- Hey, good morning, everybody,
and welcome to the vlog.
This happens to be a snowball.
You guys may not know this, but in Michigan,
we got a pretty heavy snowstorm the other day,
and I just thought to myself,
what do you think about snowballs and reptiles, right?
Kind of a little bit of a different mix,
but I have an idea.
What do you say we push our problems aside
and see if this idea works out at all.
You know, we're always trying to think of
different ways to enrich our animals, right?
Whether it's ball training, taking them out,
doing different types of stuff like that.
So Elvis is a very curious animal.
So because it snowed, why don't we go ahead
and see if we bring a snowball in, see what he does.
I have no idea.
He may be very interested in it.
He may play with it.
He may just ignore it.
I have no idea.
I can assure you one thing.
He's never seen snow before,
and we're not going to take him outside to see the snow,
so we have to bring the snow inside and see what happens.
(relaxed, upbeat music)
What's that, Elvis?
What is that? (laughs)
Doesn't seem to have any interest at all.
He's like, "What is that?"
What is it? (laughs)
He's kind of sniffing at it,
not knowing what it is.
You know, he's obviously never seen ice before,
certainly not a snowball.
Have no idea.
He's just kinda curious.
He's coming back to it with his tongue,
but I don't know that he's gonna do anything with it.
(man imitating whooshing)
What is it?
And the whole idea really is
to get their mind thinking, right?
No matter what happens,
even if he doesn't do anything with it,
it's something that was just interesting
for him to think about and to say,
"I've never seen anything like this before."
Well, you know, Elvis seemed to have
a little bit of interest.
Again, getting that mind working is what's important,
but all in all he kind of was like,
"Yeah, I sniffed it a bunch.
"Don't know what it is.
"Don't really care."
And now he's going back home, 'cause he's a lazy monkey.
We'll see you later Elvis.
But you know what?
I was thinking maybe Matilda would have some interest.
I don't know.
I'm just trying to think of different things
to get these animals excited about stuff.
So let's see if Matilda cares about a snowball.
She loves to drink water out of a white bucket,
so I'm wondering if the white snowball
will kinda entice her to see what it is.
(upbeat music)
Oh, she's taking a bite!
(laughs) Oh, she didn't like it!
She didn't like it at all.
I don't think she liked it.
Oh my gosh, she took a bite and she was like,
"Spit that out immediately!"
So I'll give her some (laughs) lettuce just as a treat,
and we'll see if she wants any...
That was hilarious!
She took one bite and immediately just spit it right out.
Like, "That was disgusting!" (laughs)
But maybe we'll see if she warms up to it at all.
Again, you know, she is a reptile,
so she probably doesn't like cold things,
but I did think it was kinda interesting to see.
D'you wanna try another bite, bud?
No?
(lettuce crunching)
Okay, so I guess feeding reptiles snow
is probably not gonna be a good thing.
I didn't think that they would actually eat it
but I did think it was going to be
an interesting enrichment thing.
'Cause I've seen Gatorland
throw big hunks of ice in with gators
and them crunch on them,
so I thought it might be interesting,
but all in all it didn't work out
quite as well as I thought,
but still something fun to do,
and again, got 'em thinking a little bit.
Like, "What the heck is this snowball?"
As you guys know our colubrid snakes
are actually in brumation,
and of course this is where they used to get bred.
They're not gonna be bred here.
They're gonna be kept downstairs and bred over there.
Not really sure what I'm doing with these racks
to be honest with you.
Really, my thoughts would be these racks would go away
so that we could expand to 3.0, right?
But that's a whole 'nother story.
What I wanted to tell you is that
although we brumate our snakes
for two and a half to three months,
you can actually go shorter if you want to.
So these animals here...
Ow, god, ow!
(man whooping) Doggie, this thing is upset!
Oh my gosh, that hurt!
This, of course, is a Scaleless Texas Rat
that is an absolute ripper,
and he's obviously crazy mean too! (laughing)
But hey, it's just defensive. It's okay.
The fact is, is that when we have animals
that are just slightly not ready to breed,
and gosh, my fingers are hurting!
Those were some pretty good bites.
What we'll do is we'll actually keep them
up until the very end of brumation.
Take, for instance, this rhino rat snake right here.
This is a female,
and she was definitely way too small
when we put stuff into brumation.
Now she's right on that side
where she could probably lay three, four,
maybe even five eggs.
So what we'll do is we'll keep those animals up
until maybe there's three or four weeks left in brumation.
Then we put them down for a very short brumation
and you can actually still breed 'em.
So if for some reason you have, say,
some two-year-old colubrid snakes, and you're like,
"They're not just quite big enough when it's December
"when I'm going to go ahead
"and brumate the rest of my animals."
You can keep 'em up until January, even early February,
and then just clean 'em out for, say, two or three weeks.
So you don't feed 'em,
so they don't have any food in 'em,
and then put them down for, say, two weeks.
