Hey, good morning everybody and welcome to the vlog.
I hope the start of your day is incredible.
I'm actually gonna start my day
just checking up on my frillies here.
Of course we've got Nova here,
we've got Lilith up there,
and of course we've the nest box right over here.
And I can see right now that she's already full of eggs.
You know, what basically happens when she lays
is that she goes from looking like she has, like,
marbles in her or M&M's in her
to looking really shrunken out.
You can tell already, way up there,
that she's still full of eggs.
You can see little bulges in her and stuff like that,
which is cool.
So, she hasn't laid yet, but again,
every single day I'm gonna start my day out to make sure
that I don't lose a clutch of eggs from Lilith,
'cause I cannot wait to get baby frillies, that's for sure.
I mean, the ones from last year are ridiculous.
So, I can't wait 'til we have some more eggs
and then ultimately hatch some babies.
Regardless, we have a lot of work today.
You know the season is upon us
where there's eggs, there's babies,
there's all kinds of things happening,
so let's buckle up, push our problems aside,
and have a great day together.
Oh my god!
I'm excited, guys!
Looks like litter number two has arrived of skinks.
This is actually what they would call
a coffee northern blue-tongued skink,
which is a polygenically bred thing
to kinda have that kinda coffee-brown look,
but it was bred to a really nice red male,
so these babies should be ridiculous.
Last year, this particular female laid,
and her babies were crazy awesome
once they hit four, five weeks old,
and this is even a better male.
So, let's just go ahead and see what we've got here.
Look around.
Look at this little baby right here!
Oh my god! It is so cute.
They look really good too.
So, that's one little baby,
and again, that coffee gene is just so beautiful and rich.
Wow, look at that!
So, that's two little babies.
What do we have here?
Oh look at these.
A whole bunch over here.
There's three little babies right here.
Just look at how absolutely adorable it is,
and like I said, these guys are gonna change so much.
There's four.
Momma's being really good.
A lot of times Momma will start attacking you
when you start to pull her babies out,
so she's being really well-behaved right now.
See what we got here.
Oh, there's a whole bunch of babies!
Look at all these babies back here!
Holy moly, she had a lot of babies!
Hoo!
Here's a couple more here.
We'll count 'em when we're done,
because I think the rest of them
are all back in this corner right here.
Let's see.
We'll just kinda pull them out over here.
Looks like we've got one more baby here.
Maybe just one more.
Oh, look at how cute they are!
Hey, little guys.
What're you doing?
Okay, there's one little baby.
I'm not sure if there's gonna be any more.
Oh my god.
They all look really nice and big.
They're nice and perfect.
Let's see if there's anything else.
Oh yeah, here!
Oh, oh there's two more babies over here.
Look at that, two more.
Wow, this is a really nice litter right here.
Unbelievable.
Let's just search around.
That might be it.
Is that it?
Oh my gosh, Momma, you do-- Oh there's some more!
Holy cow, there's two more!
Oh my gosh!
I thought maybe she was gonna have like four or five babies,
but she's got all those babies right now.
Oh my gosh. I'm just gonna search around, see if that's it.
I think that that might actually be it.
Oh my gosh, Momma, you did good.
And we'll get her rebound, and like I mentioned before,
we wanna build some new enclosures for these guys
where they've got UV light,
a little bit more, kinda, naturalistic.
Something I'm gonna work on this summer a lot.
But look at these babies.
There's two, four, six, eight, 10, 12 of them.
Oh my gosh, twelve, and they are rippers too.
I mean, just look at the color on this one.
Wow!
I mean, all the color on these guys
are just so absolutely beautiful,
and look at how feisty they are.
Hey, little feisty monkeys!
Unbelievable.
So, we'll get these guys set up,
and literally they start eating within a day or so.
Interestingly enough, baby skinks will often times
eat their yolk sac if there's any yolk left,
and that's like their first meal.
And then, of course,
within a day or two they're crushing food
and growing like mad.
So, we'll get these guys set up,
and I can promise you these are gonna be incredible here
in another month or two.
Wow, I love baby skinks.
It's gonna be a fun year.
On to the next type of eggs, right?
You're back to gecko eggs?
- Yup, Leopard Gecko eggs today.
- All right! So, we're on week three.
Again, every week we've had more eggs, less slugs,
more fertile eggs.
So, I'll let you get to it, and I'll check back--
- Should be a lot of eggs today.
Last week week was kind of a slow week, so.
- Okay. So, all right, well,
we'll check back with Jessica when she's done.
(upbeat music)
Guys, you gotta check this out.
This is pretty crazy.
Obviously, I was just checking all the ball pythons,
seeing if we had some eggs,
and this girl actually laid two days ago.
