Updates!

We have been very busy lately with a lot of changes going on! Ok, so first of all Perseus- He got some weird red splotches/lines/scales on his belly so of course I panicked and took him completely out from the ladies. Neither of them had anything going on. Looked around online and couldnt see what it might be. Def was not scale rot or a burn. Decided it might be from him climbing around a LOT looking for the girls or maybe from the branch in the second females cage. We blocked his view from the females, shaved down the branch and made any rough spots smooth. I kept monitoring him a couple times a day. It seemed to be staying the same if not getting worse so we started looking at what it might possibly be being caused by and found that the pine bedding we were using could actually be drying him out. So I bought a "Humidifying Spray" from the pet store and he has improved greatly. He also shed after the second of third day using the spray. I think the combination of rubbing on the branches, with the drying of the pine, and being in shed led to his red spots and lines. 
So, in light of this we changed all of the bedding back to cypress mulch. We originally went to pine bedding because it is so much easier to clean and just to use. With the cypress we have to cook it first to kill any bugs there might be, its more difficult to spot clean etc. But it does look nice and they seem to like it better. My red rat (Fireball) loves it. He has actually built/dug tunnels throughout. In fact, I thought he may have escaped because I couldnt find him. Then I saw just his little head poking up from the mulch in the back of his hide. So cute! 
This past weekend we "rescued" some adult BPs from a guy on craigslist. He was giving them away for free because of personal problems. We got two females and a male all breeder size normals. A little skinny (he had been feeding them "6 hoppers" at a time...) so we are going to fatten them up but other than that they seem to be in pretty good health. Also came with two free 55gal tanks too. 
Big surprise- My boyfriend got my a baby Columbian Red Tail Boa for my birthday! Soooo sweet and pretty! Hes got a little mustache and goatee. Well, we didnt sex him yet but Im calling it a him lol. We *might* breed him in the distant future but that is not my plan for him. He is just a pet now :) Thats it for now :D

Super sad news

The little guy we "rescued" from our friend died. :( We had gotten him to eat by force feeding a couple of times but I think he was just too far gone. Went in there last night and he was literally keeled over. I feel so bad. I wish we could have saved him. I wonder if there might have been something internally wrong with him or something. Obviously not going to be doing a necropsy on him but it would be interesting to know. Always wondering if there was something else we could have maybe done to help him. Poor little guy. RIP tiny baby.

Scale finally arrived today!

Ordered a scale (up to 11lbs/5000g) about a month ago from Hong Kong (only 6 bucks, free shipping) so I finally got to weigh my big snakes today!! My old scale only went to 500g. So heres the line up:
Medusa-1959 (empty)
Perseus- 1973 (empty)
New girl- 2035 (large rat 2 days ago)
Woo hoo! Buncha fatties I have ;)

Updates!

First of all, we got some new additions. No pics yet, but we got a breeder size normal female and a 2013 pastel female for trade for labor. The large female is about 1800g and is actually really light. She bred last season with 5 eggs, but only 3 were fertile and all normal. It was her first time so hopefully this season she will have better luck. We also won a Fire male on an auction for 35 bucks but havent picked him up yet. 
Perseus is not eating. We removed him from Medusas cage but he will NOT stop searching for her! Hes getting skinny so we might have to move him to another room so he cant smell them. When I took him out for about an hour yesterday he just chilled in my lap the entire time. I tried after that to get him to eat to no avail. When I put him back in the cage he was on the hunt for the ladies. Going to keep him separate til this weekend (will be a week long break for him) and maybe weds or thurs try to feed him again. If he eats, we'll keep him out a couple more days, if not we'll stick him in with the new female. Most places Ive read online say they will refuse food when breeding and its not like hes deathly skinny, just skinnier than usual.
Medusa is in deep shed right now. She is really dark! I love when she sheds because it seems she's always prettier than the last time :) 
Princess Buttercup is really fattening up! All the 2013 females are getting fat. Some may even be ready next season, but likely not. Most likely candidates are the Pinstripe and the Pastel het Pied since we got them larger to begin with so they are older anyway. Blah blah blah! Ready to get this season in fast forward to see if/what Medusa puts out. Since both her and Perseus were random buys as pets with no consideration for genetics there may even be a little surprise. Def will get normals and pastels but a surprise would be fun! I just really hope everything goes OK with her and laying etc. Dont want to have to take her to the vet for something crazy but I will cuz shes my baby! Will add pics of the noobs later!

