Snakes and Sh!t

I know I’m about three weeks behind schedule, but the new birthing rack for the rats is finally done. The final parts I’ve been waiting on for the watering system came in this week and I finished coding the HTML for the How To page today.

Check out the new plans here:

http://www.arbreptiles.com/cages/rat_rack2/birthing_rack.shtml

Clay :: Jan.13.2008 :: The Collection :: No Comments »

Snakebytes.tv is a new site being launched soon by Brian Barczyk of BHB Reptiles.
It will be a weekly show about the world of a large scale reptile breeder. Word has it this may be the forerunner of an actual television show.
I’m really looking forward to the official launch of the site.

The website for Snakebytes.tv is http://www.snakebytes.tv/

I think a show like this, especially should it make it to television, has enormous potential for our hobby. It would help bring us more into the mainstream and legitimize our hobby if you will.
The great expansion of the reptile hobby over the last decade and a half is a double edged sword to me, but now that we have grown to the point we are, I feel it is important to bring the hobby to the forefront.

Many years ago we were basically ignored by lawmakers and the public in general due to our small numbers and general preference to operate “under the radar” so to speak. We have now reached a point that we are large enough to draw the attention of the public and the lawmakers, and all too often that attention is negative. We will now have to expand further to gain the strength to avoid being legislated out of existence.

Watch for the launch of Snakebytes.TV and support it. Tell your friends about it. Get the number of viewers as high as we can so show the interest is there.
We are at a precarious point in the development of the hobby, and the next few years will determine whether we will be the last generation to enjoy keeping reptiles like we do today.

Clay :: Jan.09.2008 :: Herp News, Reptile Related :: 1 Comment »

Today I discovered that there are some problems with some of the photos on the site. In particular quite a few of the pics on the Alligator Adventure page are damaged.
This occurred during the move to the new server. Apparently due to the large volume of data that was being transferred some of the larger picture files became corrupted. The result is some have odd colors in them, are blocky looking, or are just cut off at the bottom.
That was a few months ago now, but there’s just so many pictures and stuff on the site I haven’t loaded them all myself.

I will be uploading the Alligator Adventure pics again today, and making sure they are all there. However, if anyone should come across a photograph anywhere on the site that is damaged or otherwise doesn’t appear to display properly, I’d appreciate it if you’d let me know so I can fix it.

Clay :: Jan.05.2008 :: Site News and Updates :: No Comments »

Apparently the parts I’ve been waiting on to finish the watering system on the new rat rack have been out of stock.
I got an email today saying that they had finally shipped them.

They should be here in a few days, so hopefully by next weekend the new rack will be in use.
I’ll have the plans posted as soon as I can get the page coded.

Clay :: Jan.05.2008 :: The Collection :: No Comments »

The male spider is a breeding machine. He’s mated with 5 girls so far, so hopefully I’ll get at least a few clutches from him this season.

The male albino has decided he’s ready this year and has been breeding with two het girls.  I struck out with the albino gene this season, so with him as the breeder male hopefully I’ll have better lick this year.

The pastel male has bred a female or two, but he’s not nearly as enthusiastic as the spider male. It’s hard to beat a spider for either feeding or breeding interest though.

The het clowns have copulated a couple of times. I’m crossing my fingers that I’ll get another clutch from them this season.

The womas are of course breeding heavy, but they’ve skunked me in the past, so I’ve learned not to count those eggs until I have babies roaming the incubator.

The bredli are being a little stubborn. I’ve seen some mild interest from the male, but no copulation as of yet. I’m going to tweak their temperatures a little more and see if I can’t get something started with them.

I’m beginning to think the Savus are going to need another year before they’re ready. I thought, judging by their size, that they were ready to breed, but I’ve seen no interest from them at all so far.

I’ll make regular updates here on the blog when anything of interest happens. Until then it’s just the waiting game as usual, keep them breeding and wait on ovulation.

Clay :: Jan.04.2008 :: The Collection :: No Comments »

 Here’s a new pic of the little clown girl I held back this season I thought I’d share.

She’s coming along nicely if I do say so myself. I hope to produce some more like her this year.
Her parents have copulated a couple of times so far, but in the past I’ve found that I have a smaller degree of success getting a given female to reproduce two consecutive seasons, especially when she’s a young female.
We’ll see what happens though.

Click the thumbnail for a larger pic.

