The Snake Keeper Blog

There it is sitting there in the egg. Do you think we are a little happy? No we are mega happy. We missed the odds on the first clutch in fact we did not even get a caramel on the first clutch. Colette was getting worried that just maybe she had sold the only pastel het caramel male we had by accident.

The Pastel Caramel Albino!

So here we are cutting this clutch open and the first three eggs are possible hets. I think her heart sank, she said she was ready to loose her cookies. So any ways then we cut the next one and that was a pastel. She still was not feeling any better. Then the pastel caramel…….Whew! See the smile cross Colette face. She nows feels much better seeing the new morph. Well the rest does not matter but needless to say she is feeling good just to see it in there. We will have to see how it turns out. Well there is more big news but I have to have something for tomorrow. Oh Yeah, Colette you did awesome this season!!!!!!

Things are really starting to move along here now. Going to be hard to keep up with it all. We were away last week on vacation; yes we were at the beach again. We just love going there. Any ways we are back now and trying to catch up with everything. We hatched out some cool things during the last week. We hatched out some killer cinnamons. I am sure there are others who have some nice ones as well but these have some outstanding color on the sides. We were real impressed with them. So we have a couple to put on the shelf and a few to sell.

Pewter

Next we hatched out a few pewter’s. Well four to be exact. Great odds on that clutch 4 pewter’s, 2 pastels. So we pulled out some great odds there. It seems the odds were with us on that day as the Mojave to Mojave clutch began to hatch as well. 2 Super Mojave’s (Blue Eyed Whites) and 4 Mojave’s.

A very nice cinnamon.

So two clutches and no normals. Can you see my smile? Well that makes up for some of the others where we got more normals than morphs. But hey that’s the way it goes in this business. You just take what you get and be happy.

One of the cool stripe’s that just hatched.

That’s all for now. Have to go unload a truck of shavings. 200 bails for the rodents.

Been away this week and came home and started going through the incubator. Well we cut open a few clutches as well. Just to let you know what is hatching we have Pastel X Cinnamons, Genetic stripes, Mojave X Mojave. The Supers that we produced a wek or so ago shed and I will have to get some pics of that up as well. So I should have some result shot up of what is crawling out in the next 24 hours. Let me just say, It’s nice! Also be looking for the clutch results page coming on line soon. Have a great weekend.

Ringer stripe

Another pic of the ringer stripe.

Just thought this was a cool looking genetic stripe you would like to see. It is a female and Colette is keeping it. We have a clutch with four stripes in it. Two females and one male are out so far. Waiting for the last one. At least one male is available.

These past few days have been really fun here. Clutches have started hatching and you get a rush every time you get to look into another clutch of eggs. Still waiting for the webmaster to get back to get me a page going for all this but until then here is what is happening. Clutch 7 we got three spiders that are not all out yet. Clutch 8 het ivories still waiting to see what crawls out. Clutch 9 is pastels and Super Pastels. We have 2 supers are hatching and they look great. Clutch 10 is Cinnamons I think we have three in there and then this beauty.

First clown of the season. What a head pattern!!!

This was clown to possible het clown and we won on this female. Hopefully we win some more possible hets as the year goes on. Check out the head on this clown. I hope it is a male as I know we have several people wanting them. Just so you know Colette is picking hers first. She let me know that this morning. Any ways just waiting for more to hatch to make more room in the incubator for more eggs. Ordered more cages from Freedom Breeder this past week. Made their day, 7 more racks coming with more on order. So I will be busy setting them all up for Colette over the next several days. How about this spider,

Aliens

I was kicking it the other night after getting out of the pool and this spider come up to me on the patio. That got me up in a hurry. We call these aliens here as they look like something off a scary movie. You do not want to be walking in the dark with out your shoes on. That’s all for now. Soon as we get more snakes out of the egg we will take some more pics.

There has been so much going on this last week I do not even know where to begin. I guess I should start off with our landscaping.

Finally a nice yard.

It is now complete and it looks stunning. We are very pleased with the way it all turned out

. It is like a park out in our own yard now. The pool seems to fit in much better now that we have some green around it. Yesterday I spent the day in Hollywood with my sons class on a field trip.

The Wax Museum

So I took some pics of what we saw down there. It was opening night for Batman. So we saw all the hoopla going on for the pre screening of that flick.

Other than that we have just been busier than ever with the snakes. Every morning it is putting eggs in the incubator it seems. I thought we were prepared for this season but I was wrong. Not enough vermiculite, not enough shelves not enough baby cages not enough time.

13 eggs you got to love that!

We just added more shelves to the incubator yesterday 12’ of them and now they are filled. Remember when I was excited about getting 5 clutches in one day? Well yesterday we got SEVEN clutches. I doubt we will break that record any time soon, I really do not want to as it takes so much to take care of them. Colette records everything about every egg so it is a long process to get them to the incubator. It is about to get real exciting here as these all start to hatch out. Already some cool things are piping and I can not wait to show it all to you. I think you will like it. Some things in there I can not wait to get out of the egg because I want to see what it is. The ball cam is just not going to be working to good this season. If you have the plug in from last year you could view it but if you do not we can not even find it anywhere so you could use it. Seems the company went out of business and we can not find any as nice as what we had. If you know of something that would work please let me know.

