- Hey, good morning, everybody.
And welcome to the vlog.
I hope the start of your day is amazing.
And I truly, truly mean that.
Today I'm going to be talking about a controversial subject.
And that's live feeding.
Of course, this is a cute little rat.
And listen, I'm an animal lover.
And so I love all animals.
As a matter of fact, there was a period of time
where I had a bunch of pet rats.
They're super smart.
The fact is is that there are situations
where we have to feed live.
Now you guys know, I never show live feeding on a video.
I don't ever enjoy it.
As a matter of fact, I'm going to even tell you,
I probably haven't personally watched a snake eat live
in probably 15 years, to be totally honest with you.
I'll throw a live in.
I always go back and check to make sure the snake is okay
and stuff like that, but I don't want to see it.
As an animal lover, I don't know how anyone
would actually enjoy seeing something else die.
That's just not something that I wanna do.
With that being said, there is a portion of the collection
that we have no choice but to feed live.
And I'm about to tell you why.
The fact is is that there are certain animals
that really eat live better.
And in particular ball pythons.
During the breeding season it's really difficult
to get them to eat frozen on a consistent basis.
I always talk about, when it comes to breeding,
calories in production out.
Now, there are places like in the UK
that you're not supposed to feed live
and they feed frozen.
Although there are some breeders in the UK
that actually breed their own rodents
but I'm not gonna get into that.
The fact is, if you want the best production,
when it comes to ball pythons in particular,
if you're not feeding live you're probably
not going to get the production that you really want.
And although we don't like it,
I don't get any enjoyment out of it,
The fact is, is I want the highest production
I possibly can get with ball pythons.
And the only way to really achieve that
is to feed live to 'em.
You guys might be surprised to know this
but when I was young, I actually had a guyana red-tail boa
and it only ate live food.
And honestly,
I almost stopped keeping snakes because of that.
I'm not going to lie to you.
Literally two or three times a feeding it got me so upset
that I literally almost stopped keeping reptiles.
I was like, I just don't think I can do this.
I love these rodents so much.
And I love all animals so much.
I don't know if I could do it.
But the love of reptiles kept me going.
And it's not like it ever dulled.
I mean, I don't like it any more now
than I did when I was a kid
and almost stopped keeping reptiles.
But at the same time I did come to kind of a situation
where I realized that it's just kind of part of it.
Because the truth is I would rather my snake eat live
than not eat at all, right?
It's important that, as stewards to these animals,
we give them what they need.
And if they need live then we need to feed 'em live.
That being said,
the vast majority of our collection eats frozen.
And if something will eat frozen
we will absolutely always feed frozen over live.
And like you guys see all the time we feed frozen
to pretty much everything over here at the Reptarium.
There's a couple animals we feed live,
but the vast majority, 99%,
like my girl Perdita here, always eats frozen.
So again, I'm not advocating live.
I don't think it's a good idea to feed live
if your animal can eat frozen.
I think there's a lot of benefits
to feeding frozen over live
to be completely honest with you, the safety of the animal,
not to mention just the ethicacy of it
and everything like that.
The fact is is that
if your animal doesn't want to eat frozen
then you have to make a decision
whether you want your animal to eat
or you want your animal to maybe starve, right?
So for me, I think live feeding is a necessity
when it comes to reptiles.
And it's something that you're going to have to consider,
if you decide you want to keep a pet snake,
that there is a chance
that you may have to feed live at some point.
Or you can choose the type of snake
that is very consistent with feeding on frozen.
Certainly reticulated python,
the vast majority of corn snakes,
king snake, milk snakes eat frozen.
But when you get into something like a ball python
a lot of them do eat frozen
but every now and then they will need live.
So it's just something to consider
and something that you have to be okay with
when you decide to keep a pet snake.
And guys, you know that I've told you
that ball pythons can be finicky.
I mean, there's no doubt about it.
They can go on hunger strike for sometimes months
and even up to a year, to be totally honest with you.
Honey is a perfect example.
She's always eaten frozen.
She's never had a problem over here.
But she's been off of food
for the last like month and a half or two months,
just hasn't eaten.
She looks fine.
She looks completely good.
I could probably throw a live rodent in there
and she may eat it.
But for now
I'm just going to let her kind of go for a little bit.
