- Well guys, today is the day.
We are heading off on a long journey.
It's going to be absolutely incredible. Lots of stops.
Lots of your favorite YouTubers, lots of cool animals.
It's going to be absolutely wild, but before we leave,
I wanted to show you some ball pythons that hatched out.
By the way, look at this ball python right here.
Oh my gosh. Of course, this was actually
a piebald ball python bread to a pastel py.
Just absolutely some wonderful animals.
You can see this is the pastel piebald python here.
It's just got kinda more blown out,
a little bit different color.
And then of course this would be like a normal piebald here.
Another pastel pie here,
you can kind of see the two together, right?
There's a normal py and the pastel py is on the right
hand side and they're just a little bit different,
but nevertheless,
a lot of really cool ball pythons.
And speaking of ball pythons,
the first stop that we're making is actually the most
expensive ball python collection and the most extensive
ball python collection in the entire world. That's right,
Justin Kobylka, we're off to Atlanta.
So what do you say we get in the car and hit the road
and go look at some amazing ball pythons?
Boy, I sure am going to miss this place.
(upbeat music playing)
And we made it down to Georgia. I'm at JKR.
I'm telling you what, this is the dream
when it comes to ball pythons.
I know this is the most amazing ball python collection
in the entire world and really probably the most expensive
ball python collection in the entire world.
So we are at the Disneyland of ball pythons right now.
I'm going to meet up with my buddy Justin,
he's going to give us a little tour
and get some heat when it comes to ball pythons
So what do you say we just jump in
and go see some awesome animals?
And of course here's the man himself. Justin,
thank you so much for having us, seriously.
- My pleasure. I'm excited about this.
- It's awesome. We've known each other for a long time.
As a matter of fact, gosh,
I remember when you first got into reptiles
and it's amazing what you've done here.
I mean, this facility is ridiculous.
- I met Brian at a Daytona show, I think 2004.
Talked to him on the phone a few times,
I bought my second clown ever.
Now clown is like from Brian.
Now clown is like the biggest project I really worked with.
We go way back.
- I remember because Laurie actually was reminiscing about
that story. She's like,
"Remember when we met Justin way back at Daytona"
and stuff like that. It's amazing--
- I was like a pimply teenager at that point.
- I know, but look what you turned into.
I mean, you turned into the best of the best.
And so, so let's look around, I mean,
this place is ridiculous.
Not only is there going to be some amazing animals,
but the facility itself is literally
the nicest facility I've ever been to.
- Thank you. You know, it's been a dream, a passion of mine.
It's amazing and I'm really excited
about sharing it with you guys, be really awesome.
- Let's just jump in.
I mean, gosh, I can't, I can't take it anymore.
Got to see some animals.
So where do you even start in a place like this?
- You're gonna leave and I'm gonna be like,
"I forgot to show you the best ones,"
but that's how it always is. But we'll show you a few,
just really really cool, bright things.
- Oh my gosh. Wow.
- So what we're always trying to do
is just make them different.
Right? Better and brighter and cleaner.
And this one, of course they're ball pythons.
- So what do we have here? I know it's obviously a clown.
I don't know what else.
- Clown, emchi, coral glow, sugar, red stripe.
- Wow.
- All in one animal, but you end up with
something like almost no spots, right?
Even with it being coral glow, almost no spots at all.
And just neon colors.
- That red stripe with the clown is ridiculous too.
I mean, obviously that was amazing that, I mean, you really
broke it with the whole Pompeii thing and stuff like that.
And now obviously, in the coral glow, the sugar in there.
Wow. That thing is stunning.
And again, it's about visual animals. Right?
I think the thing I love about you is that your vision
is more like five years from now. Right?
You're working on the next thing. Whereas a lot of breeders,
I think the advice that I would give people
and I'm sure you probably would too,
is that most people are thinking
about this year's production,
but you're kind of thinking about
five years production down the road, right?
- You have to start something, like have an idea
what you want to be and then like, what do I need?
What are the steps I need to take
in order to get there in five years?
- Oh my gosh. This is incredible, Justin.
- Of course this is one of the newer recessive mutations
that have been kind of out in the last few years.
- Just started making these.
I actually bought this from Dave Green here in the industry.
- Yeah, Dave started it, right?
He did, here in the US he made the first monsoon.
This is a Mojave monsoon. But that pattern is so complex.
- It's crazy. It's like the granite berm
almost of the ball python world.
