- Hey, good morning everybody
and welcome to the vlog.
I hope the start of your day is amazing,
I'm getting my day started
with a little bit of a workout, right?
Can't get to the gym later
so I figured I might as well
do my workout here
with my girl, Lucy,
almost 200 pounds of here
and immediately I'm out of breath.
I mean, she is incredible, unbelievable animal.
Come on, girl, don't pee on me,
just don't do that.
She just shed out
and she looks amazing
now I got to try to catch her.
Once she starts getting away, it gets difficult,
I'm not gonna lie to you.
Onto phase two, I do, I was talking about
going at it like spaghetti, right?
Like you roll up spaghetti on a fork,
you just kind of roll her up
and that's the way you handle
a big snake like Lucy.
But I'm telling you what guys,
you have no idea how strong she is
and how heavy she is.
There is nothing like starting the day with this
and again, I truly suggest this.
Whoa, she's going back.
Come on Lucy.
No, come here, girl, come here girl,
don't go away, don't go away, don't go away.
Come here, girl.
I'm serious, I know that with COVID,
there's a lot of gyms are shut you know what I mean?
I'm telling you what guys,
I'm gonna start marketing 20 foot snake gyms
because they are way better
than any home gym that.
- [Jake] Oh my gosh, almost has your shoe.
- It's way better than any gym
that Chuck Norris is gonna sell you.
Come on Lucy.
No, oh,
oh, okay.
So anyways,
I think I've got my cardio in for the day.
So let's just go ahead and push our problems aside,
let me take a break.
There probably needs some oxygen
maybe a little paddle,
we're gonna have a good day together okay?
It's always exciting this time of year
when I can do my first ultrasound.
So the plan is to ultrasound every female in the place
either today slash tomorrow and get that baseline.
Now I'm expecting the majority of females to be
10 to 15 millimeters,
probably 10 to 13 millimeters probably,
that's that kind of kicking off,
they've been breeding now for the last four or five weeks
so I think between food cycle, copulation, stuff like that,
we're starting to see growth.
So anything under 10 millimeters
will probably shelf and not breed
until they get over 10 millimeters,
over 10 millimeters, 12 millimeters,
means we're gonna start breeding them
and then if they are over 15 millimeters,
which I don't expect many to be,
then you got to really start cycling those.
So it's exciting, a little nerve wracking, I'm not gonna lie
because honestly, if it's bad
then it could be a real bad year.
So let's go ahead,
ultrasound a bunch of females and see what happens.
And my first one is actually this big old py female here
who actually laid on May 22nd.
So that's another thing you've got to keep in mind,
is that we really started getting a lot of eggs
the end of May, June, July,
so we're still five and a half, six months away from that
so we don't expect females that laid in the end of May
to really be that far along
because typically about 12 months after they lay
is about when you do,
sometimes it can be even a little longer.
So sometimes an animal that lays in May
will actually lay in June the next year believer or not.
So we'll see what happens,
this is a big girl
and let's hope she has something,
not too bad, not too bad right off the riff,
we're right where I expected.
I'm assuming this is about 13 millimeters
I'll just go ahead and measure him up,
see right here,
Yup, 13 millimeters. - [Jake] You're good.
- Yeah, I know right?
I usually am pretty good at guessing here,
so first female is exactly where we'd like her to be,
again, they're gonna grow anywhere from
one to three millimeters per week
typically until they hit about 20 millimeters
and then at 20 millimeters,
they're gonna start to explode.
So theoretically, this animal is gonna take
about seven weeks or so to hit 20 millimeters
at one millimeter a week
and if she hits three,
it's obviously only gonna take a few weeks
and she's gonna hit 20.
So it's now, it's about copulation,
well, she bred already twice here
and then food,
which is this is how much she's been eating
since she's been bred.
So now we have to really monitor that
and then not just keep going through
every single female and see what happens.
(upbeat music)
Now onto my second female, which is also a py
and she actually was just bred the other day.
And interestingly enough, as soon as I'm picking her up,
she just feels interesting.
