- Hey, good morning, everybody
and welcome to the vlog.
I hope the start of your day is incredible.
And you guys know that I'm not just saying that
or whatever you happen to be watching.
We have a lot going on today.
We're gonna be doing some cage stuff,
gonna work on ball pythons.
But we're gonna get the day started with something cool.
Believe it or not Jay yesterday found that
Drogo loves getting combed.
He actually enjoys it.
So, what do you say we get Drogo out,
give him a little brushing.
I mean, that's a great way to start the day, right?
Yeah.
Push our problem side, let's go get Drogo.
Okay, we've got my little guy Drogo out
and like I said, Jay, you said yesterday, he was just laying
on the bed and you were like--
- Yeah just like face down.
I was just brushing him.
- And he seemed to love it, right?
So, you know, we're always trying to find things
that will enrich his life as well, right?
So we wanna make sure he's happy too.
So we're just gonna go ahead
and see if he likes a little brushing when he's out.
So go ahead and...
There you go.
And (mumbles) look at him.
He seems to love it, he immediately kind of goes back
and...
(host laughs)
That's so funny.
It is so crazy to have a sloth.
There's no doubt about it.
It is unbelievable.
And by the way, there's some news coming
hopefully pretty soon about being able to display
this little dude.
Again, I don't wanna get ahead of myself
but if everything goes well, it won't be too long
before people can come to the Rep Terrarium
and actually see this guy
just like we have going on right now.
He is absolutely wonderful.
And again, he, Drogo what'd you doing buddy?
And of course you could see he loves getting brushed.
I mean, and it's really, probably pretty good for him too,
you know, just to keep that hair going.
We're gonna try to give him a bath here pretty soon.
Again, we have a better idea of the bath this time.
But we're thinking we're gonna make a little apparatus
so that he can actually hang on it
and we can actually just bathe him
with him hanging on that apparatus.
So we have a pretty good idea.
So that'll happen in the next week or so
'cause he's getting a little bit stinky right now.
Not too bad, but just a little bit.
But I think that Drogo is definitely loving
a little bit of a brushing.
What an absolute ripper this guy is.
I mean, he is so unbelievable adorable.
Again in my life I never thought I would actually
own a sloth.
Then again, I just think it's absolutely amazing
to have this little dude.
I mean, he is so cute.
So now he's got his little grooming for the day.
It's a good way to start the day off, right?
It's groom your sloth.
I mean, good job, Jay.
And again, Jay works with Drogo every single day
keeping him so cool and awesome and stuff like that.
So we love him.
What do you say we go put Drogo back.
He'll take a little nap for the afternoon
and then he'll be ready to wake up tonight.
Right Drogo?
Good Drogo, come on buddy, let's go.
(mumbles)
And it is crazy how agile these things are.
I mean, within a second he's just like
totally pulling himself up.
(host chuckles)
I can honestly say guys that sloths are much more bizarre
than I ever expected them to be, that's for sure.
I mean, what are you doing?
(mumbles) silly monkey.
Are you upset now?
- [Man] I think he wants more brushes.
- [Host] Do you want more brushes?
- [Jay] I think he does actually.
He's like,
"Why did that have to stop?"
- [Host] We'll give him a little brush inside here.
And this is where he probably feels
a little more comfortable too
to be totally honest with you.
You know, hanging out to me is probably not a branch, right?
You know, he's doing the best he can
but I think right here is where he's doing the best.
And again, it's just so bizarre.
These things are the most unusual.
And before we owned a sloth,
I had seen a lot of sloths, interacted with a lot of sloths.
But I'm telling you what, these animals are bizarre.
I mean, they are so cool,
but look at how unbelievably insanely cool that thing is.
(host laughs)
Drogo so much.
And I cannot wait until people can actually get
and interact with him.
I mean, it's gonna be absolutely incredible.
I told you guys the other day
that the green tree pythons were locked up.
Well guess what guys, right now their tails are locked.
You can see it's actually a complete lock right now.
Of course, Pickles is on the bottom,
Gherkin is up on top.
That is the second confirmed lock.
Of course they could have bread oftentimes
when we weren't watching, but this is the second morning
that I've come in and actually seen them locked up.
I mean, that is absolutely incredible.
Again, hopefully she'll start to produce follicles.
She ate really good the other day.
And then hopefully here in the next year
I would say month and a half, two months she'll ovulate.
Could you imagine getting a clutch from Pickles?
I mean, I've had Pickles for so long.
Never even thought about breeding her until this year.
The male's only been in for really a short period of time
and already they're breeding.