But again, I'm not breeding Honey.
So it's okay for her to go some time.
As long as she looks healthy, I'm not stressed out about it.
But if I were breeding an animal
you have to have those calories in.
So unfortunately today is a day
that we do have to feed the ball pythons in the dungeon.
And unfortunately we do have to feed the live to them.
Again, I'm not going to show you feeding it live.
I'm not going to have it on camera.
But I do have to go do it.
So what do you say we head over there?
And maybe we'll just do a quick time lapse
where you see how much work it actually is.
So again, we have to feed all these females,
the ones that don't eat frozen, we have to feed live to.
Which is a pretty big portion of them this time of year.
For whatever reason, during the summertime,
a lot of them will eat frozen.
But then when we get into say October, November
they typically go off.
So it's really important
to give them live food at that point.
So, yeah, so we'll go ahead.
We'll feed these guys.
Again, I'm not going to show it on film
but you can kind of get the idea of how long it takes.
It's probably gonna take me an hour and a half
to get through and do this the right way.
(upbeat music)
And it's not just ball pythons
that sometimes need to eat live to get going.
If you remember correctly, Virday, my girl here,
actually wouldn't eat anything but live baby chicks.
And that was really tough.
I mean, I love rats and I love mice,
but you know, again, we feed them to snakes an awful lot.
To feed a live little chicken to Virday
was so difficult for me.
Thankfully, she only did it for maybe five or six meals.
And then she switched over to rats
which was absolutely amazing.
And now she crushes frozen thawed rats every single week.
So again, sometimes you have to get them started
and it goes back to what I was saying.
I'd rather my snakes eat and be healthy
than be stubborn and say, I'm not going to feed live
and have them kind of wither away.
You know what I mean?
Again, there's a fine line.
I'm not saying as soon as your snake doesn't eat
throw live in with it, by any stretch.
I'm just saying that sometimes you do need that little kick
just to get them going.
I always talk to you guys
about the fact that we're learning.
We've been open for a little over two years,
but there's still all kinds of things
that were kind of epiphanies that we're making.
Like, we should've done this differently
or maybe we should do this.
And we can always change, right?
You guys remember,
we actually moved the chameleon cages a little bit
so that this cage is up.
And this way these cages are down here.
Because before these cages here were way up top here.
And obviously even when you stood on the rock,
like here, it was hard to see up into 'em,
especially if you were a kid, right?
So we move them down so that it could work in that way.
Well, we're going to do the exact same thing
with these enclosures over here.
And I'm pretty excited about it.
Obviously we have our frog, we have flamin' hot.
We have the Ackies.
This is an empty cage here.
But again, these cages up here are tough.
Even with the Ackie, the little dwarf monitor,
that gets on the rocks a lot.
We don't see them very often
and people really don't get much excitement out of this
because it's way up top.
So what we're going to do is
we're gonna remove these four cages
and we're going to make two cages
that are tall like this, right?
So these two cages will combine into one big cage here
and another big cage here.
And, I don't know, we'll maybe put tree monitors
or something obviously arboreal that can climb up.
So if you guys have any ideas
what you think that would be good in an enclosure this big
let me know down in the comments
because I want to put something really cool.
We're going to have two cages like this.
So it's probably gonna take us two or three weeks
to get the enclosures built
and actually fixtured out and stuff like that.
But, again, it's just little changes like that
that I think will make the place even better.
Because this is kind of what I consider dead space.
No one's really ever enjoying it.
So why not combine it into something
that people will actually get some enjoyment out of.
So, again, always making changes
and always making improvements.
As you can see, we are open to the public
here tonight at the Reptarium.
So we got a bunch of people in.
Tonight is the first night
that we actually have Drogo, the sloth experiences.
So I'm looking forward to the first person
that's going to get in with Drogo.
It's gonna be absolutely amazing.
But in the meantime
we're just going to play around with a bunch of reptiles.
Look at my buddy here came in from out of town.
So he's actually, he's sporting the free hugs, the mask.
I appreciate you, man.
You gonna have a good time tonight?
All right, cool.
(everyone singing)
- [everyone] Happy birthday to you.
- Hey guys, this is what I live for right here.
This type of an experience,
seeing kids hold snakes and stuff like that.
Look at how excited they are.
That is absolutely amazing.