Maybe even three weeks.
Like this Taiwan beauty snake here
that is certainly large enough to breed now,
but again, was not large enough to breed
when we started to brumate.
So that's one of the tricks that we do sometimes.
You almost trick 'em into that dormancy
for a short period of time.
The shortest period of time I've ever brumated a snake
and had successful production was actually five days.
That's right.
I brumated 'em for five days, (laughs)
brought them up, they bred and they had eggs.
Now, of course, you can produce colubrids
without brumation whatsoever,
but it does help the fertility,
helps everything cycle and something like that.
So we have some pretty cool snakes
that just literally are going to go into brumation
for maybe two or three weeks here next week.
Every now and then, I wanna update you
on one of Lucy's babies.
That's right. (laughing) Aren't they getting big?
Well, actually I just have the one.
My friend has another one, so we have two of 'em,
but I kept one to raise up, and she is absolutely wonderful.
Again, this is a citron tiger.
This makes it really beautiful.
Again, the super citrons are the titaniums,
which, of course, Titan, the male, was,
and it's just unbelievably beautiful.
Getting some size on it now,
and has a really beautiful disposition.
Again, didn't inherit Mom's disposition.
That's, for sure, (laughs) it definitely is nice.
And again, remember, I talked about the fact that
every generation, F2, F3, F4 generation,
typically become a little bit more domesticated.
Hence the reason why Lucy's baby
isn't quite as crazy as Lucy is.
Nevertheless, she is looking beautiful
and definitely will make it to the Reptarium
in the 3.0 expansion.
This is an animal I want to get over to the Reptarium.
You remember we had Ace,
the D'alberts python that was over at the Reptarium.
Now it's over here at BHP,
just waiting for the next expansion,
but this is actually a black D'alberts python.
So again, there's the golden ones
and then there's the black ones.
These guys get a little bit bigger,
and again, they don't have that gold to 'em.
Really a cool animal,
and typically these are a little bit more mellow
than the normal gold D'alberts pythons.
But this guy is beautiful and Ace is beautiful,
so we have two cool ones
that will definitely go on display
when we do our next expansion,
'cause I miss him over there.
This one actually has never been over there before
and people are going to absolutely love it.
Guys, I'm super excited about this.
Of course, my girl Ivy,
who was a little bit under the weather,
a little bit bubbly,
a little bit mouth open and stuff like that
here a couple of weeks ago.
Like I mentioned, we raised the temperature.
Well, she shed out, and here she comes.
Hey, baby girl! What are you doing?
You doing okay, baby? Hi, baby.
What you doing? And look at her!
She looks perfect.
She looks absolutely wonderful.
Her mouth is closed, no bubbles, anything like that.
So I'm just gonna take a little bit closer look down there.
Hey, baby girl. How you doing, sweetheart?
Ah, look at that perfect tongue response.
Perfect mouth closed, eyes bright as could be.
This is so cool.
Again, she has a pretty nice shed.
Looks like there's a little tear in it,
but for the most part, it looks pretty good here.
Look! Look, it got a little...
Springing a little leak over there.
(laughs) That is so funny.
Oh my god.
It's like a little snake-shed water balloon over here.
So anyways, I'm going to go ahead
and pull this shed out over here.
Of course, Ares is over here.
And again, looks like an almost perfect shed,
which is great, but that is great news
that my girl Ivy here has shed out, looks beautiful.
I'm gonna feed her in the next couple days,
and if she eats, which I know she will,
'cause she was looking
like she wanted to eat me for a second there,
I know she's gonna be good.
So I know you guys were worried.
I was unbelievably worried,
but I'm happy to say Ivy looks like she's good to go.
Just taking a look through
some of the scaleless corn snakes.
This, of course, is an anerythristic scaleless corn snake.
I would say this is probably my favorite mutation
when it comes to corn snakes and scaleless, that's for sure.
It's just that silver
with the black outlining on the saddles.
I mean, just looks so unbelievable.
Literally doesn't even look like a real snake.
Looks completely fake.
And of course the scaleless and the anery are recessive,
So this is a double recessive.
We produce ghosts.
We've even got four bang recessive mutations in corn snakes,
which is very difficult.
There are very few animals
that actually have four recessive mutations in it,
just because it's so hard to combine those things.
And then this one is crazy cool.
This is actually a tessera scaleless corn snake.
This turned out really cool
'cause it almost turned out really patternless-looking.
So some of these scaleless corn snakes
are absolutely ridiculous,
and every now and then I just come through
and just open up a bunch of drawers
just to kinda gawk at them,
because they certainly are rippers.
Then take a look at
this Abbotts Okeetee scaleless corn snake.
I've said this, when we were hatching, remember?
I kept on saying,
"I'm so excited to hatch Abbotts Okeetee!"
And as babies they were okay looking,
and just this little bit of size on 'em,
look at how they've changed!
