("Future Vibes" by Qeeo)
- Hey, good morning everybody, and welcome to the vlog!
You guys know that I've got my "please do not disturb,
"I am laying eggs right now."
My girl Lucy laid two eggs.
I had told you she stopped, and I don't really know
what's going on, So heart's up a little bit,
I'm hoping that she has a clutch of eggs.
It's gonna be really exciting.
Let's take a peek and see what she has going on.
Ah!
No!
You can still tell she's kind of full of eggs
so she didn't lay last night.
I thought for sure she was gonna lay last night.
I'm not 100% sure what this means,
but I have a couple theories.
But I think it's gonna be okay.
This isn't the first time I've seen this happen,
whether it be with colubrids or other pythons
where basically they start to lay, and then stop laying.
Now the hard part to not know the answer
within the next few days, we'll find it out,
is did that one slug she laid about four, five days ago
and then the two eggs she laid yesterday,
were those just kind of preemptive
to a clutch that she's about to lay?
Now I will say that it's unusual for animals
to go egg bound in one or two eggs.
Usually they'll lay like half a clutch, then egg bound.
So I'm not that concerned about her going,
what they would call dystocia yet,
but I definitely am a little bit concerned.
So we're gonna be keeping a close eye on her.
She's definitely cordoned off
where there's no commotion whatsoever.
I have no doubt that if she is egg bound,
which hopefully she isn't,
she'll lay within the next few days.
Keeping in mind that her due date
doesn't even come up for a couple days.
So she was actually gonna lay her clutch early.
So I'm not that stressed out about it.
But I would like to come in tomorrow
and see a nice clutch of eggs.
Even though I'm not looking forward to getting in there.
Because I tell you what,
Lucy is definitely not a happy momma.
I'm here alone today at the Reptarium
so I just gotta make sure I check up on all my animals.
Make sure everything is happy.
Make sure they all have fresh water.
And a little bit of love on top of that.
And you know for sure I'm always going
to check up on my girl Bella.
Oh, Bella, your glass is always dirty.
I tell you what, she sneezes on this glass so much,
everyday we have to clean it two or three times.
I remember the first time that I saw Bella sneeze,
I was like, oh my gosh, she must be sick!
And then I did some research on it,
'cause I've always read that marine iguanas
actually sneeze out salt.
Well it turns out that a lot of other iguanas,
including rhino iguanas do the same.
You see what happens is the kidneys
actually filter salt out of the blood stream.
But the kidneys require a lot of water in order to do that.
So if iguanas are actually intaking a lot of salt,
of course a lot of their hydration is kind of filled
with salt, and the kidneys can't do their job.
So they actually have a specific gland
that's just above their nostrils
that actually filters out the salt,
and then they sneeze it out.
It's really weird and it's not just specific to iguanas.
Believe it or not, some crocodilians
even have the same exact thing.
But in particular, pretty much all iguanas
will sneeze out salt.
So even though it seems weird, and it certainly is a hassle
cleaning this glass two or three times a day,
it's just kind of a part of keeping an iguana.
And you can actually see a little bit
of the salt buildup in the nostrils,
that's just kind of part of what it is.
A lot of times you'll see the marine iguana pictures
where they have like all kinds of salt on their face,
but I tell you what, Bella is just such an amazing animal.
I mean, look at this thing, it's crazy.
And again, every time people come into the Reptarium
for a tour or anything like that,
they get an opportunity to spend some time with Bella.
And to a person, if anyone hasn't spent time
with rhinos in the past and in particular one
as awesome as Bella, they just can't believe it.
They're just like, there's no way
this lizard is actually real.
I mean, you just don't think of reptiles in the way
that they are so affectionate and love to be petted.
And you can see how she kind of spins her head around.
She's always looking, she's kind of thinking about things.
Even sometimes she'll tilt her head.
I absolutely love this lizard.
I mean, she is just the coolest thing in the world.
And of course because I'm the only one here,
I'm gonna feed my guys Salt and Pepper.
I absolutely love Salt because she is just
such a cute little monkey right here.
And of course this is the quarantine tank.
I talked about how we're redoing the tanks
out in the exhibit area so that pretty soon,
within the next probably two or three weeks,
these guys will move in there full time.
