- Hey, good morning, everybody.
Welcome to the vlog. I hope to start your day
as amazing as always.
Gemma is a little bit of a quandary for me,
because let me take you back on a little story
about my good girl, Gemma here.
Of course, we bought her about four months ago,
super tame, ghost reticulated Python, absolutely incredible.
And then she wouldn't eat and I was worried
about why isn't she eating? She was huge.
When we got her, she took a big poop.
So I knew she was eating. I tried rabbits.
I tried pigs. I tried grass, nothing, nothing, nothing.
I thought, well, maybe she just needs
to calm down a little bit and get used
of her new environment. Right?
And so no big deal. Then about two months ago,
walk by the cage. And I noticed
she had some swelling in her midsection, that
typically, it's like gearing up
for an ovulation. Immediately I decided
let's go ahead and throw night fury in my Motley
golden child retake. That would be an amazing pairing.
And sure enough, he bred her right away.
I mean, it was right on it, breeding her.
Then I thought we're in business.
She's growing follicles. She's gonna have an ovulation.
She's gonna have the eggs.
We're gonna have all these amazing babies.
Then she went into shed, which blew me away
because I'm like, what the heck
is going on with this shed thing?
Because obviously the shed would either be
pre-ovulation shed. And I know,
I'm trying not to confuse you guys,
but basically a shed like that is gonna be
a pre-ovulation shed or pre-lay shed.
So sure enough, we took out the ultrasound
and we ultrasounded her and we saw
some giant follicles right in her midsection.
As a matter of fact, right about that time,
she almost attacked me because she changed
from being this beautiful, sweet animal
to having the hormones going crazy,
jumping out at me, almost biting me.
And then I was like, what is going on with my girl, Gemma?
And I thought, all right,
we're on the right path, right?
She shed out, put night fury in, again,
didn't want to breed her, put him in again.
Didn't want to breed her.
That tells me that maybe she was gravid and he no longer
had the hormones for follicle growth.
And that maybe she was already gravid,
which meant I might have missed her. Right.
And then she was looking pretty big and I'm thinking,
all right, she's gonna either lay good eggs,
or she's gonna lay bad eggs, not a hundred percent sure.
Then the last couple of days,
I've been walking by her cage
and she looks a little bit thinner. Right?
She doesn't look as big. So I have to
take Gem out, go get the ultrasound.
And what we wanna do is find out,
is there any follicles in that midsection there
or are the eggs after they drop out of the ovaries
and into the oviduct, they actually become
fertilized or shelled eggs, either fertile or infertile.
Are they all the way down to her tail
or what's going on? Or did she reabsorb
and she's got nothing happening?
I don't know what's going on.
So let's go ahead and get my girl out of here, get her over,
do some ultrasounding with her
and figure out what the heck is going on.
Because even after 30 something years
of breeding snakes I'm actually confused
and don't know what's happening
with my giant snake, Gemma.
And you could see, she's kind of
went back to being like a super tame snake.
You know, she was kind of crazy.
And then all of a sudden, she just kind of calmed down.
Now she does have a little bit of swelling.
There's no doubt about it,
but she just doesn't look as fat
as I would have expected a big gravid
reticulated Python to look.
Now she could still be a three, four weeks away
from laying eggs, which means that she could
still be growing, right? The eggs could be growing
inside of her, but I just don't know what's going on.
I think the only way I can tell is to get her out and
ultrasound her and find out where those eggs are.
Now, the ultrasound, I'm not gonna be able
to tell if they're fertile or not fertile,
but I'll at least be able to tell if the eggs are dropped
out of the ovaries or if she's reabsorbed her eggs.
She's a big girl, but she is so docile.
I mean, what a great sight.
So I'm gonna just myself slowly bring her over.
I gotta be careful, I don't wanna
drag her around the ground too much and hurt her,
so I gotta be really gentle with her. Right?
I'm already tired out. No gym time for me today.
By the way, I did go to the gym yesterday
and did legs of all things. Bad day to do that, right.
And I tell you what, when you're saying,
Brian, you're out of shape. Number one, yeah,
I am kind of out of shape, but number two,
you come and try to do this.
I'm telling you it's not as easy as you think.
Every person that comes in that handles a big snake
with me goes, now I know why you're out of breath,
after 30 seconds. These guys are giant.
We've got Gemma on the floor here.
Gonna get the ultrasound ready.
Now we'll go ahead and we'll scan her up
and figure out what's going on.
Basically again, right here is where
we're going to see the initial follicles.
I've got to just go ahead and get her over here.
And we just wanna see, are they still there?
Definitely seeing some follicles, need some
a little more goo on this because she's such a big girl.
Well, we're definitely seeing some follicles there.
It's a little harder to do by myself
trying to wrangle her, but now I'm gonna see
if I have, yup, you can see there's big eggs,
but you know what? These are a lot of
what I normally would say look phantom.
But it could just be that they've dropped down.
So, so far down there, we're seeing eggs
and sure enough, we're seeing eggs
all the way down here. So essentially
what's happening is we're seeing that eggs
have dropped from her ovaries into the oviduct.