I mean, that would be so amazing.
I produced green tree pythons when I was like 19
or 20 years old and I did it for a handful of seasons
and then I haven't since.
So it's been a lot of years
since I even tried to breed green tree pythons.
(mumbles) these guys would definitely be one
of the highlights of the year for me.
I cannot believe that they're hooked up.
That is absolutely incredible.
(mumbles) is on the run again, just kind of chilling out.
I love this tortoise.
I mean, she is so amazing.
And like I said, I didn't put a lock
on the door because to be honest with you
she only comes out in the daytime.
So she doesn't come out at night.
She's always sleeping at night.
So she doesn't dis, you know
she's not destroying the place or anything like that.
And I think it's kind of cool
that she can just kind of push her way out
kind of walk around and enjoy the zoo.
She deserves exercise.
She's a big tortoise and she likes to cruise around
and she...
She's so curious you know, I love it.
So every day we come in, usually, you know,
about noon or something like that,
she'll just kind of push her way out.
She'll spend maybe an hour or two walking around
the entire zoo.
Sometimes we'll give her some treats and stuff like that.
And then ultimately she goes right back in on her own.
We never have to put her back or anything like that.
So it's actually pretty cool.
Here she comes.
Here you go baby.
Don't step on my feet.
There you go baby.
Such a cool tortoise.
I'd mentioned last week that we're actually starting
to redo a bunch of the enclosures.
Just making them look better, going back
and kind of getting things going and stuff like that.
So Bella's cage is up now and I'll be honest with you.
She's a, she freaks out when you do even the smallest amount
of change.
So Jessica is gonna go in there and try not
to bother Bella.
Hopefully she's looking, she's already eyeballing me.
"Like, what are you thinking dad?
"I don't know what you're thinking."
But we're gonna try to spruce up this cage
and hopefully Bella will love it.
(upbeat music)
And of course my girl's Bella cage looks absolutely amazing.
Jessica did a really good job
and it doesn't seem like Bella stressed out
at all about it, which is really good.
She's up here, she's getting pet.
She seems to be really calm.
It's cool.
I can't wait to see how she kind of interacts
with it and how she looks.
I mean, when she's up there where she normally
does on her basking spot.
Just to have that more color pop is gonna
make her look absolutely wonderful.
And again, I'm just really happy
that she isn't stressed out about it.
Cause like I said, sometimes even just little things
like moving her water dish around will freak her out
like you can't believe.
So, it's really good that she seems to be settled in,
her cage looks great.
And again, those little bit of pops of color
and those just little things make the whole place
just look better and better.
Like I said, we're slowly going around
and doing it to the entire zoo.
I can't wait to see how this place looks
in the next six weeks or so when we're done
kind of sprucing everything up.
And I know my girl Bella is happy, right girl?
I love you baby girl.
I always talk about the cycles of breeding
when it comes to snakes, right?
And right now we're in that crucial stage I told you about
but we actually have a handful of males
that just haven't bred.
Now, some of those males actually bred last year
for whatever reason just haven't bred.
And it's been about six or seven weeks now.
It's pretty important to make sure that males
are breeding females at this time.
You can see like some animals are breeding really well.
Every single one has breeding.
And then we get into other lines here where
an entire group has not been bred.
Like this Banana Fire Pin.
Bred last year, just hasn't bred one time this year.
So now we're at that stage where we have
to start making decisions that I prefer not to make.
I want that male to breed those females
but I need a male to breed (mumbles).
So what we're gonna do is we're gonna go through,
we probably have four or five males
that just haven't bred yet this year.
We're gonna go ahead and hit that backup male.
The one that is the secondary male
that we didn't want to necessarily
be the one that we're breeding
but we have no choice because we'd rather get breeding
than have those females not produce.
Because if they don't get copulation here
within the next probably two or three weeks
there's a chance they may not grow follicles
and they may not produce this year.
So that's my job for today
is to kinda decipher which males I wanna put in which
which females starting this next breeding cycle.
(upbeat music)
So again, it's just about kind of matching up males
that make sense with the males that aren't breeding.
This actual Super Stripe Spider right here
just has done nothing.
Last year he bred a few animals,
this year he's done nothing.
So I definitely wanna get it into something
with yellow belly because of course that is a spider,
it's a specter and it's a yellow belly.
So a lot of the animals that I'm breeding it to
are Specters and Yellow Bellies
so I can produce some super striped stuff.
So I'm gonna go ahead and replace it with this animal here
which is a Dragon Fly Yellow Belly, which is a pastel,
it's a fire, it's a pinstripe and it's a yellow belly.
