(mellow electronic music)
- Hey, good morning everybody and welcome to the vlog.
I hope the start of your day is incredible.
I know mine's gonna be incredible
because I have been waiting for this for the last week,
week and a half.
And that's right, that's my albino het pied ball python
that's actually bred to an albino pied.
So everything is gonna be albino
and half is gonna be albino pie.
That is exciting.
And it looks like she's wrapped around
a gorgeous clutch of eggs.
There's just something about
either an albino, or a pied, or a leucistic
wrapped around eggs that is so amazing,
because again, I remember when I first started
just thinking about seeing a ball python like this
wrapped around a clutch of eggs was like dreams of mine.
Now it's just something that happens all the time,
and it's just so absolutely incredible.
Looks like she's got some really big eggs too.
Momma's really protecting her eggs well
as far as just really coiled up nicely on them.
But these are some big eggs,
so I'm not expecting them to be a lot of eggs
because they're so absolutely mammoth.
And that's the thing about ball pythons, right,
is they'll have smaller numbers of eggs
the bigger the egg,
and a larger number of eggs the smaller.
Although, I'll be honest with you,
these are more eggs than I expected.
They just keep on coming here.
As a matter of fact, I can hardly fit them in the box.
Look at how big these eggs are.
And I'm gonna have to candle this whole clutch
because obviously they all got kind of rolled around
quite a bit, so I'm sure that the embryos
aren't completely up.
But we got two, four, six, eight, nine eggs.
Nine eggs.
That was a lot more.
I figured six or seven, so wow.
What a great way to start the day,
and I hope that you and me can push our problems aside.
Let's just have a good time together.
I'm gonna forget my problems
and have a great time in this vlog.
Remember a couple days ago
we had that female corn snake that had that egg
that was kind of in the midsection bound?
I said there's no way you can get that out
when it's in the midsection.
Well, I just took a look at her
and you can see the egg is down close to the vent.
That is such good news that she pushed it,
'cause she was like midbody.
When they're midbody there's not a lot you can do
other than surgery if it's way up top,
so I'm so happy she got it down.
Let's just go ahead and see if we can express this egg
out with a probe and doing some massage aspiration.
Certainly there's never any definites.
You can see there's still a pretty good space
between that egg and where the vent is down here,
so I'm gonna just gently massage aspirate,
kind of pushing that egg really gently
down towards the vent here.
And just see,
you can feel there's a little bit of resistance
which isn't a really good sign to be honest with you.
I was hoping that there wouldn't be as much resistance,
but I can kind of get it close to that vent
so I think I might be okay.
Once I get within a couple ventral scales
I'm gonna go in with the probe
and just see if I can't find that egg
and open that vent up.
Just like that, I'm gonna just open it up like that
and I'm gonna just try to find the egg with the vent.
Looking in there to see what's going on,
see if I can find the egg,
and just slowly express that egg out.
And here it comes.
I can start to feel a chalky feeling
on the actual probe itself.
Now I know I've got the egg in here
and I can slowly go in circular fashion,
so I'm not pushing the actual oviduct out, right
you can start to see it come out right there.
Right there, we've got it.
We got it guys, right there.
There it comes.
That's right, ah, I tell you,
it's so unbelievably satisfying
when you know that you saved an animal's life like that.
She may have pushed it out on her own,
but it's very important to get that egg out of here.
And this egg is no good by the way.
It's been in her too long,
so this is just garbage.
But the fact is if that egg was stuck in her
for a long time it could adhere to the oviduct,
eventually go septic or rupture something,
and she could potentially die.
So what an absolutely satisfying feeling
to get this egg out of her.
Now she's gonna be completely fine.
And again, because this is her second clutch
I'm gonna shelf her for the rest of the year.
She'd gonna have a brumation,
she's gonna get ready to breed next year.
It's just such a great feeling to be successful.
This was one I was a little bit worried about,
I'm not gonna lie to you.
But it worked out.
