ivy,
Arianna and now Jazz,
to see them kind of how curious they are.
When you go in their enclosure
to see them kind of moving around, seeing you.
When things are happening here at The Reptarium,
the animals actually coming out
and actually being kind of curious,
I think that's what I'm talking about.
And it's really changed my entire perception.
Again, as I walk around, I mean, just seeing,
again, Cupcake, where she is,
sometimes she's up over here doing crazy things,
Perdita is known for being right up on this branch,
much like a green tree python,
and that's what I'm talking about.
You know, the thing is is that
when you keep a reptile in a rack system,
the only time you really ever see it
is when you open up that rack, right?
Now I can just sit back sometimes
and just observe these animals
and see what they're actually thinking.
It's changed my whole perception on how to keep reptiles
and their actual behavior, right?
And that's what it's all about,
is just seeing their behavior.
Again, Al always loves to be on this ledge,
it's just his favorite thing, right?
He can go everywhere else,
sometimes she does climb on the branch,
sometimes he's over here, sometimes he's down here,
but his ledge is his favorite spot.
I find that amazing, like, why is it?
Is it the perfect temperature?
Is it like kind of eyesight that he likes the best?
I mean, every animal in here as we walk around
and we just see Tiana, we see Sunfire,
of course we see Salt and Pepper,
it's just really cool, you know?
And again, I'm not dissing rack keeping,
and again BHB is still doing it
and we're gonna continue to do it to some extent,
although I think that will change over time as well.
My point is that I just have changed everything
of my thought process of keeping reptiles
since we've opened up The Reptarium.
- [Son] Mike, what's wrong with you today man?
- What?
- [Son] You got a little stinky attitude going on.
You all right? - I'm good.
It's early, it's early.
- [Son] So you know that we recently
got a new anaconda, that might be it,
or maybe that's it over there,
or maybe that's it right there.
- It's the big one.
- [Son] It's the big one, oh okay,
don't lie to me Mike. - Okay.
- [Son] See this is what I was talking about
with the attitude. (both laughing)
All right, let's go jump in there and play
with these new anacondas.
- [Son] What's up anaconda?
You gonna be friendly today?
- [Mike] Let's go swimming.
- Any day now, Mike.
- [Mike] I'm going. (Son laughing)
- All right, I got one conda.
Are you gonna grab that one out of the water?
- [Mike] Yeah, yeah.
So this is the new one, I think, I'm pretty sure.
I think your dad said his name was Jazz?
Your dad also says he's kind of nice,
but it's a green anaconda, so we'll see how this goes.
- [Son] Well I don't know,
dude we got, this one's cuddled all up on me.
I can't even move! (Mike laughing)
I got anaconda on me.
- [Mike] She's constricting.
- [Son] You got it man.
Don't worry about the one, oh!
That scared me.
I did not expect his head to be so big.
Okay, you got that one out.
- [Mike] So far so good I guess.
- [Son] Yeah, there's no neck it.
Yeah dude, we're in the neck of the woods,
you got to neck it.
How else are you supposed to bond with this animal
if you're not gonna neck it?
- [Mike] I don't want to stress him out.
Oh crap.
- [Son] Looks like you're already doing that.
- He's fast.
He's a lot faster than I.
There's so many in here.
There's gotta be what, like 12?
- [Son] Well that's what my dad wanted.
- [Mike] No, we already have four inside,
we don't need any more.
- [Son] You're the dad.
They're already cuddling.
- [Brian] Did you know I kept retics
in basically a rack type system.
Our cages that were like eight foot by four foot,
you know almost like a racking type of system,
and again when I looked at girls like Perdita,
who eventually when I had her as a baby
was kept in a rack, but not for a long time.
My point is is even like Lucy
and some of my other animals
that were kept in those types of enclosures
for, you know, sometimes two or three years,
and then I put them into these naturalistic enclosures,
they just changed their personality,
honestly changed tremendously.
I mean I could see the difference in the animal itself.
Of course we know Lucy is still pretty cantankerous,
and she can be a handful.