- Right. The challenge we're having is
how do you change the pattern?
Can you change the patterns? It's like,
most things we're putting into it so far are not really
editing the pattern much, but that's okay.
Cause we're doing dessert ghosts,
we're doing all the colors and the albinos
and the ultra mills. And so this pattern is just so wicked,
kind of don't want to change it.
- No, in a way, that's what makes it amazing.
And now you can just change the color palette
and then down the road, maybe you can start, you know,
I mean, have people done leopards with them?
- Leopard didn't change it, surprisingly.
- Didn't change it, really? Wow.
- It's actually pretty patterned for clam champagne.
You know, it's still got a nice back stripe
and a good pattern, yeah.
So we take any animal, we're not happy with the results.
You're like, okay. It's just two steps away
from being amazing. And so what are those steps?
And it takes years. We got all the time in the world.
- Oh my gosh. Yeah.
- So this is where we're going with dreamsicle.
- Okay. Wow, did you brighten that up.
So this is enchi yellow belly dreamsicle.
- Enchi yellow.
- We found out the enchi made these snakes very,
very pink when you got into the lab,
and then the yellow belly opens up the pattern.
So we have more pink showing.
- What's the next step? Or do you have an idea?
- Super enchi. So we found out super enchi
doubles the effect.
- Really?
- Check some out.
- Oh my gosh.
(both talking)
- Normally I'm like, well, I think
this is going to work out.
You're like, oh, I've got it over here.
Let's just go look at it.
We do. We don't have the dreamsicle version yet,
but this super enchi lavender.
- Whoa. Super enchi lavender? That's all it is?
Is it yellow belly too?
- Super enchi leopard.
- No yellow belly.
- What we have here, the pink is doubled,
it almost has like a mustard color to it.
This is a sugar red stripe yellow belly
instead of enchi. You see how it glows kind of
at the back end? But you get some great colors.
That sugar spot nose yellow belly red stripe.
- That makes sense, yeah. Wow. I actually love that.
I'm so glad you did so much with the red stripe
cause I've loved red stripes forever.
So it's great to see.
- Ever since I saw Ian come out with those,
I'm like, there's a lot of potential that is untapped.
- Guys, I tell ya, we're just a handful of animals in,
and I'm already absolutely blown away.
Again, you know, I follow all this stuff.
I just don't work with some of the more cutting edge stuff
anymore, so to see it in person is so much better
than the pictures, guys.
This is ridiculous, Justin. I mean, seriously.
- This is a hurricane leopard, spot nose, coral glow clown.
So Batman, hurricane, coral glow clown.
Look how crazy that is.
- That is just tricky. All the spotting that comes through.
- So we have kind of the standard Batman, and they're like,
okay, we'll make that coral glow.
They had to make it crazier. Add hurricane,
maybe add another dose of hurricane and we had something
completely different, but just to make them
wilder and wilder. There's no end to this. Every animal,
if you look here, it's like, headed for something else
or it's an angle into something else. In 20 years,
we're gonna be like, "We were doing nothing back then."
This has to be crazy.
- Well, that's how it's been, right? 20 years ago,
we could have never imagined this. 20 years from now,
we're going to be blown away.
This is going to be the old school stuff.
- Exactly.
- And that's amazing.
- We call this the inception because it's an orange dream
in a dream, so a dream within a dream.
- Right. Ah, that's awesome.
- So this is the orange dream, yellow belly dream.
It's just so, so far ahead.
- So bright.
- These as adults, they look like baby dreamsicles,
where the regular ones, like they fade right out.
The last year, the wild stuff
we had was this Kraken project.
I don't know if you ever saw.
- I have not even seen the Kraken.
I don't know if I want to see your Kraken.
- Check this out.
- These are beautiful!
- So we call this the Kraken cause it's got like
these little like sucker cups all over.
- That makes sense. So what is the Kraken? Or can you tell?
- Good question. I don't know.
So we have like seven codons in the mix.
And so which ones hit, we're going to know
when we breed it, kind of thing.
- So this is a mystery.
- Right. But I have like kind of a progression.
I can show you what I think they are.
So this one I believe is Wookie black pastel,
yellow belly. I think this one is adding GHI too.
So it changed the pattern just a bit.
It makes it a little bit more extreme,
a little bit more suction cup-y. You add Mojave to it,
you block out a lot of pattern,
but you get this like gunmetal gray.
Wow. So it's a really neat look.
