- Hey good morning everybody and welcome to the vlog.
I hope the start of your day is amazing
or whenever you happen to be watching.
I am gonna start my day in kind of a poopy way
and what I mean by that is you guys know that Ivy,
when you feed her a big meal, does a lot urate.
You see all this white stuff all over the place here?
Well, typically, she goes in the water
and does her urate which makes it easy to clean.
It's a pain in the butt to get these urates
off this universal rock.
I mean, number one, it's kinda stinky,
so we gotta clean it, right?
We can't leave it in there, but it is a huge, huge job.
I mean you have to get in there, wet it down,
you know, scrub the heck out of it.
It just sticks like crazy,
so I cannot believe she wrecked her cage.
I mean, all over the place.
So, I have to honestly get Aries and Ivy
out of the cage because I'm gonna be in here
just scrubbing away for hours to get this cage cleaned up,
but hey, that's part of keeping reptiles,
that's part of keeping giant Anacondas.
So what do you say we get Aries and Ivy out.
We'll put 'em on the ground
and I'll get in here and try to clean this mess up.
These Anacondas, I tell you what,
even as I'm setting up just all the stuff to get cleaning,
Aries is already coming out of the cage. (laughs)
I mean, they are so smart.
He was all the way on the other side of the cage.
Again, as soon as they know the door is open,
they hear it, they come over, they're so cool.
So, I'm gonna just put Aries actually in a tub
and then I'll let Ivy
just kind of crawl around and stuff like that.
So, come on, big boy.
He's amazing.
He just shed out, looks absolutely beautiful,
but again, Anacondas are so unusual, aren't they?
They're so curious, I mean, it's just wild.
There you go, buddy.
(lid clatters)
And I wait 'til everything is set up before I take out Ivy.
Obviously, I want her out
the least amount of time as possible
so she doesn't get herself in trouble.
'Cause like I said, it's gonna take quite a bit of time
for me to clean all of that white gunk,
that urate out of there.
It's gonna be a stinky job and it's not gonna be easy,
but hey, that's what we gotta do.
(cheerful, mellow music)
So Ivy was laying in this pee puddle right here,
this urate puddle, she is so stinky.
So got her out, just have her on the ground. (laughs)
I'm gonna let her wander, I'm gonna get in there.
It's gonna smell, it's gonna be bad,
but Ivy is gonna need to get a bath too
'cause who doggy, she is stinky.
(cheerful, mellow music)
And you guys know that I'm excited
about Ball python production this year.
We have a lot of really cool stuff going on.
This morning there was actually a snowstorm
that had, you know, two, three inches of snow
so I'm expecting a lot of locks today.
So, that's always super exciting.
(cheerful, mellow music)
And you may notice that I've been taping cages
and what basically that is is when an animal is breeding
when they're locked up,
I'll tape a little piece like this.
That's just so that when Quinn is actually servicing cages,
he doesn't accidentally open it and disturb 'em
because what can happen if you disturb a snake
during the breeding is they can kind of separate.
Sometimes the male can actually pull the hemi-peen out
which isn't good.
So I tape 'em, that's the way to kinda communicate
when more than one person
is actually taking care of a collection.
(cheerful, mellow music)
I tell you what, what a breeding day.
It seems like almost everything is hooked up,
but I am really excited about this.
Of course the Lori Project.
This is actually a Lori Ball python,
bred to a Lori Pinstripe so we can produce
Super Lori's, Super Lori Pins, stuff like that.
We have a lot of Lori stuff going and you know
they produce some absolutely amazing bluish snakes.
You guys probably remember last year
when we produced the Super Lori Leopard Ball pythons.
Course we've produced three of 'em.
These are two females here and we have a male
and when they were born, they were really bluish.
They've turned more of a silvery look now,
but I tell you what, I love the Super Lori stuff.
So I'm super excited.
That's a lot of supers in one sentence, isn't it?
But I am super excited (laughing)
to produce more Super Lori stuff
in all kinds of different combinations
and because they come out kinda blue,
I think that with some selective breeding,
we might be able to produce like
almost a solid blue snake or, here we go,
another Barney Ball python, right?
We're heading down that path, but I tell you what,
over the years, if we get the right combinations together,
a Blue Ball python might be a really good possibility.
So hey, for you guys that are worrying,
(laughs) I'm not gonna do it. - [Man] Do it, do it.
- So (laughs) if you guys.
No, so if you guys are looking for Blue Balls,
we might have some down the road. (laughing)
We have a nice little group of gray-banded king snakes
that I'm super excited about.
I've mentioned in the past
that we used to produce a lot of these.
I mean, there's probably 15 years ago or so,
we had a pretty big group and then slowly,
we just got out of 'em and then
it's been a number of years since we've bred 'em.
So this year will be the first year.
I mean just such a beautiful snake.
I mean look at the grays and the oranges,
black banding, I mean such unusually awesome snakes.
These guys are from West Texas
and just a really cool king snake.
Now as babies, when you have certain bloodlines,
they really like to get lizard scented food.
Fortunately the ones that we have
were coming from pinky feeding babies right off the bat.
So typically, that does pass down generations
and usually when you have adults that started on pinkies,
their babies start on pinkies pretty easily.
At least that was our experience all those years ago.
So, really excited to have gray-banded kings again.