And again, I always stress this,
please don't do this if you don't have a vet.
I did this many times with a vet
prior to doing it on my own.
Just over years and years of experience
I've been able to do this.
I don't want you to ever injure a snake
by doing it yourself.
So if you ever have that problem,
please reach out to a vet.
Don't try to do it on your own.
But in this case, it worked out great.
- As you guys can see
I'm in front of our albino green iguana cage here.
This is Heinz and Frenches.
As you guys know, these guys are albino animals,
so there's a huge hurdle that we've said
a number of times on this channel.
Because of their lack of eyesight
they're listening to me right now.
You can actually see him right now,
he's almost sort of wandering.
You can see his eyes are dancing around.
This is a clear behavior of him,
he's listening for me right now.
So he's wondering when's that voice
gonna get real close to me
so I know when to dart away.
As you can see he's shedding actually already right now,
and God, this thing is so beautiful.
They're super pretty, but you guys see,
see the waving he's doing?
A lot of that waving he's doing?
There you go, a little wave here and there.
He doesn't know where the next place to grab is.
Try and get him to calm down a little bit.
What I want to do is obviously touch
is a big, big thing.
The first thing is I want to definitely make sure
he knows I'm still here.
He knows there's still movement.
A little licking isn't bad.
He's certainly not trying to bite me.
As you can see, he's already calmed down quite a bit.
He's already starting to get a point
where I don't have to quite put my thumb on him
or make sure he doesn't really get freaked out.
This is telling me one really, really important thing.
Number one, he's either forgotten that he's on my hand,
which of course always making that reminder with touching,
making a little movement happen
always will help mitigate that as best you can.
Or number two, he's finally starting to realize
that there's nothing to be afraid of.
He's just waiting for his time to be able to get away.
He's just waiting for that moment
where he feels a little bit more relaxed hands
where he can go, "Oh, he's letting me go and I can go."
This next couple months I'm definitely gonna try
some more audible cues.
Maybe when we do the feedings and stuff like that,
try and maybe have a clicker or something
just like we do with the alligators.
That potentially could be something we try here.
Especially at this young age
I really want to try my best
to actually really set the standard for these guys
to be one of the coolest animals in the world.
And it really will show people too
that these aren't as bad pets
as everyone kept saying they are.
It's just about willing to take care of your animal,
willing to love them a little bit,
and willing to be a good keeper.
- Yesterday I showed you Ivy's merch of course.
Today is Lucy with the "free hugs."
You can also get it without the "free hugs."
There's four ones.
Ivy hugs, Ivy without hugs, Lucy hugs, Lucy without hugs.
Only gonna be available for a limited time,
so link in the description.
If you guys want to get these I would love it.
I appreciate your support.
Definitely get you some before they're gone.
And we have an Enchi--
Oh, I don't like the way that looks.
This is actually an Enchi female here
wrapped around a not so pretty clutch of eggs,
and it's unfortunate because it was bred
to an animal that I was super excited about.
And it's just this mutation
that we've been calling the new gene.
We're gonna maybe call it mango, a few other things,
but there was already a mango ball python.
Regardless, this is one of its offspring last year,
and they're born really orange.
Something really radically different.
But this is actually an Enchi of the new gene,
and I was really hoping to potentially produce
a super Enchi of that new gene.
The good news is we do have a couple
other clutches with Enchi in it.
So we bred this Enchi female to the new gene animal
to hopefully produce some super Enchis.
Regardless, the point is last year
you can see right here,
she says slugs three 21.
She slugged out last year.
And obviously you always give a female
a second year because you just don't know
what's gonna happen.
The fact that the fertility was not very good on this ...
Come on, momma.
Tells me that there might be an issue
with the female itself.
Now, there does look like there's a couple
good eggs in here.
I'm just gonna push this back right here.
There's a couple of these crazy boob egg
type of things right here.
I'm gonna take these out
and I'm gonna candle them to see
if there's anything going on.
This egg looks really good.