New snake!

Seriously, the last one for a while!!!! Great price I couldn't pass up! Male black pastel. So far, he's the biggest one of them all (of the 2013 babies anyway.)

Success!

The little guy who wouldn't eat finally ate! We had put him with the tiniest of pinkies a few days ago and he still wouldn't eat. Over the course of several hours: Put him in a normal feeding tub-nothing. Put him in a smaller feeding tub-nothing. Put him in the smallest feeding tub available-nothing. Fed that pinkie to another snake. Waited a few days and then ended up pretty much force feeding him. Opened his little mouth up, stuck that suckers head in there and then he swallowed the rest on his own. Yay! He's not gonna die from starvation :)

Another New Snake

Yesterday we got a Female Spider. It is amazing what lighting can do for taking a picture! Both of these pictures are the same snake but one is in the living room with incandescent light (on the right) and one is in the snake room with sunlight  (on the left.)  I was not happy with how the living room didnt show her yellow so I moved to the back. Both this snake, and the Firefly male, were as payment for more work my boyfriend did at the pet store. 

Here she is next to the pinstripe. Both a couple of months old, she weighs 128 g and the pinstripe weighs 166 g. 

We also acquired a baby normal from a friend of ours yesterday. We bought two babies and he bought two babies at the same time almost 2 months ago and ours have eaten multiple times and his still hasnt, one of them escaped the feeding chamber and got lost in his house a couple days ago. He decided he just didnt want to deal with the stress of it with the not eating, losing one etc so we took him in. It is sooooo skinny. So we are hoping that we can get it to eat because ALL of our snakes eat perfectly fine every time so we're thinking maybe the conditions just werent right for him there. I've never seen a snake so skinny before. Very worried about the little guy. My boyfriend has experience force feeding so if we cant get him to eat in the next couple days we'll try that. Thats all for now!

New snake- Firefly

Well, we got a new addition yesterday! Firefly male.

Here he is (on the right) next to the Female Pastel (on the left.) They are about the same age (a few months old) so you can see how she is browning out a little and he is still bright. Also, his head is way lighter than hers and he has less black on him as well. This guy is going to be paired up with my pinstripe when she comes of age and size so I can try and get some dragonflys! 

Medusa and Perseus have been locking up again too. Accidentally startled them last night because I turned the light on at them to see what they were doing in the hide and got an icky glimpse of the "lock" coming undone... Not pretty!! They are locked back up again as of lunch time today. 

Fat girl :)

So, like I said we have never bred before. This was Medusa today when I went in to take Perseus out and put him into his own enclosure. I've never seen her this fat before. She ate almost a week ago and wasn't even this fat. I had her out two days ago (she was bundled up in a hide all yesterday with the male and I didn't want to disturb ;) ) and she was not this fat. Usually when I take her hide off her she moves right away. But this time she just laid there. I touched her and she moved but not much. Didn't want to mess with her too much so not sure if there is any tail suck going on. Wondering if she might be ovulating. I had to go back to work- I was on lunch. Ill check her out again later and see whats going on. It seems pretty early for ovulation and my boyfriend also seemed skeptical but shes just a porker right now! She may just be squeezing up or something if I caught her sleeping, it has been chillier in the back room and she was on the cooler side of the enclosure. Update later!