This was that yellow-belly ball python
that was bred to that extreme banana spider,
and I noticed she was just laying a little weird
and guess what?
Let's she what she's got going on under here.
Doo-doo!
There is a golden egg down here.
Oh my god.
She literally laid another egg
after I pulled this clutch.
So, remember how I always talk about
that I like to look at the females,
make sure there's no eggs left in 'em,
whether they're bound up or anything like that?
Obviously, I just didn't do that with this girl.
I can't remember the last time
that I pulled a clutch of ball pythons
and then, two days later, found another egg.
I mean, it's been years since that has happened.
But that's pretty darn cool.
And it looks perfect!
The egg looks absolutely amazing,
so good job, Momma!
I though you only had eight eggs, turns out she had nine.
But we did get a couple clutches of good ball pythons
that are laid today.
And, of course, this girl here--
Oh my god.
She is a pastel ghost ball python,
and she's wrapped around a beautiful clutch.
Okay, Momma, it's all right.
Don't bite me. Don't bite me.
You're okay, sweetheart.
I'm just gonna slowly unwrap her real quick.
Come on, girl, let's get those eggs, baby.
Now, she was actually bred to a champagne ghost,
so we should have some mimosas, which are ghost champagnes,
as well as pastel mimosa, which are pastel champagne ghosts.
Absolutely wonderful.
Whoa!
Momma!
She came out of there like a-- woo!
I'll tell you what she-- Oh come on, Mom.
Come on, you're okay.
Boy, she is protective of her eggs, isn't she?
I've gotta be careful of this girl.
Come on, Momma, you're all right.
Gonna just put this egg over here.
It's okay, Momma.
It's-- Oh, oh!
C'mon. C'mon.
Woo! I'll tell you what:
Some Mommas are upset, and she's one of them,
that's for sure.
So, I'm just gonna get her eggs out of here really quick.
Put this right here.
Gosh, this is a beautiful clutch.
Whoa!
Man, I tell you what:
I've never seen a ball python more protective than this.
It's okay, Mom.
And what we'll do is we'll get her cleaned up.
We sometimes have to take a little soap and water
and get that egg smell off.
Get that maternal instinct kinda shut down,
so that we can get her back on to food.
But Momma, you did such a good job.
Wow, I tell you what:
That's a protective momma right there,
and she had two, four, six, eight good eggs.
Of course, this is that other egg here.
So, eight good eggs, no slugs.
That's pretty awesome, again, 57 days, guys.
We're gonna be cutting a lot of eggs.
As a matter of fact, I think the first clutch
is about 3 weeks off.
For those of you people that are just
fiending for snake egg cutting,
three weeks from now we get our first clutch.
And actually, one more clutch today.
This is actually a pinstripe here.
And she's actually bred to a really beautiful male,
which is this Mojave calico bee.
So, it's a Mojave, it's a calico,
it's a pastel, and it's a spider,
and of course, breeding it to a pinstripe
means there's another gene to it,
so it could produce some really cool babies.
Let's see how many eggs she has.
Okay, Momma, let's see what you got going on here.
Just get her kinda unwound a little bit.
Look's like, oh, got some sluggers in there.
That's not too good.
Tell you what: There's a few good eggs,
that's no doubt about that,
but there's definitely some sluggers in there.
And that particular male, actually, that Mojave calico bee,
actually I think he's had two or three clutches already,
and all of them have been a little bit shoddy
when it comes to the actual fertility.
So, he must not be doing really good for me this year.
But, nevertheless, we still do have
four really beautiful eggs right there.
Those are really awesome.
They're really good,
but we also have two, four, six bad eggs.
So, that would've been a ten-egg clutch,
so we got four good ones, six bad ones.
That's the way it goes, again,
ups and downs of the breeding season.
Nevertheless, still some pretty cool opportunity
with these four eggs
and hopefully some beautiful babies on the horizon.
(upbeat music)
One of the big tasks for today for Lori is, everyday,
that you have to have to spot clean the colubrids,
but it's not just about keeping the animals clean, right?
I mean, that's a big part of it,
but there's more to it than that.
- Yeah, it's really important
to really look at 'em everyday,
because then you can see subtle changes of
whether they're feeding consistently,
whether it looks like they're going into a shed,
if they need something extra.
Just because right now
we want them at their optimum health and weight,
so they have good production.
So, yeah, it's just very important to everyday
just kinda look, assess, and be on top of things.
- Yeah, so I'll go ahead and let Lori get to it,
do what she does best,
which is killing it this year with colubrids.
(upbeat music)
- All right, we've got 179 eggs and 32 slugs today,
which is trending in the right direction.
Last time we checked there were 80 slugs,
and I think a little less eggs.