I mean, that black just starts really bordering
all of those saddles
and just becomes absolutely contrast like you can't believe.
like I said, Abbotts Okeetee corns are amazing,
and then you put them into scaleless, and oh my goodness.
These things are so, so nice.
I know I keep saying this, but so vital,
this next week and a half to two weeks of breeding.
We have to get things really bred this week.
The majority of females are doing good.
Bred a bunch.
But there are a handful of things
we have to really focus in on
to make sure that this week or next week
we get some copulations, because if we don't,
we could really risk the chance
of having those females starting to go backwards
with their follicle growth.
So the copulation
actually kind of spurs on the follicle growth.
So put my thinking cap on
and let's go get some male ball pythons in with females.
(relaxed, upbeat music)
So I'm really expecting really good copulation
from these introductions today
because of a couple things.
One thing you really notice
is that when I get into that really critical stage
that I've been talking about, a lot of times,
it's when the males go through their first shed
coming into the breeding season, right?
So they've been breeding for about four to six weeks.
They shed, and it seems like right after they shed,
that's when things really start happening quickly.
And then you also look at the females.
A lot of females would start to shed around this time.
That's kind of increasing that cycle, right?
So the fact that a lot of my males just literally shed
within the last seven or 10 days,
the fact that the females are starting to shed,
and the fact that weather patterns
are looking pretty promising in the next couple days,
I'm expecting that the next two, three days of breeding
is gonna be amazing.
And I have the right males in with the right females,
so if this goes well,
this is kind of building on the blocks of success
for the breeding season.
So I think that I did good today.
I think I was really happy with the decisions.
Now let's hope the males do their job.
Got a couple things.
You guys are always sending me all kinds of cool stuff,
so I appreciate you so much.
This one is called fragile,
and so I'm gonna try not to break it,
if you know what I mean.
I'm not usually not that good at this.
It actually comes from C Murphy from Missouri.
So let's see what we got here.
Something that is fragilly.
And how do you open these boxes?
Oh, here we go.
All right. Oh my gosh.
There's all kinds of little stuff in here.
So I'm going to read really quick. Just say...
And again, I appreciate when you guys send stuff.
PO box is always in the description.
"Thank you for all of the content you put out.
"Especially now in this crazy world,
"I look forward to the vlog every day.
"I can't wait for the world to calm down
"and get a chance to come visit the Reptarium."
I really hope that you will.
"It will be awesome.
"Just thought I'd send another pair of clippers
"for when you inevitably lose another pair. (laughs)
"Let's make 2021 awesome. Cody."
Thank you so much.
So I'm assuming there's some clippers,
but I don't know what else is in here, so let's see.
There's a whole bunch of stuff.
All right, so I got...
Oh my god, these are dope!
My gosh. Reptarium glasses!
That is dope. My gosh.
Are these all the same? That is so cool.
So there's a handful of these ones.
I guess these are kind of pseudo wine glasses in a way,
and Laurie will love these for sure.
I love the design on 'em, you know what I mean?
Obviously it's got the etched Reptarium,
which is super cool, and I love these.
So thank you so much. That is so cool.
And then we have...
And we have, "Pull both sides down
"from where the key ring is."
Pull both sides down from where the key ring is.
(man grunting)
I don't understand.
Oh, so you pull down like that and it goes like this.
And what are these? - Clippers.
- Clippers. How do they work?
Oh, like here. I see.
Oh, this is cool, man!
That's a really cool thing.
Well, thank you, that's beautiful. Love it.
Now you just gotta figure out how to shut 'em.
(cameraman laughing) Love it. Thank you so much.
And then just some more glasses.
My gosh, I've got a whole thing.
Oh, these are more wine glasses
and they cut the Reptarium on it.
Oh my gosh. These are so cool!
So we've got wine glasses,
and then we've got these, kinda more like mason jars.
- It looks like a beer- - Yeah, maybe.
- Beer can. - Maybe that's what it is!
'Cause isn't a flight of beer,
you want that little edge so that you get the foam?
- Get the head, right? - Yeah, you get the...
Oh, so got the beer and we got the wine.
Thank you so much, Cody.
These are awesome.
Well, I guess the snowball thing didn't work out too well
but that's okay because we still had a really fun day
and it was interesting, at least,
to see Elvis being very curious about it,
and then Matilda actually tasting it
and did not like it at all. (laughing)
So again, just always thinking of things.
If you guys have any ideas in the comments
how we can enrich these animals more
by somehow mentally stimulating them, let me know.
I would love to know.
I just want these things to be
as happy as possibly they can be.
If you enjoyed this video, can you do me a favor?
Right over here, this is a playlist.
If you could hit one, two videos, something like that,
it would help my channel a lot.
I appreciate it.
Up here, you can actually subscribe to my podcast channel.
Over here, we are 50,000 subscribers away
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turn your post notifications on.
Have an absolutely wonderful day.
Remember, be kind to someone,
and I promise I'll see you tomorrow.