Again, these guys are in brumation now,
maybe for another four weeks
and then they're up and they're gonna start breeding.
Back that way, go ahead, go ahead, look back that way.
Come on, let's go back that way.
Go back that way.
Go, go, go back that way.
Go.
Okay, go go.
(laughing)
So there is 25 females actually locked up today
which is pretty absolutely incredible,
but you know, it's all about working hard
and being consistent.
I talk about it all the time,
if you want to breed snakes or just be successful in life,
it's about consistency, right?
There's a saying that says,
"When preparation meets opportunity."
In this case, the preparation was feeding the animals,
giving 'em breaks when they wanted to.
The opportunity also was there
when a snowstorm came through like it did this morning
and then with all our preparation,
we actually had a successful breeding day.
That means that we have a better chance
of these females starting to grow follicles,
feed better, ultimately produce eggs.
So, work hard, people.
I'm telling ya, the 25 locks that I had today
wouldn't have happened if we weren't working on this
for the last month to get to a day like today,
but wow, 25 animals hooked up today,
that is absolutely incredible.
I'm telling you guys, the next month is gonna be
super exciting when it comes to breeding pythons here.
(cheerful, mellow music)
(sighs) I tell you what guys, that was a chore.
That was a lot of hours of scrubbing
and still there's a little bit more,
I'm gonna have to go back, but I'm done for now.
I'm just out of energy.
So, (labored breathing) Ivy, I love you so much,
but please, poop in the water.
Go in the water.
I've never had her do that before
and I hope she never does that again
because that is way too hard to clean.
In the water, you just suck it out, takes you 10 minutes.
Here, it was hours of scrubbing and wow,
(sighs) I'm hot, I'm exhausted, I need a break.
You guys remember, I work with Spotted Children's
and Stimson's pythons, the Antaresia,
those little pygmy pythons from Australia
where there's a recessive mutation
called a granite right here,
which is really cool, which is just, again,
a recessive granite mutation
that makes its pattern all broken up like this.
Now I didn't produce any last year.
Bummer, I was so upset about it.
Well this year, we had a couple new males up to size
that hopefully will do their job.
This happens to be one of 'em right here.
So with any luck,
that's an animal I'm certainly excited about producing.
I love Children Spotted and Stimson's pythons
and I would certainly love to produce this mutation of 'em.
And although so much of my life now
is spent at the reptarium and education behavior,
just kind of that excitement of the zoo
and all that type of stuff,
I still will always love breeding snakes and reptiles.
You know, I mean, I get excited about it.
You know what I mean?
It's something I've done since I was a kid
and I'll never lose that passion, that's for sure.
And this particular one is one
that I'm really excited about as well.
This, of course, is a Sunset Indian Sand boa.
Now I produced the Indian Sand boas in the past
and the Sunsets are kind of like
what we think are maybe an incomplete dominant
because if you breed a sunset,
which is this more orange color
to the more brown Indian Smooth Scale Sand boas,
about half the babies come out Sunset right off the bat
which is pretty cool.
So I'd love to work this project a little bit more.
We do have a Sunset female
so breeding Sunset to Sunset, who knows what we'll get.
Maybe we'll get even a brighter orange snake.
Not sure.
Nevertheless, definitely a species
we haven't produced in the last couple years
so I am excited that hopefully
this will be the year to have
some of these little monkeys born
'cause they are absolutely incredible.
As you can see, even now that I closed the door,
Aries I kinda like testing, like, can I get out?
He's just kinda going up, kinda checking things out.
It's amazing not only snakes,
but all reptiles, you know, our tortoises,
lizards, everything, it's like one time,
all they have to do is figure out something
and they remember it forever.
We've seen Ivy crawl up that ladder so many times,
just going right back into her cage.
It's just so interesting how, again,
these guys have so much cognitive thought and memory
than I ever expected, just such cool animals.
Definitely excited about these guys here.
These are a Mexican Pine snakes.
Again, an animal you don't see around that often,
it's a Pituophis, really cool.
Again, related to bull snakes, pine snakes,
gopher snakes, all that type of stuff.
Super neat animals, this is the male.
He's a little bit smaller.
The female's a little bit bigger.
Of course, they do need to be bigger to produce
'cause these guys have really big eggs
and really beautifully big babies.
I mean just what a cool looking snake
and I have never bred these in my entire life
so this is gonna be pretty cool
that hopefully we'll have babies this year.
It seems like I've been talking about Black Milk snake
or the Lampropeltis Triangulum Gaigeae for years
about how awesome they are and we've been raising 'em up.
This is one of our two-year olds
that's not quite ready to breed,
but we do have a pair that we hope
will be able to breed this year that are in brumation.
Gonna be super cool.
Again, these are the animals that hatch out,
but like a Milk snake, right?
They're red, black and yellow and then as they get older,
they turn jet black and they get pretty big,
seven foot or so,
so this one certainly isn't ready to breed,
but hopefully, with any luck,
we'll have some babies this year.
That will be a huge accomplishment.
Again, an animal I've never produced before.
So that'll be another one to add to the species list.
Like always, I'm excited about what we can potentially
be producing in 2021, not to mention,
so much fun working with Anacondas, you know what I mean?
No, I honestly love 'em, even if it is a lot of work.
It's absolutely worth it.
If you enjoyed this video and you're missing baby snakes,
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I'll see you tomorrow.