So, fertility is going up, slugs are going down.
Looking good.
- What is goin' on, everybody.
So, today I'm actually doing a bit of our
socialization behavior work
with the one and only Mango and Kiwi.
I've got some delicious escargot.
Oh yeah, bonjour!
Pretty much what I'm gonna try and do
is actually try and get him out on my hand this time.
Let me get started on this
'cause the more I look a this, the more I get hungry.
(upbeat music)
He did nip me a little bit there.
A little bit more my fault than his.
I'm sure he probably picked up the smell
of that snail on my hands and just like:
"Wow, that's a bigger snail
"than what you're trying to hand me, boy.
"I'm gonna take that one."
It wasn't that bad.
There's nothing bleeding or anything like that,
but it was enough for me to be like:
"Okay, well I don't wanna do that again."
Wanna try again? Go on.
Ooh, you are a monster.
Oh my god.
Dude, oh my gosh.
These guys are like little alligators, this is crazy.
(upbeat music)
So, that is what I call some serious success right here.
So, for me this is really, really cool,
'cause now I also am able to eventually get to a point
to where getting these guys out and physically handling them
and working with them more often
will also actually help for their health.
It will help us also detect if anything's going wrong
or anything like that,
and them being more comfortable with us is half that battle.
She's already ready for another one.
What a cutie.
But, man, I'm so, so glad that these guys
are finally starting to get a little bit more habituated
to dealing with us, and I hope for a few more weeks,
we may even actually be able to hold 'em
without them trying to bite me
like you saw with mango, there.
So, I'll take a little nip over a little bit of interaction
like this any, any, any day.
- Guess what time it is guys.
Colubrid egg time.
By the way, thank you for everyone
that was reaching out for the Blues Clues
kinda intro bumper for this.
It's pretty funny.
You guys came up with some pretty good ideas.
Hopefully, someone will actually send us a little clip
or Jay will make one.
- Yeah I'm gonna try and make one tonight.
So, we'll see if we can do it.
- We'll see if we do this.
Regardless, this is actually a creamsicle.
Really pretty snake and not a very big snake.
Now very, very-- Ooh, gosh, Momma, what is wrong?
It's okay, girl.
You're upset.
Not a big snake but a pretty big clutch.
This is a creamsicle corn that is het for scaleless
bred to another creamsicle het for scaleless.
So, should have some creamsicle scaleless in here.
And like I said, a pretty big clutch for such a small girl.
Wow, I'm really surprised at how many eggs
and how big they are.
I'm gonna candle this egg right here,
but we've got two, four, six, eight good eggs.
Not a bad way to start.
Next up we actually have
a het black motley scaleless corn snake right here,
and it's actually bred to a really beautiful male here.
It's actually a motley scaleless corn snake.
I mean, look at that thing.
That thing is a ripper.
So, hopefully he will father some good eggs in here.
Let's see what we have.
Oh no!
That's not a good clutch at all.
Of course, I keep telling you that
we have this old group of het scaleless.
This is one of them here.
Again, there's only six or eight animals,
but they have some fertility issues.
I don't know what's going on
but, guys, that's a bummer right there.
That is two, four, six bad eggs.
Not even one good egg.
So, no hope for any good babies from that one,
but again, again ups and downs of breeding.
And again, you know, that's a female issue,
it's not a male issue,
because that scaleless motley corn has actually
fathered some other good clutches.
So, it just happens.
And again, it's just one of those things
that sometimes, when you're early on in a mutation
like those females were,
you have some other fertility issues that come on.
The more you outbreed, the stronger that line comes.
This is actually
a caramel het for albino, het for motley scaleless,
so it's all kinds of crazy stuff,
and you can see that caramel
is just that cool pattern right there,
and of course the albino caramels
are what they call butter corn snakes.
So, that's a beautiful girl.
Not a very big girl,
but she had a really good clutch,
and by the way, look at the male that she's bred to.
Hoo, doggy.
Look at that thing right there.
That's an albino scaleless corn snake
that's actually het for motley as well,
so could have some really cool animals
hatch out of this clutch for sure.
And they look like this was a beautiful clutch right here,
so I'm really happy about that.
There is two, four, six, eight, 10 good eggs in there,
and that wraps up the colubrid eggs.
So, we had two good clutches, one bad clutch,
but, hey, I'll take it every day of the week.
Hope that you enjoyed today's video.
If you did, actually here's a playlist
of some blue-tongued skinks
if you guys wanna see more about them.
Up here, you can support
my podcast channel called Checking In.
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if you don't mind.
Have an absolutely wonderful day.
Remember: Be kind to someone,
and I promise I'll see you tomorrow.