(upbeat music)
Laurie. - Yes?
- I'm excited about a Drogo experience.
Sell a Drogo experience.
I wanna see people going with Drogo for the first time.
Let's just, so get on that, all right, please.
Thank you.
In the mean time I'm going to go take a look real quick.
I wanna see how he's doing over here.
And again, this is so cool
that people can actually look at him here.
He's over in his bed right now.
Just hanging out over here.
Earlier he was right up here at the front.
So he loves the clear glass now to see us.
He's like curious about us.
So I'm sure in no time
we're going to do our first sloth experience.
It's pretty awesome.
Guys, I tell you what, all my issues in life
always melt away when I'm around people at the Reptarium.
When I can just see everyone just having such a good time,
seeing the animals.
I know I can't see smiles on people's faces
but you can see their eyes are smiling.
It's the best thing in the world, guys.
I mean, it's probably my happiest time of the week
is just right now.
I mean, I am brimming with excitement and happiness.
This is, I feel so lucky.
So lucky that people support this place
and that it's so magical.
You guys are not gonna believe this
but this is of course Elvis.
And your name is Presley.
- [Mum] Yep. So Elvis, Presley.
They finally met.
I mean, Elvis is really still alive, he really is.
Elvis, you found 'em.
- [Man] She's not even going to move.
- [mum] Oh, she's so friendly.
- [Man] Doing a good job.
Good job, way to go.
(upbeat music)
- Guess what, guys?
We actually just had our first people
that are gonna do a sloth experience
here at the Reptarium with Drogo.
So I'm super excited.
We're going to go in and actually do it right now.
This is what we've been waiting for, for almost four months.
- [Man] Hi, hi guys.
Right here, other side of that.
Come all the way in so we can shut this.
Good job.
- [Child] I don't know where he is.
He's right up here.
You guys just walk right under him.
- [Mum] We walked under him.
- Walked right past him.
All right, so we have a sloth experience.
You guys can come right over here.
Come on right over.
You guys can take pictures of him
and get close to him if you want.
He's not gonna do anything.
He's just moving around.
Hey, Drogo.
of course, getting a little bit of a treat.
That's a little sweet potato.
So what do you guys think?
You want to come over here?
You can get a picture from this way if you want it.
Get close to him.
- [Mum] You guy look up at him, he's not scary.
- [Man] I think it's got stuck on his tooth.
- [Mum] It got stuck on this tooth.
- [Man] Yeah. (laughs)
- Why don't you guys get under here, right under here.
- [Mum] You guys get underneath him.
- [Brian] Get right underneath him.
- [Mum] Pres, look at me.
- [Brian] Here, look this way.
- [Mum] Sawyer, look at me.
There we go, perfect.
- [Brian] Aw, that looks good.
- [Mum] Yeah. - [Mum] Awesome.
- [Brian] He's like, "No way, that last sweet potato."
- [Man] He's like, "That last one got stuck on my tooth."
- [Brian] So, what do you guys think?
Do you liked the sloth? - Yeah
- [Brian] Is he cool? - [Child] Yeah.
- [Brian] It's awesome, huh?
And he's out, just kind of cruising around right now.
Hi, Drogo.
Hi, baby boy.
- [Mum] How old is he?
He turned four years two days.
- [Man] Two days ago, yup. - [Brian] Four years old.
These guys will live about 30 years.
So he's still a youngster.
- [Mum] Hello.
- [Brian] And he's just saying, "Hi.
"Hi guys."
So it's awesome.
So you guys excited that you got a chance to meet my Drogo?
Awesome.
Well, I appreciate you guys so much.
- [Mum] Well thanks for letting us.
- [Brian] My pleasure.
It's awesome. - [Child] He's moving.
- [Brian] Hey, Drogo.
Hey, baby boy.
Hi baby.
How you doing sweetheart?
You doing good?
Hey, sweetie.
How you doing?
Want to come out and play, right?
Like, can I go outside now with everybody else?
And we are closed here at the Reptarium.
It was amazing to see Drogo
getting some interactions for the very first time.
It's going to be absolutely incredible.
And again, the controversial topic,
I hope that you guys understand
about the live feeding thing.
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Have an absolutely wonderful day.
Remember, be kind to someone.
And I promise I'll see you tomorrow.