And I think I'll keep them together for a while,
and then eventually separate them,
and then we'll have to build bigger enclosures
and so on like that, but with Salt, the thing that's so cool
is I actually have to kind of feed her one pellet at a time.
She is so absolutely adorable, I love her to death.
And she is definitely a chunky monkey.
We'll have to weigh her later this week.
Oh, look at...
Peaches shed, she's got a new shed of skin on her right now.
It is truly amazing how snakes look right after they shed.
I mean they are just at the peak of beauty.
Take a look at her right now.
And of course, she's a hypo Honduran milk snake.
And this looks like a really nice shed right here.
I get asked all the time, why do snakes shed?
And basically what it is, unlike us that have
this kind of elastic skin that as soon as we're born
as a baby, we stay with that skin our whole life.
As we grow, our skin kind of just stretches out
and becomes what we are.
Same thing with the rest of mammals.
But the fact is with snakes, is their skin
can grow only so far, So basically what happens
is they have three layers of skin.
And when that external layer of skin is stretched
all the way and just cannot stretch anymore,
they go into a shed.
The next step is what they call going blue,
which where they just look like
they've got this like bluish tint to them.
That's actually a milky secretion that actually forms
between the second layer and the epidermal
or outer layer of skin, and that is to basically,
like a lubricant, right?
And so after a few days of going blue,
it actually absorbs into this layer of skin,
making it just lubricated.
So the fact is when that snake splits its shed
on the top of its head, they can actually just climb
right out of the skin and then you get
this beautiful shed skin.
But hoo doggy, that snake looks incredible.
Now it's interesting, the hypo Honduran milk snakes
originated mainly from something that was called
the Tangerine Dream line, that Bill and Kathy Love
produced years ago, and they just thought
it was a super uber clean Honduran milk snake
that was just like lacking most of the black pigment
through line breeding or something like that.
And then, of course, they realized
it was a recessive mutation.
Now there might have been another line
that I'm not aware of, but I think that the majority
of them came from that line.
And again, you can just see the lack of black in it
or that hypomelanism is what causes that super uber clean
and of course almost that grayish purplish banding.
Oh man, I tell you what, Peaches looks really good
after a shed and she is gorgeous.
So like Lori said, there's no colubrid clutches today.
But I did find a couple ball python's clutches
and the first spotted python clutch of the year.
So let's go ahead and see what these guys have going on.
This first female is actually a pinstripe right here
and she's got a beautiful clutch of eggs.
And this is actually bred to a pastel vanilla woma
bamboo ball python, I mean that is gonna be incredible.
And this looks like an incredible clutch of eggs
for this girl, and she's a really unique
looking pinstripe too.
I remember when we actually hatched this girl,
it was just really kind of a more almost axanthic-y
looking animal, so I hung onto her, raised her up.
This is her first clutch, don't know if maybe something
is gonna pass on, but that bamboo is amazing,
especially when it comes to pinstripe.
And then you got pastel, the vanilla, it's unbelievable.
There is gonna be some bangers in this clutch.
And we have two, four, six, eight eggs.
Looks like this egg right here just rolled just a little bit
but you can see it was stuck on the bottom of the paper,
which basically tells me that it's probably up.
But we'll go ahead and candle it
just to make sure regardless.
But let's go ahead and get these in an incubator box
and get these all setup.
Again, I'll take this egg kind of keep that separate,
so that we'll know we'll candle that one.
And then I'll take these guys here and just slowly gently
pull them off, so that momma doesn't get too mad at me.
There you go momma, we'll just put these right in here,
and again I always talk about this,
we use HatchRite, which is a perlite that has a water isomer
that keeps it nice and humid.
These guys just get a little bit pushed down in the egg
and that is basically again, two, four, six, eight eggs.
Not bad even though I would like
to pull some colubrid clutches.
Hey, this is an awesome ball python clutch.
Next clutch we actually have just a het ghost female.
But it's bred to a calico ghost or a calico hypo.
So half the clutch should be hypo
or what they call ghost sometimes
because it's a recessive mutation.