See how she's a little more rounded
than the other snake and not as flat bottom
and she's actually got a little bit of a glow to her
where her colors are just a little bit bright,
that tells me
that there might be some big follicles in here
but I'll be honest, it's early in the year
so I'm not sure,
what an oh my gosh, look at that guy.
That is beautiful, wow,
those are huge follicles right there.
Again at this time of year,
I wasn't expecting to find any at this size
but she is well on her way, she's already at 28 millimeters.
I mean 28 millimeters,
you're looking at ovulation at 35 to 40 millimeters
but they hit 28 millimeters, they are done feeding
so you don't have to feed them anymore,
you breed them once or twice more and they're done
so she's probably gonna ovulate in about two weeks,
this may be my first clutch of eggs of the year
and she was bred to an albino py
so everything should be py head for albino,
that's, I mean that second snake guys,
that was pretty awesome.
(upbeat music)
For you guys that need your Drogo fix,
I first wanted to tell you, look at the ledge.
Laurie actually seamed everything now,
remember how it had like foam and stuff like that?
Now it looks like it actually belongs.
She's still gonna seam in the bottom down here
but you can see the floor over here has gotten a really good
so looking good, of course Jay's over here
and what I really wanna talk about
is how we're trying to train Drogo
so that when we do have him on exhibit
when we get our final permit,
we can have you guys interact with him
so we're gonna go ahead and try
some of his favorite tree, which is hibiscus leaf,
let's see if he wants some.
Hi Drogo, you want hibiscus?
He loves hibiscus leaves.
- [Jay] So, I'll only give him one just to taste it
so he'll come out.
- And so the idea is that's his favorite by far,
he loves sweet potatoes, loves green beans
but hibiscus leaves are his favorite
and we actually have a little hibiscus tree farm down
in the basement
that we're growing some hibiscus leaves
'cause up here in Michigan, you don't see them
and then now Jay is going to try to see
if we can get him to come out.
You know what I mean?
Like entice him
like, hey, guess what?
You got your favorite treat now come out
and the thing is is if we can get them to come out
and come see people,
this'll be a really cool interaction.
You can see he's definitely very excited about it,
he wants it now the question is
will he get out of his hammock?
His laziness, it looks like he's gonna come out.
Good job Drogo, come to me,
let's go.
Look at him, he's like,
just give it to me dad, just give it to me.
Come on.
- He's thinking about it.
- [Brian] He wants to go out so bad but he's so lazy.
- [Jay] He's so lazy
- Maybe we can come to the,
like see on this side of the branch maybe,
I was trying to get them to like come here.
- [Jay] Here you go buddy,
here you go.
- Here he comes.
- [Jay] So I think I'm actually gonna reward that.
- [Brian] Yup, reward that behavior.
Yeah but it's little things like that,
your reward the next behavior,
he's got both his arms out, he's trying to reach forward,
we'll go ahead and give him that hibiscus leaf
and then we'll try to get them to come completely out
and then the ultimate thing is that
when Jay is actually holding him,
we can be feeding him hibiscus,
that way he's just really happy with the hibiscus
and not thinking about the interaction at all
but he definitely loves, look how happy he is
and now he's gonna come out a little bit further,
now it looks like he's coming, there he goes.
Come on buddy, come on.
- [Jay] And it cracks me up
that he thinks that he can just put his hand out and hold it
'cause even if I was to give it to him in his hands,
he can't hold it.
- And again, just these little training things
we're gonna slow, he's almost out of his perch now,
his little hammock and then when he's done with this,
if we don't get them a hundred percent out, we'll try again,
again, it's just like training all the reptiles
and stuff like that and you do little pieces
and you reward them as he's doing good
so he is so cute
and I know you guys wanted to see him on the vlog
so I had to give you a little cute Drogo training session
and there you have it.
He didn't come all the way out but he's definitely out,
Jay's giving him a little bit of reward for it,
giving him a little affection
and within no time he'll be climbing out.
'Cause again, the idea is here in the next month or so,
hopefully we'll have the permit
and then someone can come in and maybe have an interaction
where they're standing over here
and then we can get Drogo to climb right up
and actually be right by you
and I think hibiscus leaves is the way to go.
