The Snake Keeper Blog

Here we are the last day of the month. March is knocking at the door. Amazing how fast this year is moving along already. Tax day is just around the corner and I for one am not looking forward to it. If you are in business for yourself you understand how this is one of the worst days of the year. Any ways enough of the sad stuff.

Well have you checked out the available section lately? Well we added a new feature. We can now list a snake and keep it up at the top of the page as a featured snake. This is cool as I can put a couple there every day if I like. So if you want to see if any thing is new or now you may have to look below featured animals. I may also have deal there often so keep a watch on it.

Well have to get out of the house now and get some work done. Should be an exciting day with what I have to do. I am working on the house doing some re-modeling. You know just little jobs. Like re texturing the ceiling, new kitchen cabinets etc. So today is a little demolition day. I will have to write a little about it tomorrow.

Well I am finally adding some snakes to the available list. Check it out and see if there is anything you need from there. Just starting to get snakes together for breeding. We have been a little slow this season getting started. But we are getting on track now. Now that everything has hatched out we put all the babies in order according to morph. It makes it so much easier to find them now when people call asking for snakes. We had it according to clutch before they were all hatched out and so there were morphs everywhere.

Well the holidays are upon us now and things are slowing down as they always do this time of year. If you are new to the business November and December are really slow months. You just have to be patient and wait till January for the sales to pick up again. Traditionally January is one of the best months of the year. I always look forward to the first of the year.

Did you see the super pastel het ivory on the available page? WOW now that is a cool snake. The picture there really makes it look orange but it really is yellow. Wish I had a whole rack of females of them. I think we will see some real cool morphs from that line. The pastel gene has really treated us right for morphs this season. The pastel clown and pastel pied and last but not least the pastel caramel. I will have to get you some updated pictures of them all. I do not know if I mentioned this before or not but I have an adult pastel het piebald male we are going to sell if you are interested. Great breeder so if you like the pastel piebalds and you are thinking you want to get going on the project give us a call. Well have to get out and get some more work done.

Well many people have been asking to see this snake so here is a quick picture of it.

The Mojave Het Ivory

We really like the way it turned out. Should make some great combos in the future. Who knows what the snake will look like form this cross. This one is for sale if you are interested.

Belly of the Mojave Het Ivory.

It is really a cool looking snake.

Well we were busy today putting females with males. Yes it is that time again to switch gears from hatching to breeding. Not sure they are ready to get with the program just yet but we will see in the morning. Been working on changing out the old DBS1000 Helix units to new ones. Still have 13 of them to go to get them all switched out. You are wondering why you are switching them out. Well some of mine are some of the first ones they made and well technology has increased and the new units are better than the old ones. Plus many of mine did not have the grounding wire on them and I had to modify them to be grounded but the new units if you order them with the heavy duty plug come with a ground wire. So we have been replacing them as time permits. I figure if you have a valuable collection you should have the best in thermostats taking care of your collection. So what’s a $142.00 for a new controller that is the newest and best there is out there.

Take a look at the Pastel Caramel. This snake here is really tuning out to be a real knockout.

The Pastel Caramel Albino.

Some days we just sit there and stare at its beauty. I think the pastel caramel has tons of potential. I just can not even guess what the super pastel caramel will look like. There is still so much to do with all these morphs. Just the ones we have now will take us to retirement. How do you like that retirement. Well needless to say that is still a decade off or so but that give you an idea of how much work there is to do out there with all these morphs. If you like the pastel caramel and you would like to produce your own this season you may want to talk to us. I think we are going to sell a breeding pastel het caramel soon.

Well check out the available pages we just added some more snakes for sale. If there is something you are looking for and you do not see it listed just ask us for it and we may just have it. We still have a good amount of balls to take pictures of and get up on the site.

Well the chill is in the air and the season is winding down. We have just one more clutch in the incubator and that will finish off our season. That should hatch out in about two more weeks. That it will be the break we need to clean out the incubator and decide what needs to be done prior to the next crop of eggs.

Right now we are working on getting into breeding mode. We are not there just yet but getting close. We have to mark all the snakes we are going to breed this season with which male they will be spending their time with during the season. That is a process that takes many hours to complete. It could take us a week just planning out who will breed who. But by doing so it makes it so easy to put the snakes together.

I will be adding some more news here and getting picture up for you to see soon. I have received emails from people wanting to see updated pics of several of the snakes. So I hope to get to some of that this week. The hypo mojaves are just doing outstanding. The extreme hypo line is being more noticed now as well. Talk about a snake that is a must have snake. The few people that have them now are so pleased with them they are looking for more. You really have to seem them in person and once you do you can see all the possibilities.

Well that is all for now. I have my webmaster working on the site again so maybe in a week we will see a new section open up. That will be exciting. So for now have a great and safe Halloween.

Okay it has been a long time. Summer was just a blur. Kids are back in school and we are winding down on the balls hatching. Only about 6 or so clutches left to hatch out. So another 6 weeks or so and we can shut down the incubator and clean it all out. It sure got its use this season.