But again, I'm gonna candle that
because sometimes an egg can look good
and stuff like that, but isn't.
And then beyond that a lot of slugs.
This is not what I wanted to see at all.
Oh my goodness.
So we have two, four, six, seven slugs.
Looks like four potentially good eggs,
but I'm gonna candle them right now.
Like I said, I'm pretty bummed out about it.
But the fact is, is when you have a female
that doesn't do well fertility wise
two years in a row that usually tells you
it's a female issue, not a male issue.
In particular, with this particular new gene male,
he already fathered one clutch
and has a few other clutches that should look good,
not to mention I know he was good
'cause last year he fathered clutches.
So the truth is most likely
we'll be selling this female Enchi as a pet.
Tell people to never breed her again.
She'll just be a great pet.
She's a great animal,
but no sense in us breeding her a third year
and potentially having infertile eggs.
In the meantime, let's go ahead candle these eggs
and see if there's anything I can salvage from this clutch.
So basically what I'm doing is I'm just shining
a light into the egg,
illuminating it in a dark room.
I'm looking for this red network of veins, red spots,
see where we can actually see the embryo.
We definitely see the first egg
has a little bit of a red spot.
The second egg, this one doesn't look like
it has anything in it at all.
Again, I can see a little bit of a red.
These aren't normal networks of veins,
so these eggs may not be good,
but at least there's some fertility to it
so there's a chance that these eggs
weren't as bad as I thought.
Time will tell if these eggs actually hatch.
Like I said, I don't have high hopes
because the embryos themselves
didn't look really strong to me.
But you never know.
These three eggs here
look like they were potentially solid.
One definitely no good for sure,
but I'm gonna leave it in the egg box
just as a you never know, miracles can happen.
We'll see what happens.
If they do actually hatch
then maybe there's hope for this girl
and I'll breed her again next year.
If all these eggs go bad, like I said,
we'll just re-home her as a pet.
Hey, there's still hope, right?
(mellow electronic music)
You know that I always want to come to you guys
and ask your advice.
I'm kind of in a little bit of a dilemma now
that I am curious what your thoughts are on it.
You know what we opened up a couple weeks ago,
10 people per hour.
This weekend, by the way,
later tonight we are open to 25 people per hour.
Last night was the first night.
I'm gonna be totally honest with you,
I really loved it.
I really did.
10 people were great,
but it still felt very empty.
Last night with 25 people, and tonight with 25 people,
it almost feels more normal, right?
There's enough people to have things be really fun
but then we can still give really individual attention
to each group of people that come in.
We literally have six people working to 25 people here,
so everyone really gets an amazing experience.
But I always thought that I would probably only do this
until July, but I'm kind of thinking
what if I kept it this way indefinitely
where there's 25 people per hour?
The downside is that normally it was $10 to get in,
you could stay all night if you wanted to.
Now it's $10 for an hour,
but at the same time you're getting
such a better experience.
When we're normally open there is 200 people in here.
You're not getting much individual attention,
it's packed, it's kind of crazy.
With 25 you're literally able to do
everything you want to do,
and people are buying two and three hour blocks as well.
So in two or three hours
you are literally seeing every animal,
doing everything you possible can do.
It costs a little bit more,
but your experience level is probably a lot higher,
and I enjoy it.
I'll be totally honest with you
I loved last night, and I know I'm gonna love tonight.
So my question to you is do I keep it that way?
Do I keep it maybe just selling hour slots
and not go back to open to the general public,
or do I just open up to the general public when we can
to as many people as want to come in, we get packed again?
I want to know from you guys what would you want to do?
Would you want to pay $10 per hour
and get a really intimate experience,
or would you want to pay $10 and be here all night
but maybe be with hundreds of people?
I'm not sure what to do about it.
But by the way, we're gonna put tickets on sale
today for July.
We decided we're gonna go ahead and sell
25 tickets through July.
We may up it a little bit, we don't know,
but probably just gonna be in that ...
