Okay, the fastest update I've ever had. Actually, I just had something that I didn't want to get lost in the stuff below. I have had to pull off several shows from my calendar this year for various reasons. Mostly I can't afford to drive 5+ hours to a show where we are expected to do well or where we've gone and not done well in the past, it's just not a risk I can take with gas prices the way they are. Couple that with a slow market and economy and you've got a rough weekend. So, the main page shows the new dates. It looks like we ARE in for Tinley Park if I can finalize (and pay) here this week, which I'm trying to do.

Okay, signing off..again

Oh dear god, where do I start??? This time of year is just bonkers, moreso this year than ones in the past for some reason, we've barely started doing shows, here in a few weeks we do them 2-3 weekends a month. The past month has been a roller coaster ride.

Hmm, okay, first topic...vacation. We took a 5-day trip to Disney World a few weeks back. We've been planning it for a long time, wanted to catch the big one before he was too old not to care and wanted to catch the little one when he was old enough to remember. It was hot, humid, and expensive but that was all expected. The boys weren't...well, they weren't on their best behavior. I felt like I spent most of my day going "Please stop", "I asked you to stop", etc. It got aggravating. We did manage to do all 4 parks and got to do pretty much everything we set out to do. The Soarin' ride at Epcot is awesome and the new Toy Story ride/game at Disney Studios opened just a few weeks before we got there. For anybody that's been an like's the Buzz Lightyear right, this is like that but on steroids...it's 4D!

So onto the drama...we left for Disney on Friday late morning. On Wednesday evening, our axanthic clutch started pipping so I cut the eggs. We had 6 axanthics and 6 hets, as healthy as can be. On Thursday night when we went over, all 12 of them were out and cruising around but stil in their egg halfway (it literally looked like Medusa's hair, it was funny). So, before we left on Friday morning, we made a trip to the shop JUST to take the babies out that had come out of the egg. Well, NONE were out yet. All sitting there with their heads poked out. I called Richard and he said he'd come down over the weekend and check on them. I put the lid back on the egg chamber about 9:30 that morning. When Richard came over on Sunday around 1PM, we got one of the biggest kicks in the nuts we've ever had, 7 of the babies were dead. Take another lesson from me on this one folks. I have incubated my eggs the same way for 6 years. I used sealed egg chambers and I'll STILL continue to use sealed egg chambers although some people say I'm an 'idiot' for doing so. BUT, what happened with this clutch is that there were TWELVE babies fighting for air in that space. It's quite a large space but with the temps and humidity it is at and 12 babies, the air ran out and smothered 7 of them. Richard had to flush 3 axanthics and 4 hets down the toilet. I know it was on hard him doing it and then having to tell me about it (well, in reverse order, he obviously asked me what I wanted done with the babies). I in no way blame him for any of this mind you, this was just a major lesson learned. From now on, after the babies pip, I'm going to crack the egg chamber just a little bit to get some air in. The good news is that we DID produce 1.2 axanthics (could have used more males, unlike anything else we've produced so far, I had a waiting list for at least 2 males), the bad news is that stung....bad. Not just monetarily but to also know that even with 6 years experience, I'm still learning big things like this...and of course I hate killing animals, makes me sick to my stomach.

Okay, happy thoughts...happy thoughts...on the bright side, we DID produce dumeril's! We tried 3 new species this year: hognose, dumeril's, and the womas. The womas produced but I had NO touch for incubating them, the hognose did very well, and we have one litter of dumeril's and may even get our other girl to go. This was a TOTAL shock. The girl didn't look any bigger than she did when I got her a year ago. The babies are SOOOO pretty, I love their pattern, and 11 of the 12 came right out eating like clockwork.

After some deliberation though, it's the hognose that we're going to keep. I'm selling off the adult and juvenile woma pairs (hint, hint!!!!) as well as the trio of dumeril's here in a few weeks. Here's my price list for anybody that cares:

1.1 Proven Womas - $2000/pair or $2300 with 4x2x1 cages
1.1 Woma Juveniles (aweseme Rare Earth line) - $1000/pair
1.2 Dumeril's - $600/trio or $1050 with 4x2x1 cages

I just can't do the big stuff anymore. It doesn't intimidate me, it's just too much to deal with. It takes me 30 minutes to clean a cage and because of that, they're not getting cleaned as often as they should. Also, in the same space that I have my 5-cage stack, I can house THIRTY adult sands, rosies, and hognose :)

We've also had some more BP clutches laid as well as hatch plus our other two hognose clutches both hatched. We ended up with 28 hognose babies. We lost one (runt) and I let another 4 small ones go to a friend that's good with the hognose (and more importantly, the time and patience to get them started). Most everybody else is eating on their own, we're having to work with just a small handful of them. I REALLY dig them though.