But my point is is that even her,
she became more curious, she climbs into the tree,
she like, you know, spends time in the water,
she does all kinds of other stuff,
and I just think that's the really amazing part
is to see that sometimes
when you change an environment for an animal,
it literally change their behavior patterns so much,
and I find that just so interesting
and so absolutely amazing.
And again, that's one of the things that I love
about The Reptarium, is seeing that growth.
And listen, we're learning too, right?
We've only been doing this for a few years over here,
so who knows what the future's gonna hold
and what we're gonna find out that we're doing wrong now
that may be three years from now we say
oh, when we change this even more behavior changed,
so it's just cool to see these animals kind of just flourish
to what they really should be.
Actually found a tooth from Salt earlier today,
and I wanted to kind of give you an idea
of the two different sizes.
The small tooth that's in my hand right now
actually was a tooth that we found
about six months ago in her tank,
and then the big one is one that we just found,
just to give you an idea of the size difference
of the way she's grown.
She is getting absolutely enormous.
And the fact is is that alligators can literally
replace their teeth up to 2,000 teeth in their lifetime,
believe it or not, which is pretty absolutely amazing,
and although she's definitely grown a lot
and that tooth has gotta be, you know,
three, four times the size it was just six months ago,
the truth is one day it's gonna be like an inch,
inch and a half long, it's gonna be a really big tooth,
so, but it's always cool to see alligator teeth
and I absolutely love them,
and it's a great educational tool, right?
We can show people their teeth and stuff like that
and talk about how they actually replace their teeth.
Just really cool, you know?
And I can't believe how big Salt and Pepper are getting.
My overall point too is that we always need to be growing
and evolving, right?
Hey, listen, for 27 years we kept reptiles pretty similarly,
and I changed, literally 180 degrees,
with my perception of how to keep reptiles
and how I want to keep reptiles now
and in the future, to be totally honest with you.
So if you're keeping animals or doing anything,
you should always be learning and be willing to change
and evolve because when you do have that evolution,
you never know what the opposite side is,
and I can honestly tell you that in the 30 plus years
that I've been working with reptiles,
this is the happiest time I've ever had
as far as interaction with the animals.
I just feel more in tune with everything,
I'm happier to come to work and see the animals,
I'm always excited to be around these guys.
So again, you certainly can change if I've changed,
and I think that's important
that we're always learning and evolving.
Obviously continuing to work on
the New Caledonian gecko room downstairs,
but we have been more babies!
- [Worker] These ones are really nice too, look at them.
- Oh my gosh, look at how pretty.
Now what's the pairing?
- [Worker] So this is Annabelle and Freddie Kruger.
So Annabelle is probably the brightest one we have,
she's from Gigi's Geckos.
I think she's not from Deadpool though,
she's the Dracula line.
- [Brian] The Dracula line.
But these ones came out, oh my gosh, the orange all ready?
- [Worker] They're amazing all ready.
So these are freshly hatched.
Usually you won't see this much color on them
until they've developed for like a couple months.
I have two other babies from this pairing
and they're the first ones I produced
that actually have a little bit
of color on the head too, which is super cool, yeah.
So we'll take a look at those in a couple months
and I'll show you like what they look like.
- [Brian] Oh my gosh, that's amazing.
Well these certainly are incredible geckos,
there's no doubt about that,
but they are feisty little monkeys.
They love to jump all around at this size.
- These ones are the same pairing,
but a couple months older.
- [Brian] Oh my gosh, yeah.
You can start to really see the red and oranges
coming through in them.
I mean, when these get bigger,
they're gonna be ridiculous, I mean-
- [Worker] Look at that one.
It's hard to see 'cause it's got such a tiny head,
but you can see the little spots on it.
- [Brian] Oh my gosh, yeah, spots on it,
yeah that's amazing.
Trust me guys, when these are big
they're gonna be on fire.
Pretty excited guys, we actually did a rebrand
over on my Snake Bites YouTube channel
that's kind of been dormant,
has been doing too much for the last couple years,
but we decided to change it to The Reptarium,
so now if you go over and check out
The Reptarium YouTube channel,
I'll put a link in the description,
it actually will have daily content.