I’m proud of this girl, and am very glad I was able to start with good genes and was able to produce her to add to my breeding colony.  Her grandfather was also a very nice reduced patterned male, and that was the main factor in my deciding to start my clown project with his offspring.
Despite the claims of some, you can see the benefit of starting a project with good stock. Clowns are indeed variable, but not to the point some  (mainly the ones producing the lowest quality) would like you to believe.

I’m not saying that to promote my animals. There are many breeders producing high quality clowns. There’s a good number producing low quality animals too that look more like blackback normals than clowns too.
I’d like to see this gene refined and improved on, and to that end I’d like to see people interested in the clowns make the effort to acquire high quality founding stock, regardless of who they buy it from. With careful breeding, aimed at improving the look as opposed to just producing more to sell, I’m anxious to see what will be produced in years to come.

Clay :: Jan.04.2008 :: The Collection :: No Comments »

I know some of you are waiting on the new rat rack plans to get posted.
I wanted to give you an update. I’m still waiting on a few of the components for the watering system to arrive. I will post the plans as soon as they are completed.
There’s no need to email me asking about them, the plans will be published as soon as I get the page written. The rack is built, I’m only waiting on the last parts for the watering system.

I did intend to have the plans completed before Christmas, but I just wasn’t able to.

Clay :: Dec.30.2007 :: Reptile Related, The Collection :: No Comments »

I always find the unique behaviors of many animals to be fascinating. No matter how much we learn about nature, it seems there’s always something else ready to amaze us.

I saw this article today about how squirrels in California were found to be using snake skin to scent themselves with to aid in avoiding rattlesnake predators.
An excerpt from the article:

Rattlesnakes often chow down on unwary squirrels, but new research shows the rodents fight back by eating, rubbing and even bathing themselves with pieces of discarded snake skin.

The reptilian musk helps California ground and rock squirrels mask their natural scent and thereby avoid detection from their slithering nemeses.

See this page for the full article http://tinyurl.com/2g4qzr

Every time I see something interesting such as this I can’t help but wonder just how much is going to go completely unknown as a result of species being driven to extinction from mankind’s relentless pursuit of “progress”.

Clay :: Dec.28.2007 :: Herp News, Random Thoughts, Reptile Related :: No Comments »

I must say this action is the single most ignorant and intentionally damaging act to be perpetrated on our hobby to date. The turtle farmers of Louisiana in their blind attempt to get the sale of hatchling red eared sliders legalized in the US have simultaneously endangered the entire reptile hobby.
I cannot believe the combination of gall and stupidity displayed here.

What has happened is an amendment has been added to an agricultural bill after it was passed by the Senate. The amendment was introduced by Senator Mary Landrew (D La). I’ll copy the full text of the amendment at the end of this post, read the entire thing, and pay particular attention to the bold text.

This amendment puts the entire reptile industry in jeopardy. The turtle farmers who pushed for this amendment obviously care nothing for the rest of the industry, only themselves, for what they have done is basically attempt screw the rest of us over completely.

Here is the text of the amendment. This is quoted from Herp Digest

Continue Reading »

Clay :: Dec.27.2007 :: Herp News, Reptile Related :: 1 Comment »

Well, a warm spell is interrupting my cycling schedule. I had the motorcycle out today and at the moment it’s 75 degrees in the brumation room. I’m sure it will pass though, but a bad season several years ago due to a warm winter always makes me nervous when it’s spring in December.

I got the new design rat rack assembled today. I think it’s going to be a very usable design, and the build was much easier too getting away from the hangers for the boxes.
I placed my order for the supplies to set up the auto watering system so hopefully I’ll be ready to get this rack into service by early next week. I’ll try to have the plans published within a couple of days after that.
I believe this will be a popular design for this size tub. It has 24 slots and is very easy to build. I ran into a snag or two working out the measurements, but once I got those details worked out, building another one will go very quickly.

Clay :: Dec.11.2007 :: The Collection :: No Comments »

We’re picking up steam with the python breeding. The albino male has mated with two het girls, the spider has bred with three, and the lemon pastel has been with one as well.
The het clown male has been in shed, so that pair haven’t been put together just yet.

The bredli and the savu pythons have been together, but no breeding activity has been noticed. I’ll be tweaking their environmental conditions and see if I can get something started with them.

The womas have been copulating, but they do that at the drop of a hat, time will tell if I’ll have success with them this season.

The new style rat rack for preggo moms is ready for final assembly. I still need to order the supplies for the auto watering system, but I intend to have the plans published before Christmas.