One of the BP clutches we had is the axanthic to a PH axanthic. This is one I got back in from a breeding loan in piss poor shape. She was underweight, had RI, and had several stuck sheds. We gave her some TLC and now (well, before the clutch) she's a 2800g monster. She gave us 5 good eggs and 7 slugs, not a bad attempt for a first timer. I don't have high hopes that she's a het but I'll take some more het axanthics if nothing else.

Oh, and our Het Ghost #2 girl gave us eggs last week. Richard and I put moss in here cage on Thursday and on Saturday we had eggs. She is the ONE proven het ghost girl I have so hopefully we'll be getting some more ghosts!

Speaking of ghosts, I'm doing some early cutbacks if anybody's interested. I've got several males that I've been raising up so some of my current breeders will be up for grabs, in addition to some proven girls (way too many normal girls, overproducing badly). Sorry to make this a flea market post, but here's what I know I have right now:

Proven Spider Male - $700
Proven Ghost Male - $800
Proven Pastel Male - $400
Proven Female (#39) - $225
Proven Female (#46) - $225
Proven Female (HGBP-F-3) - $200
Adult Female (#42) - $200
Het Pied Male - $200
Proven Pastel Female (being stubborn to go back on food) - $1000
Holdback '06 Pastel Female - $1000

If you're interested in anything above, let me know. I can provide pics, weights, etc. All come with feed cards, etc.

Had a show in Evansville two weekends ago. Had a good time and will always come out to promote DJ's show, but it wasn't that good for us. After expenses, I think we made under $100. Better than losing money but I stayed up until at least 12:30 5 nights in a row getting ready for that show. In two weekends we're off to do the Kentucky double-header (Shelbyville and Morehead) then the next weekend we're back to St. Louis. Hopefully that one will be as successful as the last one. Plus we've been doing that one long enough that we've become friends with a lot of the people there and really enjoy doing it (Hey Bob, David, Stuart, Matt, etc!) Maybe this time I'll actually bring all the racks I have pre-sold so I don't look like a horse's butt :)

Oh, we finally got our new shirts made. I'm not going to spoil the surprise, you have to order $500 in racks or come out to a show to see it. They're HILARIOUS!

Lastly, we need to add some more hatchling racks (of both varieties) so we revamped the shop this past weekend. Richard and Mike came over and finished up the racks we needed and Brett came over and helped me move everything. It's VERY nice, I like it a lot. I can now hold 168 sands/rosies/hognose and 84 balls/dumerils, should be enough space for a long, long time. I'll have pics soon.

Alright, that was WAY longer than expected but until I sat down, I just forgot about how insane the past month has been. Hope everybody is doing well and hope to see you soon.

Sorry for not updating sooner, things have been crazy. Been going through a major transition at work that's kept me up until 1AM+ several hours the past 2 weeks and up until this week I've been working on the flood recovery project there. Another note on the personal side, I'm finally an uncle!!!! I'm an only child so I only have Misha's family to provide me with a niece or nephew...or in this case, BOTH! Welcome Brice David and Brenna Rene Conrad!!! I only wish there weren't in Colorado. Anyway...on the snake/business front...

Had a PHENOMENAL show in St. Louis 2 weekends ago. In fact, it was an awesome weekend overall. Brett and I went to the Jack Johnson show on Friday night and had a blast. We spent Saturday finishing up some racks and packing the trailer up (it's been 6 months, we were a bit rusty PLUS we were hauling more racks than we ever have in one trip). Saturday night we went to the casino there like we usually do and both came out ahead, me playing poker and Brett being the 'craps master'. Then had a great show on Sunday. I brought Brutus and one of the supers and they drew a ton of attention. The racks sold incredibly well and we moved a few animals.

This past weekend we spent up in Lafayette for Father's Day since we missed the real Father's Day the weekend before. Had a good time visiting with the family.

Earlier this week we finally hatched out our first hognose babies. I went to check on them (expecting the normal 50-60 days) and there one was just staring at me. We got 8 from the first litter and 5 ate their first meal last night on straight live pinks. Others may take some more work. We have two more clutches still to hatch.