There'll be shorts, there'll be some longer content,
they'll be a bunch of stuff happening
here at The Reptarium with myself,
the crew, stuff like that.
So you can go over and show that some love,
it's got like 810,000 subscribers
and it's just been dormant,
so now we actually are gonna have it going.
So again, I'm excited to share it with you guys,
go pay it some love, go check it out
and you'll get daily content over on that channel as well.
Getting down to the end of the Colubrid season,
as far as hatching goes, but we still have
some really amazing stuff going on right now.
This happens to be a scaleless clutch.
This is that tiger scaleless stuff,
which is that kind of scaleless animal
that looks like a tiger, and of course
what's interesting about that
is we didn't realize that they were
het for axanthic or anerythristic.
So basically we're getting the black ones as well.
So these are black tigers.
Unbelievable, I mean just take a look
at how beautiful these snakes are.
I am so excited that we're hatching these
and the fact that it's a genetic trait is super cool too.
So just raising them up, one day we'll have to sell them,
but for now they're absolutely rippers.
And then we've been having a crazy cool
Pueblan milk snake year,
and what I mean by that is that they're super clean,
really big ones, like ones like this
that have that really big sock head on it,
and that's what it's called when has that big white band,
they call them sock headed Pueblans.
Just absolutely incredible.
And by the way, another little
anerythristic scaleless corn snake.
Now this isn't a tiger anery scaleless,
it's just a normal anery scaleless,
but wow, I tell you.
And then we've got a normal scaleless in there,
so definitely producing some cool scaleless stuff as always.
I love our scaleless corn snake group too.
I mean, they're just so absolutely incredible.
And then again some more just beautiful Pueblan milk snakes.
This is an interesting clutch here, because again,
I talked about the fact when you breed apricot to normal
you get half apricots and half normals.
This is the basically what the deal is here.
You can see some normal Pueblans in here
and then a bunch of apricots,
and we've got a jumper guys, we've got a jumper!
Okay, let's get it back in here.
Whoa!
Okay, I tell you it's always an adventure
when you open up these enclosures.
And then the last ones of course
are these beautiful Mexican black king snakes.
I mean, take a look at that.
Of course we have a corn snake clutch in here too,
just a bunch of really beautiful what they call
Abbotts Okeetee, so really beautiful Okeetee corn snakes,
and then again Nigritis or what they call
Mexican black kings that are absolute rippers.
So again, don't have that many more Colubrids to hatch,
but wow, what a year we had.
- Feeding bugs!
- Bug feeding, chameleon time, we're shape shifting.
Let's get it, are you ready?
- I'm ready, you ready?
- Yes dude, I'm just geeked up right now.
I've been waiting for this all week.
- [Mike] Here, I'll let you do the first one.
- (gasps) You're gonna give me the honor?
Ooh!
Did you see that? - Yeah.
- Wow!
Should we feed the other one
while this guys finishes up?
- Yeah, that'll take him a couple minutes,
yeah let's do that.
- Look at this, you can feed him hand held.
Hand held, look at this.
Oh, oh.
- [Mike] The bug. - [Son] Dude-
- [Mike] Wait, what are you doing?
- Dude no, it's not, no, he's not doing,
this is not what you're supposed to be doing.
You like that?
I think he just wants to play.
Thanks for coming out, hanging out with us.
- [Mike] Go back in.
- He just wanted to chill.
- [Mike] He's not even going back.
This is so weird.
- [Son] It does look like, he looks like a snow cone.
If that doesn't make you believe in Jesus, what will?
You know?
- Sure.
- Hope you enjoy today's video,
if you did do me a big favor, right here's a playlist,
you can watch a couple of videos,
it would help me a lot.
You know what else would help me a lot?
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hit that subscription button,
turn those post notifications on,
have an absolutely wonderful day reptile army.
Remember: be kind to somebody
and I promise I'll see you in the next one.