And this just a het ghost girl and then of course
the calico is co-dominant, so half the babies on average
will be kind of calico, so we should get some calico ghosts
if we're lucky, if there's beautiful eggs.
Which it sure looks like it and momma does not look happy.
Momma, it's okay, I'm sorry, I'm so sorry.
I know you're like, don't take my eggs away from me.
But like I always talk about, it's important
to take the eggs away for the mom and for the clutch.
But you can see this egg right here is starting to roll.
Oh we're gonna have to candle that one too.
As I was taking her off she was kind of rolling it
just a little bit, so I'm gonna push it over here.
Again I'm gonna give another shot as taking this girl away.
Nice clutch of eggs though, oh my gosh!
What a beautiful clutch.
And it's kind of interesting 'cause this is one of those
clutches that actually doesn't seem to be
really stuck together, the eggs are kind of a little bit
flaccid here, which happens sometimes.
I'm not really sure what that is.
But nevertheless really good clutch eggs,
two, four, six and of course this one over here,
seven eggs, I mean wow, that is really good.
And again on average, half of them should be hypo,
the other half will be het for hypo,
and then about half will be calico,
so it's just a matter as to how it lines up
with the mutations and so on like that.
Nevertheless, really good, unbelievable year so far.
Kelsey has done an absolutely amazing job
breeding snakes this year.
And I'm super excited about this.
You guys know that we've collected a bunch of Stimson's
and children's eggs, but this is the first spotted pythons
which are the three antaresia that work with,
which are all Australian pythons,
that are kind of smaller pythons.
You can see this is a full grown adult here.
She's got some eggs outside her coil,
but overall these look like a beautiful clutch.
So we'll just really gently try to get these eggs
that are outside here and you can see
the embryo is right there
so we don't even have to candle that one.
The egg looks really good.
What we'll do is we'll just pull this one out,
we'll probably have to do a little candle on that one.
And then gently try to get momma off her eggs.
Momma it's okay, it's okay sweetheart.
Aw, you got a beautiful clutch of eggs mom.
Okay, we gotcha, we gotcha, we're all right, okay.
Oop, there's a couple more eggs out over here.
Gonna have to get these all in.
Yeah this egg, she definitely pushed her eggs
all over the place, let's see what we got.
C'mon mom, gotta give me those eggs.
That's okay, it's okay mom, oh its okay.
All right, okay, alright, alright, alright.
Oh, c'mon girl.
C'mon girl, oh, oh, oh, oh.
There's one egg left over there.
I'm just gonna set these eggs down, try to retrieve
that one last egg over here and again
because things are kinda rolling around.
We're gonna just have to candle a bunch of these eggs,
which is completely fine.
Momma looks really good, she doesn't look that deflated.
Doesn't have any eggs stuck in here.
definitely a beautiful first spotted python clutch.
Let's put this over there.
let's see how many eggs we've got.
We've got two, four, six, eight, 10. 12, 14, 16, 18 eggs,
18 eggs from a spotted python that is a really good clutch,
and for whatever reason the antaresia, spotted,
Children's, Stimson's actually incubate a little quicker,
so these guys typically hatch
in about 50 or 52 days, so that is awesome.
Candle these eggs, get them in the incubator box.
We can get them back home to the incubator.
And like I've always mentioned,
you just wanna have that embryo at the top of the egg.
So if an egg rolls it can potentially go bad or whatever.
I just basically take my iPhone,
you can take a little flashlight whatever it is,
and I point it at the egg and I'm just basically looking
and I'll even just barely jiggle the egg
and I'm looking for that embryo, which is right there,
you can actually see there's a nice big red spot,
network of veins and that's what I'm actually looking for.
That just basically tells me that the embryo
is on top of the egg, I've got to do it with one more egg.
And then again, you remember the one egg rolled
in the other clutch and sure enough,
well no it's actually pretty good,
it was just barely off center, you can see it
right at the top where my nail is right there.
You can see all that network of veins right now.
That's basically what you wanna see.
And that's a great sign because that strong network of veins
and that embryo like that, those are really fertile eggs.
The one snake that I am so excited to see when she lays eggs
and it should be any day right now.
Is this girl here, my blacktail cribo.
She's not in her egg box, so I know she didn't lay eggs.