I don't think it was anything. She seemed pretty normal when I picked her up after work. Oh well! Wishful thinking ;)

Obsessed

So, ever since we have decided to start breeding I have been obsessed with the different morphs. Even though most of our snakes are not ready for breeding this year, and some will not even be ready next year I am still planning who will go with whom! We will be getting a firefly male and a spider female here soon in exchange for some work so that will be even more to plan with. So far I know for sure that I want to pair Princess Buttercup with the mojave male because I definitely want to try and get a Butter Mojave/ Blue Eyed Lucy. They are just so pretty! Love the all white snakes. Another definite pairing will be the pinstripe with the firefly male so I can try and get a dragonfly. We will most likely pair the bumblebee male with the pastel female because there are so many great morphs you can get from that pairing. Not sure with the spider female yet. Waiting for them to get big enough is painful! 
Medusa and Perseus have locked up a few more times. She looks fatter to me but hey that's probably just wishful thinking! They have been together for a couple months and we had them in the living room so we looked at them a lot every day and never saw them pairing up before so it is possible, though not likely, that they had locked up before. It will be weird to see Medusa all fat and then mean when she lays. I keep thinking she might not get mean but everyone says it doesnt matter how nice they were before they get mean when they lay. Another odd thing is, I have read on a lot of sites that they will refuse to eat while mating but both of them have been eating right on schedule and within seconds of putting them in the feeding chambers. Guess not every one is the same! 
Like I said, this is new and we have researched extensively but the real thing will be different than reading things online etc. Fun times :)

And we have a lock!

Well, looks like Perseus and Medusa are doin' the nasty! We have had them housed together for about 2 months now, since we acquired a snake with too small of a cage and he took over Perseus' old cage. I know, I know, you shouldn't house two snakes together but the cage is very large, with multiple hides and they get along fantastically and didn't seem to have any problems so we left them like that. Until now, they have never locked up yet. We had them in the main house for a long time. We set up a reptile room in the addition when we got the new snakes and moved Perseus and Medusa into that room two days ago. The reptile room is divided from the rest of the house and the central heat/AC does not go in there. So right now it is just heated and cooled from the outside temps. We live in Florida so it is perfect for them. There is a separate window shaker in there in case of extremes of hot or cold, and we have a movable temp/humidity gauge so we can make sure everything is good in there. The more natural temps and humidity in there must have sent them into breed mode.  Boyfriend is building him his own home again now so he doesn't get too sex-crazy and exhausted. We will reintroduce him to her cage again in a few days and repeat for a while to ensure she takes. Looking forward to having some babies in several months! 

Intro to the Snakes!

OK, so this blog is basically going to be like my diary!  I am just going to post all kinds of stuff about the snakes here so that I can keep track of everything and not blowing up my facebook page with pictures and stories about my snakes :) It is way easier to keep a digital log than a paper/printed picture log!

This girl on the right here is my original Ball Python, 

Medusa. I picked her up in 2007 from a woman who was trying to get rid of her at a pet store, they wouldn't take her except for store credit but the woman only had dogs and this was a reptile store. I was just in there buying mice for my Red Rat snake. Well, she was so pretty I just had to take her! She is less than 2 ft here. Currently over 1200g. Normal. 

This guy on the left is Perseus. In early 2013 we were at a reptile show and they had him for sale. The guy really wanted to get rid of him for some reason and was trying to sell him to everyone who came by his booth. So far, we can't tell why- he's super sweet, no physical problems. He is a pastel and was an adult at time of purchase. We got him for just 40 bucks :)  Down below is a pic of the two of them. She is on the right, he is on the left. At this point, we were not planning on breeding them. It was more of a "He's cute and cheap" kind of thing!

 In August, my boyfriend did some work for a local pet store and took two BP Morphs as payment. The first one is this male Bumblebee (above and right). The second was a female Pastel het Pied (two photos below).

Here are the two of them side by side. Male Bumblebee and Female Pastel het Pied.

 Above, is my next purchase. Female Butter. Princess Buttercup (AKA Butterball) Again, from a reptile show that I was definitely not planning on buying anything at! But she was a great price and so pretty!

The next snakes I purchased in a lot. They were found on a reptile site at a great price and then the seller even worked with me to drop the price even further for buying three. Mojave Male, Enchi Male, Pinstripe Female. 

 And, finally a photo of the Mojave (left) and the Butter (right) to show comparison on color.

Those are the snakes we currently have!