I finally got the colubrids into brumation. It’s a month later than I normally cool them, but our local temperatures haven’t been consistently cool enough to keep the cool room at brumation temps.
I hope to have a brand new rack built and waiting on them by the time they are warmed up.

I’ll post some breeding pics along the way and keep you posted on how things are going as the season progresses.

Clay :: Dec.08.2007 :: The Collection :: No Comments »

A sickness in the family kept me from doing any cage building or pairing of snakes over the holiday weekend as I had planned. I spent it in the hospital instead.
We’ve got that behind us now though, so I stared pairing a few snakes this week. I’m still holding off on most of them, but I’ve got one female that has copulated a couple of times with a spider, and I have a lemon pastel male with a female now.

Over the next couple of weeks I’ll be putting more together. I’m going to let the albino male have a week or two to temperature cycle alone  before letting him have any girls. He didn’t show any breeding interest last season, but he was only a little over a year old. I’m hoping he’ll be up to the task this year.

Back to cage building tomorrow. I’m hoping to make some good progress on the new boa cage and maybe even get started on some of the new rodent racks.

Clay :: Nov.29.2007 :: Reptile Related :: No Comments »

I wish you all a happy Thanksgiving. May we all remember during this time just how much we as individuals and as a nation as a whole really do have to be thankful for.

We are blessed to live in the greatest country on Earth, to have plenty of food, clothing and life’s other necessities, as well as more luxuries than we could ever use.
It takes only a casual look at much of the rest of the world to make you truly thankful for the things that we all too often take for granted.

Clay :: Nov.22.2007 :: Random Thoughts :: No Comments »

Well, cage building has been suspended for a few days due to my work schedule. I’m working double shifts until Thanksgiving.
I do however get to enjoy a nice four day weekend starting Thursday though, and plan to do some building then if the weather cooperates.

I’ve been working on plans to redesign the rat barn to maximize my production potential should I decide to significantly expand the breeding colonies. This should result in two new rodent rack designs, one to hold the large Van Ness cat litter pans and a variation of the cement tub breeding rack design that is already posted. I’m thinking of a design that will support the tubs from the bottom as opposed to having them suspended on tracks.
I also plan to replace an old melamine rack this winter while I have the colubrids in brumation. This will be a large rack for the 32 quart tubs.
Something needs to be done with  some new shoebox racks too. I have never liked the hatchling rack design I have posted on the site and am wanting to replace those plans with something better.

I think I’ll pair up a few snakes this weekend too. My albino male ball is off feed completely, so I’m hoping he’s developing an interest in breeding this season. So far only one female has started refusing food, all the others are ravenous as they often are just prior to the breeding season.

Clay :: Nov.20.2007 :: The Collection :: No Comments »

I decided to put off starting the breeding season this year. I normally start pairing up the ball pythons in October sometime, and getting to the other pythons later on. I decided to wait until late November at least before I start introductions with the balls and see how that works.

For whatever reason I often see a 50% success rate in female becoming gravid, so I’m going to switch things up a little.
I went through and weighed my potential breeders a few days ago. Looks like I’ll have three more girls I hatched in 2004 that will be ready to join the stable this year.
The het clown female that produced the two awesome clowns for me this year is heavier now than before she was bred last year, so I’m hoping she’ll produce again.

One of my het albino females took this year off, and the other is a big 1900+ grams, so if my albino male decides to cooperate maybe I won’t miss the gene this year.

The spider male is of course ready to go, I think eat and breed is all the spiders are concerned with. He’s over 1100 grams now.  My lemon pastel male has crossed 1000 so maybe he’ll decide he’s ready this year too.
Unfortunately my female pastel isn’t going to be up to size to breed it doesn’t look like, so I might not see bumblebees this year after all.

I’ll be trying the bredli for the first time this season and I’ll be pairing the womas again as well. My woma technique still isn’t worked out completely and I’ve had mixed success in the past. I’m going to work on them again and see if I can get both females to reproduce for me.

We always have much more potential in a given season than we have results though, and I think most breeders understand that all too well. We’ll see in a few months how our plans work out, and as usual we have hopes of a very good season ahead.

Clay :: Nov.13.2007 :: Reptile Related, The Collection :: No Comments »

It’s been a few months since there’s been a new cage design published on the site. Due to the format of my cage plans in that they are not drawings, but photos of the actual build, I can only add plans as I build cages and it’s just not that often that I come up with a new design.