That's basically when they would call it sufficial
ovulation where they're actually down here.
Now those eggs are basically calcified
and they are what they are. They're either
fertilized or they're not fertilized, right?
So now at least we know that she's
actually gravid. Although, like I said,
some of those eggs look a little phantomed out.
What I mean by that is when they phantom out,
that's when they basically didn't
get fertilized and the female is starting
to reabsorb those eggs. I wish I'd see
really crisp lines on them.
That whiter look in the ultrasound is,
can be either phantom or can still be early stage
they're kind of developing through, right?
So she could still be laying a clutch of eggs.
We definitely have something going on. Now,
what I can do is I can offer her food
this coming up week and if she eats,
then I know for sure she is definitely gravid.
And I think she's getting away on us here.
Where's she going? Oh, you got the fish pop.
Little girl. Look at how giant
that snake is right there. I mean,
that is a big snake and an absolutely
beautiful snake. So I guess I'm kinda
answering the questions, right?
We know she's gravid. She might be
re-absorbing her eggs, and if she eats,
then the eggs will just kind of disappear,
which is kind of a weird thing. But you know,
we used to call it reabsorption,
but you know, then there's no like technical way,
an animal could reabsorb actual mass
in the oviduct because it's not in the stomach,
but yet we see it happening a lot.
Right? I've seen it at least once or twice a year.
We'll have a gravid ball Python,
that just the eggs just kind of go away.
They reabsorb. That could be happening.
Now the fact that she's been bred
a couple of times by night fury
would make me think she wouldn't reabsorbed
because usually reabsorption happens from females
that haven't gotten any fertile sperm in
and we've seen that with night fury.
So I don't know. I mean still a little bit unsure,
but now I think we're just gonna
have to wait for eggs and they're either
gonna be fertile or they're gonna be infertile.
But the one thing I am very happy about
is that my girl Gemma went back to being
an absolutely beautiful animal.
And she's not that much. Or she was
just that one day, one day
I opened up her cage and she just was a different
animal. I mean completely different.
I mean, as soon as I touch her, she goes whoaa
She just came up on me. You could see
now she's back to her old self,
which is interesting, right?
Because if she is gravid, you wouldn't think,
you know that she would go back to being super tame.
Maybe she'd be protective as a mama
or something like that, but no, she's herself.
Like I love her and I wish we could pull her out because
that was the whole reason for getting her right.
Not to breed her, but to actually pull her out
and let kids have this interaction with her.
Now, the downside is, that if she's gravid,
which she appears to be, I can't really pull her out
because having over handling is actually bad.
We don't want her to get egg bound or
have any kind of issues with pregnancy, right?
So unfortunately for the next month or so
until she deposits whatever she's gonna
deposit good eggs, bad eggs,
or reabsorb the eggs, whatever she's gonna do,
she's gonna have to be kind of
sequestered back home unfortunately.
But we will try to feed her next week.
And if she does feed, then we know
that reabsorption is actually happening.
Which is doubtful. I highly doubt
that's gonna happen. So yeah. So there it is.
We got our answering our questions
and we're learning right along with one another.
I hope the reptile army is doing well today.
As a matter of fact, we have a new drop,
which is actually an old drop,
actually what we call a classic drop.
So we actually have it right now.
You can go over to reptilearmy.com
and get some of the classic design
that you guys wanted from before that maybe
we didn't have any more. So that just dropped.
So go check that out at reptilearmy.com
and keep in mind about a week, week and a half,
from now, we got the Christmas drop coming.
So if you want to wear some cool reptile army Christmas
holiday gear, we've got to come in there.
Some bangers in there,
make sure to check out reptilearmy.com
And from one giant snake to another giant snake,
Hi Ivy, what are you doing, girl?
You are so amazing. And I know
she wants to come out and say,
hi dad, what are you doing?
She just wants to always come out
and say hi to me. She's such an amazing snake.
And you guys know, I love my anacondas. I mean,
certainly one of my favorite snakes that
I've ever dealt with in my entire life.
I mean, again, you just don't see a snake
that acts like a puppy dog or something
and comes out and says hi to you
and wants to see around you.
But I will say one thing that they are messy snakes.
If you're ever deciding to get an Anaconda,
like my girl, Ivy or Ariana or Jazz,
they're amazing. And the experience
you can have with them, like this girl here,
and I'm about to go in the cage,
you'll see, she'll be like, hey dad, what are you doing?
It's amazing. But man, are they dirty.
When we fit all three of our Giant Anacondas
at the same time, we have now had to clean
during closure at least once a day,
every day for the last five or six days,
sometimes twice a day. And sure enough,
we got some more poop in it. I just
cleaned them out last night. And now
here we go again, more poop.
So I got to go in there and get the Pondovac
and clean it out again. And that's just part
of keeping Anacondas. Amazing snakes. Absolutely
one of the best snakes ever, ever I've worked with,
but boy, oh boy, do they put you through work
so think about that. If you ever decide
you want to get an Anaconda.
And that's what it takes to take care of anacondas.