Look at how absolutely distended she looks right now.
I am so excited to produce these.
Of course Rico is the dad and oh my gosh,
If I get some good eggs and actually hatch out
little baby cribos, I am gonna freak out.
I dunno that whole dry mark on which is cribos, indigos
and stuff like that, they're just some
of the most incredible snakes that I've ever worked with,
so I'm so lucky that we had success this year.
And this girl is just loaded up with eggs right now.
But again, it's just one of those days
where seems like for whatever reason,
colubrids just aren't laying eggs today.
Which is completely fine.
I know tomorrow, we'll probably have a ton of eggs
and that's the way the season goes.
There's a lot of ups and downs when it comes to that.
But at least we did get some cool python clutches today.
While I'm down here in the dungeon,
I just want to check up on some of my rainbow boas.
Oh my gosh, we have a bunch of Brazilians
that are just loaded up with babies I tell you what.
And what's interesting is that we bred them
slightly different this year.
Last year, we literally had a horrible year
with Brazilian rainbows, so this year we just bred them
just a little bit earlier, we cooled them
a little bit differently and then put them in groups
of like two or three females.
Remember when I was talking the other day about
how sometimes snake's ovulation can kind of almost pass on
to other snakes, so we thought if we put two
or three females together with one male,
maybe they would all kinda grow
their follicles at the same time.
and I tell you what, I'm not sure if that was the secret
or not, but pretty much all of our Brazilian rainbow boas
are loaded up with babies.
But again they're live bearing snakes
and the one thing I've learned
in the 30 years I've been breeding snakes
is never count your baby snakes before they're born,
especially with boas, because they can break your heart.
You can stillborns, you can have slugs, all kinds of stuff.
But as for now, things certainly looks good.
Now that the Reptarium is kinda popping and stuff like that,
there aren't many days that I'm here alone at BHB,
so it's kind of a little weird and kind of awesome
at the same time, you know.
Being in a building full of snakes
and all the little eyeballs
and little things crawling around, it's really kinda cool.
And it kinda throws me back to the days when it was often,
that two or three days a week I was the only one here at BHB
but like I said, now with the Reptarium on the weekends
and every other day, there's always people here.
But everyone need time off, so we try to at least
once in a while let the crew take a little bit of a break.
And I guess I don't get that break,
but that's okay 'cause I love it here.
- No eggs today, kind of a weird day,
'cause I have a lot of stuff to do.
But you know what, I'm sure we'll get
some more clutches tomorrow.
- And again when I'm here alone, I get a chance
to just kinda look through and see a bunch of animals.
I don't know, for some reason it's just much more tranquil.
But this is really cool,
this is a Miami diffused motley corn snake.
And I'll be honest with you, that thing is crazy.
I remember when it was a little bit younger
and I really haven't seen it,
'cause Eric's been taking care of it.
And just going through some of Eric's raisers,
holy cow, some of the animals that I haven't seen
in a month or so, 'cause I'm so busy with other things,
have looked so cool.
Take a look at the red on this scaleless rat snake,
and oh, it's a cheeky little monkey too.
What is your problem little guy.
It's, oh careful careful careful.
Oh my god, I tell you what, it is a hyper little dude,
but wow, is that thing gorgeous.
And speaking of gorgeous, look at this,
this is actually an amber motley scaleless corn snake.
Oh my gosh, now the amber is actually
a hypo caramel corn snake, so it's a double recessive.
Then of course, you have another recessive
with the scaleless, so a triple recessive snake.
Oh my god, that thing is stunning.
Again I love sometimes just kinda tooling around
and looking at snakes.
It's something because I'm so busy,
I don't do nearly enough of.
Every now and then, I just need a day like today.
So I tell you what, with any luck I hope that Lucy
will lay tomorrow or in the next couple days.
I know that I'm not necessarily looking forward
to battle that's gonna ensue.
But I cannot wait to see if she lays a good clutch
now that she's got a couple good eggs,
I'm really excited to see what's gonna happen.
But as for now, I'm just gonna wish you guys an amazing day
and tell you how much I love you guys.
Do me favor, be kind to someone.
I promise I'll see you guys tomorrow.