But we want to at least let you get the opportunity.
And if we open up the general public,
just wide open, your $10 will get you the whole night
instead of just the hour.
But I want to know from you guys.
I really need to know.
I'm kind of conflicted.
I enjoy the smaller groups,
but at the same time I don't want people
to feel like they're not getting their money's worth.
So let me know what you think about it
down in the comments.
Every now and then I want to just
continue to update you on this Boelen's python
and how well it's doing.
It's definitely getting darker.
It's not black yet.
Like I said, it's gonna turn jet black.
These guys literally get nine, 10 foot long, pretty girthy.
Just one of the most amazing pythons ever.
But it is doing so well.
Cannot wait to get this guy over to The Reptarium.
I'm just not really to do it yet.
It's doing really well over here at BHB
and I think it's time to just keep it here
for the next maybe five, six months, something like that
because it's just absolutely incredible.
Again, one of the coolest snakes ever.
I never thought that I would own a Boelen's python
and I can't wait till this thing gets jet black
with yellow in it and glossy.
I mean, you think that Nightfury's iridescent?
These Boelen's pythons are next level iridescence
once they get adult sized.
So it's doing really well.
You guys will see it over at The Reptarium soon.
Look at how big some of these baby skinks are getting.
These are the ones that were
literally just born a few weeks ago.
They were so tiny.
And look at that.
And look at the color
that's starting to come through on these guys.
It's absolutely amazing.
This one here was actually a coffee to red.
You can really start to see that coffee coming through
and the red pigment is gonna start to increase.
When this thing gets another two or three
times this size it's gonna be ridiculous.
It's good that some of these anima;s
have finally gotten to the size where we're probably
gonna start putting them on the website.
I know a lot of people have been like,
"When are you gonna add blue tongued skinks?"
We'll probably have a handful up on the website
within the next few days.
I can't wait to get these to new homes
and people can appreciate them as much as I do.
I tell you what, these are absolute rippers.
Like I mentioned earlier,
we are open tonight at The Reptarium
with 25 people per hour.
It's gonna be an absolute blast.
People are lining up.
Let's go ahead and let them in.
(mellow electronic music)
You guys know the one thing that I really missed
when The Reptarium wasn't open
was getting people over their fears.
You came in and you said
there's no way you're gonna hold a snake,
and you're holding a snake.
- Yeah. - How do you feel?
- It's not as scary as I thought it would be.
I've been scared of snakes my whole life.
- [Brian] Oh my God, you did so good.
You should be so proud of yourself.
- Oh, I am.
- I'm very proud of her. - I'm amazing, I know.
- Oh my God, that's ...
I tell you, I missed this so much.
It's made my night.
You literally-- - Come check it out!
- [Brian] I know, you guys made my night.
Thank you so much.
Oh look at this snake!
How you doing bud?
- Good. - How you doing?
- You doing all right? - You struggling over there?
- I tell you, this has just been an amazing night.
I know you can't see my smile.
Rita here, how have you been doing?
- Doing great, thank you.
- It's awesome.
It's been such a great night.
Man, I tell you what, again,
I'm gonna show you my smile real quick
'cause I am smiling from ear to ear.
(mellow music)
And there it is.
We just closed up.
Really amazing night.
Had some ups and downs, I'm not gonna lie to you,
but for the most part this was a good day.
It was a good day.
My best day I've had in a couple months.
Let's hope that we can build on it
and tomorrow's a good day too.
It was just amazing seeing so many people,
and this was the right feel.
It felt really, really good.
I hope that you guys enjoyed this video.
If you did enjoy this video, by the way,
you can go right here.
You can watch a whole playlist of baby snakes
because I know baby snakes are on the way.
Could you also do me a favor
and right up here you can subscribe
to my podcast channel called Checking In.
On this side you can subscribe to this vlog channel.
Please turn the post notifications on.
Have an absolutely wonderful day.
Remember, be kind to someone,
and I promise I'll see you tomorrow.