Daily work. I mean, that's just the way it is,
but I love them. And fortunately
we have the equipment and the enclosure and
everything else that makes our job
a little bit more simple, but there's still
a lot of maintenance involved to keep this
thing looking absolutely incredible.
Again, great animals. I'm not trying
to discourage anybody from getting one,
but I'm telling you, they are a lot of work.
They are messy. So now let's just go ahead
and let this water fill up and it
should look beautiful here within the next hour.
Kinda cool to catch this in the act
and that's of course Ben and Jerry
starting to shed, and you can see basically why
they shed a little bit wonky, right?
It's because one head is off, of course.
Ben heads is off right now, but Jerry's isn't.
Well, the problem is, is there's a Y there, right?
With the normal snake, it's like a tube, right?
That they can just kind of roll right out.
With this, that Y restricts the ability
for it to go. So they have to break the skin
in that Y for Jerry to actually
shed his head off and then the
rest of the body can come right out.
But it's definitely the first time I've seen it
to where Ben's head is out and Jerry's head
is still in. Obviously they'll both shed today.
It's gonna be interesting to kind of
keep the progress through the day,
to see how they are go. I just thought
it was an interesting thing to actually be
able to see and share with you guys
that one of the snake heads is actually
out the shed, and one of the snake heads
is still in the shed. Just really wild animal.
Not every animal can come out here
at The Reptarium. Obviously there's some animals
that are just a little bit tricky
and stuff like that, but there are the majority
of the animals do come out and there are
a handful of things that I feel are
really under appreciated and hardly ever
taken out. And Gene here, the woma python
happens to be one of them. It's just an amazingly
cool animal from Australia. And you honestly
hardly ever see it come out. No one hardly ever
wants it to come out, just because maybe
they don't think it can or whatever the
case is. So I'm gonna give you a list of things,
if you ever come to The Reptarium,
you've got to experience that
don't get experienced too often.
And Gene is definitely the first one.
We have a whole bunch of frogs here
at The Reptarium as well, that don't really
hardly ever come out for some reason.
And a lot of them can, you know,
there are certain frogs that obviously
you don't take out. You know, like I say,
dart frogs obviously, one of them.
Other frogs that are kind of delicate,
but we don't really keep the ones
that you can't take out. We keep the ones
that you actually could take out.
Now you still have to keep it within reason.
You know, there are some animals here where
we couldn't take them out all the time
because they would get overstressed and stuff
like that. But the Vietnamese mossy frogs
are so cool. And I can't remember the last time
anyone asked to see one of these guys.
I mean, take a look at that animal.
It is absolutely ridiculous. Tons of people
actually take out the leachie geckos,
which I don't blame them because
they're obviously the giant geckos,
the largest gecko on the planet.
But this comes from the same area
and it's actually a chahoua gecko.
It looks a lot different, more mossy
and more interesting color. And they're
absolutely incredible to take out. You know,
for a smaller kid or something like that,
it'd be cool to hold something like this
rather than reptile that's so large, right?
So chahoua geckos don't get nearly the love
they should because they are absolutely ridiculous.
This is just a cool snake. This is a
red Dominican mountain boa. It's called
Mr. Nubbins. And again, it's an awesome snake,
you know. it may look a little intimidating
and maybe that's why people are like,
I don't know if I want to take that out.
Maybe it bites, but we wouldn't take anything out
that's gonna bite ya. There's no doubt about that.
And Mr. Nubbins is an absolute gentleman
and just an unusual animal that you don't
see around hardly ever. And to be able
to get an experience to hold them,
it's something that everyone should
take advantage of when they come to The Reptarium.
I wouldn't say Oz the Mandarin rattlesnake
never comes out because every night
we take it out a couple times,
but you got to remember, we have
five hours when we're opening.
So five different groups of people are
coming through. And I'll be honest with you,
if I was coming to a reptile zoo
and had an opportunity to hold something
as unusual as a Mandarin rattlesnake that you
just don't see around too often,
I would definitely take advantage of that.
So this guy should come out probably
five times a night to be totally honest with you,
but I would say maybe once or twice a night
someone actually asks to see him.
It's just a cool, cool snake.
Peaches is a hypo Honduran milk snake
and is absolutely incredible. This actually
was donated to us about a year and a half ago
by a guy that did educational shows
and he actually used Peaches all the time.
So it came here already super used to being handled.
So it's absolutely placid as can be
and super, super friendly. And it's weird
that it doesn't come out more often,
to be honest with you. Look at the color on it,
look how cool it is. And that's just
an awesome looking snake. And again,
it does come out occasionally,
but not nearly as often as I'd like
to see people do it, so. These are just
a handful of animals that I think should come
out all the time. If you ever make it
to The Reptarium, don't lose the opportunity
to have time with these animals
because they are absolutely awesome.
Hope you guys enjoyed today's video.
If you did do me a favor right over here
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some more videos if you'd like to watch those.
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post notifications on. Have an absolutely
wonderful day reptile army. Remember,
be kind to somebody. And I promise,
I'll see you in the next one.