So it actually has more genes than the Spider Super Stripe.
So I think it'll be a good kind of replacement.
We'll see if this guy starts breeding.
And then later in the season we may throw
the Spider Super Strike back in a couple of times too.
That's where we might get some dual father clutches.
But right now this male will replace that male
for the next couple of weeks.
(upbeat music)
And like I'd mentioned earlier,
this actual Banana Fire Pin right here
just hasn't been breeding.
Now these males I'm replacing are two year old animals
but they are a little bit smaller.
So I'm hoping that they'll breed.
This is actually a beautiful Pastel Vanilla Bamboo Woma.
So if this guy will breed
it will be a really good switch up for sure.
Matter of fact, I wanted to breed him earlier
and he was just a little bit too small.
He's put some weight on now.
Now he's at that 550 gram weight
which is about where they can start to breed.
So if he does breed this'll be actually an upgrade
from the Banana Fire Pin.
And like I said, there's probably
five or six males I have to replace.
This one here is kind of a little bit of a bummer.
This is actually a Vanilla Red Stripe
and it pred great last year
and literally not even one copulation this year.
So I'm gonna replace it with the same Red Stripe gene
but I'm gonna go Pin Stripe Red Stripe.
I really wanted to get that Vanilla in,
but there's nothing I can really do.
I need to get these animals bred.
So I'll go ahead, replace it.
Still (mumbles) a bunch of Red Stripe stuff,
which is really cool.
And then like I said,
I've got maybe two or three other males I'll switch out.
That'll start in the next couple of days,
we'll start the new rotation
and hopefully we can get these females bred,
then we can see follicle growth really popping
and stuff like that.
And then we can always adjust.
So again, that's what it's all about.
It's adjusting on the fly.
If you're just set and say,
"Hey, I'm only gonna breed that one male."
You may not have a good breeding season.
Always have a backup plan and try to be
flexible with your plans.
So that way you can have the most success possible.
It is crazy how big, big Mac, and of course chicken nugget
the female Frilled Dragon that we produced a year ago
have gotten.
I mean, they are unbelievably cool.
And again, you can see how unbelievably habituated
and socialized they are too.
I think it's really cool.
You know, again, Frill Dragons are such amazing animals.
If you can keep 'em tame where they just kind of chill out
on you like this, they're almost like a Bearded Dragon.
And a lot of people think that Frill Dragons
and Beard Dragons are really closely related.
They kind of look similar, but that's about it.
Their care is different.
Typically their temperament is different.
A Bearded will sit on your shoulder
like this forever usually.
Normally a Frilly won't, but technically
if you work with them
like we did right from when they hatch,
they'll actually get this DASA
which makes them just incredible lizards.
And Bella's enclosure turned out absolutely incredible.
So we decided we're gonna go ahead
and tackle Elvis's cage too.
'Cause again, it's a cool cage
but it definitely needs a little bit of a pop to it.
So Jessica is gonna work on that now too.
(upbeat music)
Well, I think that Elvis' enclosure,
it looks pretty good.
There's some plants over here, plants up here, over here.
I think already Elvis is starting to destroy
things a little bit...
If I'm not mistaken, this was somewhere that
is up over there that he ripped out already.
He's down in the weeds, pushing these things down.
This is gonna be a little bit more of a challenge.
So I think what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna
stick this plant back where it belongs,
(leaves rustle)
where he ripped it off before.
(leaves rustle)
It was kind of like that.
And I think what we're gonna have to do
is actually silicone those in, because obviously
as he's moving around, he's a big bodied animal.
He's gonna do it, but now he's just sitting
in the water underneath the leaves.
So, definitely a little more challenging trying to fixer
out a large lizard's cage
'cause they're just so heavy and destructive
but it still looks better.
I mean, we've got some color in here starting to look good.
So, but it's a work in progress.
No doubt about that.
It's pretty cute to crush (mumbles) like that.
And those enclosures turned out really good.
I'm really lucky to have Jessica.
She's like an artist when it comes to this stuff.
If you liked this video
and you enjoy the way we kind of build site stuff,
here's a playlist of us building the Rep Terrarium.
Hopefully you can click through a couple of those
it helps me a tremendous amount.
Up here, could you subscribe to my podcast channel?
On this side, help us get to 3 million.
We're getting close guys.
Subscribe to this channel.
Turn your post notification sign.
Have an absolutely wonderful day.
Remember be kind to someone and I promise
I'll see you tomorrow.