Well here it is the unofficial begining of SUMMER!!!!! Well it started off good for us with a litter of boas.

CA Anerytheristics litter

Now you are probably going what he means a clutch of eggs. No it is true we had a litter of boas this morning. Type 2 to Type 2 Anerytheristics, 101 days POS 11 babies and no slugs. So Colette is walking around with this big smile on her face this afternoon. She has been playing with this project for a couple years now and this is the result.

Had to show this tail shot.

Last night we were busy in the incubator adding more shelving. We had a little space when you come in the door where we added four more feet of space.

Just coming out of the sack.

That will allow 16 more clutches that we really need the space for right now. We also had to order more glass tops. We had just had 40 made about a month ago and now we just added 30 more. We should have a good amount hatching in June so maybe we can start rotating them in and out and not have to find any more space.

The back yard is almost done. I will get some more pics up after the weekend. Grass is coming in on Tuesday so that will make for some nice pictures. Have a great holiday and be safe.

Sunday, the day of rest. Well not for us this morning. We were blest with FIVE clutches of eggs today. Now that was cool to get five we have had several four clutch days but never a five. So not too much rest this morning for Colette. Yesterday we were egg less which was good as we had so much to do. What a great take as well.

Hypo Mojave laying eggs.

Two clutches of Hypo Mojave to Hypo Mojave 14 eggs total. That right there would have been enough.:) Do you know what is going to hatch from that……….Super Hypo Mojave’s (aka white with snake blue eyes, plus it will be hypo) Hypo Mojave’s & Extreme Hypos. Now you may be asking what is a hypo white snake going to look like. Well I do not know but we will see in 60 days. It will be cool to have one to breed to other crosses though.

As for the other clutches we got Mojave het hypo to Mojave, Pastel Het Ivory to pastel & Piebald to Possible het Piebald. So a very good day at 34 good eggs and one slug. I wonder what a super pastel het ivory will look like. The incubator is full now and we are expecting three more clutches tomorrow.

Found this little legless lizard out in the yard today. Had to take a picture before we let him go.

So I have to go get some extra shelving out of the garage tonight and get it set up to accommodate the overflow until we get some more hatched out. I just may have to fire up the storage room which was built as an incubator as well. It is larger and was designed to be the incubator in the first place. So now I guess its day has come. So to take a line from a great movie…….”If you build it they will come” well we built the incubators and now the eggs are coming, it is AWESOME!!!!!!!

This a planter being built. Wait till you see the tree for it.

The back yard is coming along nice. They have been at work now for five days. I think when they get here tomorrow though they will be re doing a few things. Most of the water lines are all in and about ½ of the brick & stone work is done. It is a huge job. I have more sprinkler valves I think than everyone else combined in the neighborhood. Colette and I went to the nursery over 400 acres and picked out some great trees. We are into palms around the pool so we had to pick out 14 of them. Then we just could not resist. I love the Canary Island palms. They are just huge trees and look so cool so we sprung for two of them. I am just waiting to hear what the cost on those is going to be. I am sure my landscaper is going to tell me soon.

kids play area off the pool.

Considering they are in a five foot box and it will take a crane to lift them into place it will be a few dollars I am sure. So he tells me today he wants to be laying sod by Friday. Well I hope so that would make a great holiday on Monday.

Not too much else going on right now, only two more weeks of school left for the kids so that will be nice. That will give us a little extra help here for a few months. They like to help with everything but we make their studies a priority while they are in school. Any ways time to move on now just had to share some excitement.

Things are continuing to go well here this season. We sure hope to hatch out some nice new morphs this year. Did you see the Super Spot nose? Wow, that is really nice. Should be a snake for everyone to have in the coming years. Tracy has worked the project for a long time and now the pay off.

New yard going in..

It will be cool to see it again once it sheds and all. Any ways thought I would mention that congratulate VPI for that one. I wonder if it will make their new book. STOP THE PRESSES!!!!!!!!! I have a new snake for the book Dave. Shoot next week the press will get started back up again and then they will be another phone call STOP……………well you get the idea. We should see a lot of new morphs this season from allot of the breeders. Should be a fun season.

Well we finally get started on the landscaping of our back yard. It has been a long time. But it is here. Two years ago we tore it all up and put in a nice pool. Last year we added the new snake room but we did not add any landscaping. We knew it would be expensive to put in what we wanted to we decided to wait. So here we are coming up on summer and it will be ready for the BBQ party season. It is really heating up outside too. Looking like 99 on Sunday. Usually I wait till I get to the beach to get sunburned. This year Colette and I both are sporting some RED hues on the old white skin already. Hey at least I do not have to worry about getting burned at the beach this year now.

So they started on the back yard on Monday. Ten guys show up with water trucks, backhoes, skip loaders & trenchers. You name it it was here doing the job.

more yard photos

It was amazing to see how much a group of guys can do in one day. These are pics from the first day. Most of everything else has been underground work you really can not notice in pictures. Some more brick work is being done right now. By Friday I should be able to show some more pics. It has been fun. I am just waiting for the first swimming party after it is all done. That will be nice.

Any ways that is about all for now. Still waiting for the eggs to get started. Looks like about June things will really get going on the hatching front. Had four more clutches this morning. Those sure make good morning no matter how bad a night’s rest you got. Keep it up Colette you are doing great!