This cage however is a big departure from what I have normally built. It’s going to be the most labor intensive cage I’ve built to date, but I think it’ll be worth it.
I’m looking forward to getting it in use and publishing the build on it. Being an experimental design though, I’m also just hoping that it’s usable once it’s built haha.
Not many people know the specifics of this cage yet, but just for a sneak preview, it’s being built to house large boa constrictors and will be 5 feet wide. My aim is to create a more stimulating environment for the snakes and maximize the opportunity for exercise while not taking up a lot of real estate in the room.

Actual assembly was ready to start yesterday, but I had to quit for the day.  My wife works nights too and I couldn’t fire up the air compressor without waking her up ;).
I’m hoping to get to work on it a bit in the morning before I have to go to bed. I’m still not expecting to have it finished until probably December.

This is the first time I’ve  started construction on a cage without having the entire plan in my head. I hadn’t decided on the type of doors, but right now I’m leaning toward hinged.
I still haven’t fully decided on the heating method either. I wanted to experiment with radiant heat panels, but I’m not sure that is going to happen in time, so I might have to fall back to the flexwatt on this one.

We’ll see how it turns out in the end, but I’m looking forward to seeing what everyone thinks of this project.

Clay :: Nov.11.2007 :: Reptile Related, The Collection :: No Comments »

I am really loving the spider morph of the ball pythons. My male was born in 2005 and he has amazed me with his appetite and feeding habits since he was a hatchling. This season I hatched a couple of daughters from him that are spiders and they have the same unreal feeding response.

From what I have been told by other breeders, the spiders are known for their good appetites. Based on the three I have now, I tend to agree.

Here’s a pic of one of the girls I hatched this year. I decided to just keep both of them.

Clay :: Nov.10.2007 :: Uncategorized :: No Comments »

You know, 99% of the time I hate to see an article involving people and reptiles in the news. It almost always results in a bad image of herps, and this is yet another example.

Fortunately the snake wasn’t portrayed in nearly as bad a light as it could have been, thanks in part to the fact one of the cops was apparently somewhat knowledgeable about them.
Still, anytime the police are involved in something which also involves a reptile, it’s never good, and this instance just astounds me.

A 17 year old girl was bitten and constricted by a 2-3 foot long ball python, 2-3 FEET! and what do they do? They call the police! I couldn’t believe it when I read it. Why involve the police in something so trivial?

We’re not talking about a large constrictor, nothing that snake could have done would have endangered the girl in any way, but yet the police were called, which of course got the media involved.

I couldn’t begin to count the number of times I’ve been snake bitten. I’ve been constricted by a number of smaller species as well, including ball pythons, but never did the idea of calling anyone, let alone the police, ever so much as cross my mind.

Every time something stupid like this happens and finds it’s way to the news media, it does just a little more damage to our hobby as a whole. It give just another bit of ammunition to those who desire to completely take away our ability to legally keep these animals.

This girl should have done us all a favor and stuck to keeping hamsters if she is no better prepared to deal with something as simple as a bite from a ball python.
It seems that every couple of months we are seeing yet another state or community proposing a ban on the keeping of snakes. Generally it’s an ill-worded piece of legislation which calls for a ban on “constrictors”, or some other similar wide ranging blanket legislation. Every time our reptiles are shown in an unfavorable light in the news, I always think, will this city be next on the list? How many more local civic leaders will be called upon to enact another piece of knee jerk legislation?

For the whole story see this link http://tinyurl.com/26bez6

Clay :: Nov.10.2007 :: Herp News :: No Comments »

I rode down to Columbia last Saturday for the show. I haven’t been much of a show goer for the last few years, I think it was spring of 2006 since I’d been to one.

It was a good trip, the show was moderately good, not a lot there that interested me. I mainly went to see the eyelash vipers that David Kornerly was bringing. He had some outstanding specimens, and I enjoyed talking with him a few minutes.

I did pick up another addition to my lepidus group, a Davis Mountains locality male. Click the thumbnail below for a bigger pic of him.

It was worth the trip, since I hadn’t been to a show in so long, and better than the average Raleigh show these days.

Clay :: Nov.08.2007 :: Reptile Related, The Collection :: 1 Comment »

I’ve been enjoying a new venture from Larry Suttles and BT called Reptile Radio. The show airs on BlogTalkRaido.com every Saturday night at midnight EST.

His latest guest was Brian Barczyk of BHB Reptiles. Brian will be returning this Saturday for part 2 of his talk.
You can listen to the show live or listen to past shows at http://www.blogtalkradio.com/reptileradio

Clay :: Nov.07.2007 :: Reptile Related :: No Comments »