The Snake Keeper Blog

Well we are well into the breeding season now. Things are going real well. Our new room is working like a dream. Never before have we had this much success so early in the season. We just have to hope that is keeps it up through egg laying. Tomorrow is a mile stone. The first day of winter. That means the shortest day of the year. Which if you like the sun that means we are on the down hill slide to longer days.

Well so onto the snakes. Guess everyone has heard about the Super Mojave now having blue eyes and being a white snake. WOW did that make some people happy and I guess a few are unhappy as well. All I can say is I had a good laugh. It is nice that we know now before we got too far into the season as everyone wanted to know what it would be. It was like the market was on hold just waiting to know. So that is behind us now and we can concentrate on other things.

Yesterday Colette decided to put some snakes together. I told her she hit a grand slam. 27 males breeding at the same time, yahooooo!!!! I think that was a first for us. That was just so cool to see that many cages marked as breeding. Many of the females are carrying some well developed follicles as well. If all goes well we should see some early results this year. We had a few males holding out like the caramel albino and piedbalds but they even decided it looked like the thing to do so they joined in as well.

Well that is all for now. If I do not get back here again we wish you all a Merry Christmas and a very happy New Year. I think we should all do well this season. We should see some new crosses we have all been dreaming about for years. We have a few we are working on that we expect to see produced this season and I know there are many others out there that will have new things as well. So what do you think is going to be the hot snake of 2005? Go ahead and email me and let me know what you think the new upcoming morph will be this season. If I get some feed back I will take the top ones and then post a poll and we will see how it turns out.

Well has it been a while or what? Here were in December already. The weather here has been real cold in California and that is really working to our advantage this season. Breedings are going good at this point. Well you always have those hold outs that just will not get with the program when you would like them to but they will kick in soon. Good day today though we have 15 males breeding right now. Seems the new room is paying off this season, I hope it does then I can finish paying for it.

We were counting up what we thought we would be producing this season and it looks as though we will be producing 50+ morphs of ball pythons. Some of which will be new crosses never seen yet. Guess we will be expanding our baby area by a few racks if we get them all. So we have some high expectations for this season.

The black stripe male is breeding so we hope to see some offspring from him this season as well. Seems he gets a lot of looks for people visiting the site. I will have to let you know how that project comes along.

The just does not seem to be enough time in the day to get everything done. We are working many hours trying to keep up with the season and it seems we just keep falling behind. It is already time to ultrasound again. Feeding comes every week way too fast. Of course for some it would appear that feeding happens much more often. I have seen some pics lately of snakes that just blow my mind. It is not a race to see who can grow up a snake the fastest. Any time you look at a snake and see this little neck and head but a huge body that can not even bend as it is so over weight that is a problem. Snakes that live for 40 years are not to be grown up in 4 months. Unfortunately the side affects of this type of feeding behavior will not be manifested till later in the snake’s life. But this is just my opinion; I would rather have a well feed snake that looks in proportion than a snake that needs liposuction. Bigger is not always better. Take some time to talk to the breeders that have been doing this for 10+ years and see what snakes do the best for them. I think you will find that a moderate feeding program is the best policy.

What else is going on, the Mojave’s are doing well. I hear there is news buzzing around on those right now. Guess we will hear and see more about this soon. This has got to make some people real happy.

Any ways we are making priority list for available balls now. If there is a morph that you would like to get from us you should take the time to give us a call. This should be just a great season for the ball pythons. Popularity for the ball is at an all time high right now. The market is still growing and being sustained by new people every week it seems. I talk to about 3-4 new comers to balls a week. The biggest problem for them is they can not get the morphs they want at this time of year. So that tells me that the market is still growing and strong.

Well that is all for now. Good luck to you all this breeding season.