We're going to breed these and then we'll find out,
find out what they actually are.
And that's part of, you know, and you know this
as part of being breeders that you have to become real
comfortable with not being sure of yourself.
- Absolutely.
- We live in this limbo.
- I say it all the time, you know,
there's times where we approved a six or seven gene animal.
There's no way we know what six or seven genes are in it.
You know, we can only guess, you know.
- And then you find out.
- And then you find out, yeah, when you breed them out.
You know, I have a few projects now that I'm like,
I don't even know. I can't sell them because I've got to,
you know, raise them up.
When you first walk into JKR, sorry for the echo,
it's a little echo-y in here,
but this is the first vision you get.
Now these are actually going to be some display enclosures.
You, I mean just pro right?
Everything is pro, you look here,
you can look through the windows
into the breeding facility.
I mean just unbelievable offices over here.
And let's go ahead and walk in here.
I mean, it's just absolutely ridiculous.
I mean, look at the cleanliness,
the sinks everywhere. You've got the stainless here.
Everything is not only good for actual functionability,
but it looks absolutely pro and that's what's amazing.
Everything matches, the floor,
the place is absolutely incredible. I mean,
the way he has it organized with males and females
so that it's the easiest to breed with males on this side,
females on this side,
that way you can just literally pull a male,
put it over here. Don't have to walk around everywhere.
I mean, just look at this place.
It is literally a ball python breeder's dream
to have a facility like this. I mean, everywhere you look,
again, same setup, sink stainless, you know,
same type of thing.
This is what any breeder would want to aspire to be.
It's mind bending.
- This is a crazy cat. This is out of the Pompeii line,
but it's a little different because instead of the black
pastel, we put GHI. Racetrack yellow belly GHI
fire spot nose clown, so we have six codons in one clown.
Here's what we're kind of really proud of is the fact that
we have six incomplete dominant genes
and they don't cover each other up.
- Right.
- They're all individually--
- Expressing.
- Expressed and you can see them all and they all
work together to create a better animal.
And you don't end up with one that says, okay,
now the animal's blank and you can't
see any of the other genes.
- Oh look at that one!
- Do we go more orange? Do we go more pale?
Do we want more clean?
It's just that process of trying to find that balance.
- So what is the difference here? I mean,
this is super orange dream?
- These two have fire and fire pales it and cleans it.
So it's like, do you want, this one has--
- More orange but a little dirty.
- Right. Exactly. So it's about finding that balance.
But I think there's other ways we can get there.
Our perfect snake is this without the dirtiness,
with the more orange, for now. What we think
is perfect is always changing.
- And to be honest with you, I don't mind the dirty,
I think it kind of adds a little character too.
So I think it's like you said,
a little bit for whatever you want, you know,
you might find that you get clean and then some people want
some of the dirt, you know, so.
- Exactly.
- Yeah. Wow. Whoa.
- This is top level right now, desert ghost.
- That is top level.
- So we get perfect black and yellow, you know?
so fire yellow belly, orange dream, leopard spot
nose desert ghost.
- Oh my goodness. That is ridiculous.
The thing I love about desert ghost stuff
is that clean feeling to it, right?
It's got almost that soft look because like,
if you were to look at this, it almost feels soft.
You know, just to look.
- And it gets better with age, which so few genes do.
And it leaves the black alone because like hypo,
pure hypo, it will fade the blacks.
And then suddenly you're getting
an animal that loses contrast.
Our goal is to make, you know,
bright and dark in the same animal.
So this is a little bit in shed,
but this is a suma py, it's a super mahogany py.
- Sheesh, look at the dye on it.
- I was so disappointed when this snake hatched.
Even though it was my first male.
Because it was almost pure white.
All these spots came in over time.
So now it's like the best snake ever in the collection.
- It's like, it's like a Dalmatian. It's beautiful.
- So none of these spots were there when it hatched.
- I didn't realize that they actually
created melanin as they get older.
- So generally speaking, they don't,
it's like a randomized thing that this animal really has.
And I've had a couple others do it,
but have no rhyme or reason as to why.
Black pastel, mahogany, yellow belly.
There's like really, really chocolate look.
- That's very chocolaty.
- That's the dark side of py.
- So then that's the mahogany
and the black pastel interacting, making the dark.
- Which is pretty good. It's not dark as we want, really.
- But still, I like the contrast there.
I like that brownish look. That's awesome.