This week we are preparing for the Chicago show. Be our first time attending this show. We have put it off for years but this time we thought we would give it a shot. So this week is all about getting out to the show with the snakes and supplies. Going to the show always throws everything off like feeding & cleaning. Also falling behind on the email. Coming home it takes hours just to catch up on all the email and get everyone answered. Some people get mad with some of my short responses. I really try to answer all questions I just do it in a short not long winded manner.

his year has been good to us. As the weeks go by I will start posting some of the cool things we hatched out this season. Many of them you already know about but some are just sitting on the shelf. Like the Super Cinnamon we took it to the Anaheim show a month ago. It sure looks cool and caught people attention. The biggest attention getting was the Paradox Hypo Super Mojave. Wow is that just the coolest snake. It is getting bigger so I will have to take some new pics of it and post them. We hope to be able to reproduce it in the coming years.

Well there is a ton to catch up on but like I said Chicago is calling so I need to get things going here. We look forward to meeting everyone there. If there is something you are wanting to see that we have drop us an email and we will see if we can bring it along.

The wait is over………Yes we have proven the Extreme Hypo line will cross into the NERD line orange ghost line. They are hatching now. So one they are out and they shed we will take pictures. So for those waiting to get into the hypo mojaves wondering if the genes will cross you now know. BUT it seems from initial inspection that when the Extreme line is line bred you get a better looking animal.

Fire mojave cross with a fire and a mojave.

We will see after the snakes shed. We just produced some Extreme Hypo Mojaves and they are a knock out. I still say they are one of the best morphs out there. Nothing in your collection looks anything like one of these.

More Mojave news………The Super Hypo Mojaves hatched yesterday as well. So you are wondering a hypo white snake? Yes you can tell the difference and they look even better than the super Mojave. We will show you picture soon as they shed. But they are whiter.

The Super Mojave

So the Mojave is showing lots of cool stuff right now. Still a surprise to me that it even produced a white snake to begin with though. I never thought that was going to happen. Not to much time to write more right now. Have too much to do in the snake room. Later.

We had a great vacation last week. But coming home was great as well. It is always nice to come home. Well I may leave some of the surprises for later this week but for now lets talk about the new pages added to the site. I am sure you noticed how the front page looks a bit diferrent. While it is so hard to keep up with everything that is being hatched I thought it would be useful to have a ClutchKeepr page. This will let you know what has hatched out or what we are expecting. It will give you an idea of how the odds turn out in the clutches as well. While we are already about 65 clutches into the hatching season I am going to do my best to get it caught up form about clutch 30 or so. Some of these you will hear about before they make this page but I think you will enjoy the information. That is where this page is set apart from any others out there. Information, You all have heard me talk about how Colette records almost everything. Well she has been keeping data for years and we have a place to put it now. You will notice that on every clutch, we hope, you will see all the breeding details for that clutch. This is great information to have that we have given to some people from time to time for school papers and such. Now though we are publishing it for every to see and benefit from. Some people will probably spend hours looking it over and checking it out. So we hope you like it and find it useful. I should also thank the webmaster for taking the time to make it all come together.

Oh yeah, did you notice the boa on the home page as well? Yes it is ours. Thought it was time to change out the picture that was there of the hypo Mojave to something else. The webmaster thought the picture of the boa was cool so he put it there. I guess you would call that a “dinking” project as they have been come to be called. We will see but that picture is awesome.

The Pastel Piebald after shed picture.

While we were gone we had another friend collecting eggs and putting them in the incubator for us and also pulling out the hatching snakes. It was funny as in his words we had an explosion on Wednesday and there were snakes coming out in about 15 boxes. He could not even tell me what was what. It was real funny. We could not wait to get home to see what had hatched. It was like Christmas eve and we could not wait to see our presents the next day.

Another shot after the shed.

Tomorrow I should have some pics of some of the new hatchlings. I think you are going to like them. Well that’s all for now.

What a weekend it has been here………….You should see what is coming out of the eggs.

Super Mojaves

First the Pastel Caramel and now the Pastel Piebald. Are these cool or what! The Super mojaves are out now so we took a picture of them together. Talk about a purple looking snake their head is amazing.

The Pastel Piebald

Yes it is still in the egg but it is still nice to see. Do you see what this just did for the piebald project? WOW…………..a new birth all over again. Not many of these will be produced this year. I am sure some one else should do it but maybe only one or two others and that is about it. Just a real key snake to have right now. Let’s hope it is a male. Well we are hopping it is any ways.

Well let see another cool snake we hatched out.

Lavander Albino

Yes this is way cool. I was not a believer of these for many years. It was Colette that pushed for these for so long that I finally gave in to the pressure. Well thankfully I listen to her and we picked up some hets a few years ago and just last year we got a lavander male. Well it paid off big time! This is from our first clutch and it is a beauty. The crosses that will come from the line of albinos will be awesome. I really believe that this line of albinos will follow just like the other line of albinos. We will see everyting put into these and just as you can not produce enough albinos now for the demand the same will hold true for these. We have alot of life left in the business. I feel like we are just getting started. These’s even more but I need to get the pics done. We have a new page coming on line tonight I need to get finished as well.