So this was actually one of my early girls
that produces an anchi hatch for py,
she laid actually in March of last year,
the end of March of last year
but I'll be honest with you,
she hasn't been feeding really well
up until we started breeding.
Remember when I told you that sometimes
female ball pythons that are off food,
once you start breeding them, will go on food.
So now she's feeding well
but I'm wondering if she's gonna have anything going on,
'cause again, she would have to be one
of my more advanced girls to stay in that range
and I tell you what,
I'm a little surprised that they're as big as they are.
So again, she went early last year, one of my first girls
and she has gone pretty well to 17 millimeters
and again, she just started feeding rapidly
just in the last couple of weeks
so I have a feeling
this girl may be one of my early girls again
so I was pretty surprised about that.
(calm music)
I used to play this game
where I would actually guess in advance
to see if I was right just by the animal's look,
this animal to me, I think it looks like
it's about 20 to 25 millimeters.
Let's see if I'm close or not
and I promise you, Jake, I didn't just, I did not.
- There's no way he did it,
he literally just pulled it out of that crate so.
- I'm thinking she's 20 or 25 millimeters,
Let's see if I'm right.
Oh, I'm probably wrong, it's bigger than 25 millimeters.
- [Jake] What?
- It's, let's see here, it is 29 millimeters.
So it is funny how you can sometimes just look at an animal
and kind of get the feel without even pelting them,
just the overall feel.
So I guess I've been doing this for a while.
I don't know if you guys remember,
oh, a while ago, that thing just railed me.
I got those T positive rainbow boas
and it's got a feisty little attitude,
there's no doubt about that.
It's squeezing me, trying to bite me,
already bitten me once, oh my God
but these things are getting big and they're so beautiful.
Again, we've got two types of albinos,
this is the T positive, which is just tyrocine right?
So tyrocine is a protein in melanin which is black pigment
and it's just that kind of more grayish purplish look to it
so it's not that albino, that's white with red eyes,
it's kind of got that grayish purple,
almost caramely looked to it so this guy is getting cosy
but boy, is it a feisty monkey.
And then we look at the tyrocine negative
which just basically means that it's lacking
all of the melanin,
all the proteins and the black pigment is missing
and that is a true albino here which is of course
a beautiful just kind of yellow, white with pink eyes.
I mean, just really a ripper
and this one seems to be much more docile by the way
which is pretty cool.
So it's cool, of course, these guys
aren't gonna be compatible
so we won't breed the T negatives
and a T positives together,
we'll keep them a separate line there's no doubt about it
but probably next year, we'll be able to actually produce
some T negative and T positive albino rainbow boas,
how cool is that?
Adding it to our leucistic rainbow group,
that's gonna be pretty cool
to have a handful of cool mutations of rainbow boas,
they're just cool animals.
I mean, live boas are really awesome,
they get big but not too big.
Usually they are pretty chill,
obviously that one was a little bit feisty
but usually if you work with them,
they're really good animals.
So I'm excited for the future of the rainbows.
When these color mutations start to become affordable,
they're gonna be super popular when it comes to pet snakes.
All right, so we did all the ultra sounding
and it was really right where I expected to be,
a lot of 10s, a lot of 12s, a lot of 15s,
some 20, some even close to 30
so we definitely had more animals
that were closer to ovulation than I expected
and then the rest of it was about good.
So this was a good start.
We have a baseline now,
now what's gonna be important is every week
we can have two weeks, us do this again
and we wanna see growth.
So if they're at 12, we wanna see them go to 14.
We don't want them to stay at 12
so as long as there's growth, that's important
but all in all I tell you we're really good,
we're ahead in the game of where we were last year
and that's all I can expect.
It's exciting to see follicle growth
with ball pythons already,
won't be long before we'll have eggs
and you'll get to see the egg time song,
then we're gonna have egg cutting,
it's gonna be absolutely incredible.
I hope that you enjoyed the video
if you did and you're jonesing for some snake eggs,
here's a playlist right here of snake egg galore
you can watch for hours if you don't mind.
Up here, can you please subscribe to my podcast channel
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one that I think you guys will like.
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have an absolutely wonderful day.
Remember, be kind to someone
and I promise, I'll see you tomorrow.