- We went black head leopard Mojave, but then
they got so high white we couldn't really go any further
so we added enchi and you get this really cool thing
with these like black lined medallions all over it.
(both talking)
I like enchis are so low white, typically people
don't want to use them because they want some white.
But if you add a high white element
with like the black head in the Mojave, you get 50 50.
So you get that perfect balance there.
- Now I've got the double mahogany and the black pastel.
- And this is starting to get a few spots now too.
You can see them there.
- You can see it's starting to go. So I assume it probably
is going to get more dots as it gets older.
That's good. Now that's the true
kind of panda-ish looking py.
What do you think? You grew up around this stuff.
- Now let's just say his stuff's way better than yours.
(all laughing)
- This is the chocolate version of the Pompeii.
- Oh, so this is the chocolate.
- So chocolate instead of black pastel.
So race stripe, yellow belly, spot nose, chocolate.
Look how crazy busy their bellies are.
- Oh my gosh.
- So many ball pythons and a clear (mumbles) `
This is kind of cheap to have an entire half of the snake
to still mess with the pattern on.
This is a really unique animal.
- Wow. I love that.
- It creates this confusion. Black pastel spot nose,
yellow belly, and again, crazy bellies.
They come from the confusions.
- Wow. Now there's a confusion. What type of gene is that?
- It's incomplete dominant.
It's similar to leopard a little bit.
The super is not different, just like leopard.
Yeah. So this is enchi fire cryptic desert ghost.
- Okay.
- So there's a double recessive with cryptic
and desert ghost and the enchi fire
is giving it that crazy . . . It takes away
the eye stripes and gives a good solid--
- That's what makes it look so interesting, right?
It's the fact that there's no eye stripe.
- Right.
- You know, it doesn't even look like a ball python.
Yeah. It's wild.
So, obviously like Justin said,
we've known each other since 2004 and it's amazing,
you know, in that time it's an interesting thing.
Because during that time,
you never know who's going to end up being like a player.
Who's not going to be. And as you know, most people don't,
you know, so it's pretty crazy you've come this far.
I mean, it's crazy it's been that many years.
- It doesn't feel like it's been that long.
I got a lot older. (both laugh)
- At least I have. I got more gray than you,
- that's for sure. You look pretty young still.
So what's the next iteration?
I mean, is this where you're going to stay?
Do you have any other plans or?
- You know, I think I'm going to stay in the zone.
You know, it's, it's my passion.
It's been, you know, 20 years of work now, but I just,
I'm so excited and enthusiastic for the future of it.
Because you know, look at interacting
with you here today to see like
so many of the animals are stepping stones,
they're not really end products.
They're a stepping stone to more and more beautiful things
and sharing this passion with so many other people
throughout the world.
And what it's done is ball pythons as you remember
used to be like the junk snake that nobody wants.
They're cool pets, but they were just sitting in the corner
and they weren't that pretty. Now we have it as
the most exciting pet reptile in our world.
- Crazy to think that you're just getting started.
Cause you seem like you've come so far. And by the way,
if you guys want to follow his journey,
I'm going to put a link to all his social media,
including his YouTube channel right down below.
Definitely give him a follow, go show him some love,
tell him I sent you, of course.
And you're going to be blown away.
- I have to brag a little bit though.
(both talking)
- Well I have like 50 thousand.
- So let's get him to a hundred thousand guys.
Let's pump it. Let's do it. Trust me, it's worth it.
Because you're going to see some living art
on a level that you're not going to see on any other thing.
- I love sharing the details of these things.
People who wanna do it or are enthusiastic about it.
We get in really pretty nitty gritty with it,
but that's just, it's my art,
what I love about these animals.
- That's I love about you too. And like I said,
the thing that I think people now know you because of what
you've done is that you are a forward thinker.
Like I had mentioned before. So like,
I may look at these animals, even me doing it
as long as I have and think it's the end product,
but you're not thinking it's the end product.
And that's what makes JKR so special.
Seriously go give Justin a follow.
You will not be disappointed.
Hope you enjoyed today's video.
It was an absolutely incredible time here.
I tell you what, I'm blown away.
I'm gonna think about this for a long time.
If you enjoyed this video, please right here is a playlist.
You can go ahead and watch a couple of videos.
If you don't mind on this side right over here,
can you subscribe to this channel?
It would mean the world to me.
Have a wonderful day, reptile army.
Remember, be kind to somebody, and I promise
I'll see you in the next one.