In the ball python news, we got a spider clutch last week (my luck with spiders has been PATHETIC) and a doinking-around clutch earlier this week. It's part of my big ghost project that I've been working on. Also had some babies from a ghost x het ghost breeding. 6 eggs, 0 ghosts...ANOTHER girl I've raised up that proved out NOT to be a ghost. And people wonder why I don't trust most breeders...

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Last night one of the axanthic babies pipped so we slit them open, looks like we got an even 6 out of 12. Hopefully some will be out and feel like getting their pictures taken tonight!

Hopefully have some pictures of some black and white babies to share soon. Until then!

Just about ready to pull up the laptop and do some late night work and thought I'd drop a quick blurb.

The storms and flood subsided pretty quickly on Sunday and things got back to 'normal'. There are tons of people that lost their homes just across the road, it's a shame. Most around here don't have flood insurance either. The floods moved south to Columbus where Misha and I work, and did even more damage. It trashed one of my work's buildings. The damage so far is in the MILLIONS of dollars. I was there today and it was horrible. Anyways, we are safe. The shop was safe minus a small power outage.

Spent most of the day on Sunday in there putting finishing touches on racks for the show this coming weekend. Sammy Gregg came down and hung out on Sunday which was awesome. I love shootin' the $hit with Sammy and it was good company. Brett came over for several hours as well. Even had a clutch of eggs waiting on us when I got there on Sunday, which was nice to take my mind off the devastation I had seen just a while earlier driving around.

Anyways, that's it. Looking forward to seeing everybody in St. Louis this coming weekend!

The good news is that it's only been 24 hours since my last update. The bad news is that I'm at home updating the website rather than in the shop where I have a TON of racks waiting my attention. We woke up to quite a ruckus this morning. Our entire town is under a state of emergency due to flooding and we are literally stuck. There is no path from the south side of our town to the north side of our town. I had a friend run over to the shop (Thanks Josh!) to make sure we were in no flood danger over there but unfortunately I can't get there and may not be able to for several days. I've never seen anything like it. We had some water problems anyway from the storms and tornados the past week but overnight we got another 10" and we're expecting more on Monday and Tuesday. Our house is high enough in the addition that we're safe but some homes in the front of the addition aren't so fortunate. We just rode down to the front of the addition and snapped some pictures:

The next few days should be interesting. This is going to get worse before it gets better. Hopefully we can get everything knocked out that we need to before the show weekend next weekend, going to be tight, tight, tight.

Again, a major lack of an update, many apologies. Not sure what's keeping us busier than normal this year, there's not that much. We have the typical baseball season and then rack making on the weekends. We are on the tail end of our largest order of racks ever, about 37 racks. Richard, Mike, and I have been in the shop working on them for over a month. Going to put the finishing touches on a ton of them this weekend in preparation for the start of show season next weekend in St. Louis.

2008 Babies have arrived!!!! We had 5.5 anery Kenyans 2 weeks ago and then our first clutch of ball pythons hatched earlier this week. After so many years of trying, we finally produced not one, but TWO super pastels and out of 4 eggs! Wow, we don't get good odds too often, we'll take it!

I didn't say too much about it for security purposes (leaving a shop empty and the wife and family at home alone tends to worry one enough) but I went to England for 10 days late last month on a business trip. Had a good time and it was a great experience. We got to visit 2 different places while I was there, Richmond Castle and Whitby Abbey, both amazing places. Here in the US, a home that's 100 years old is considered 'historic', they laugh at that. They have buildings standing over there that are older than America itself. Anyway, thanks to Iqbal for being great company while I was over there, he was the other American from my company supporting the project and he and I hung out most of the time. Had it not been for him, it would have been a boring trip. Here are some pics from the trip:

The Clow Beck House (my 'hotel'), Richmond Castle, Whitby Abbey

Alright, going to go spend some family time playing Wii as I know I'll be in the shop most of this weekend. Take care!

Hey hey...I updated the available '07 inventory tonight so thought I'd make a little blurb for those who read.

We just finished our last round of racks. Kyle came in the shop with me today and we were able to put the finishing touches on the 4 that were left then we cleaned, cleaned, cleaned. I don't think it's been so clean since we moved in. Won't stay that way for long though, I'll have more plastic on Friday and back to building we go.

I'm up to 4 clutches so far. The woma eggs are doing HORRIBLE. I've already lost 10 out of the 14 and another one looks to be joining them. What they say about these eggs is true, they're tricky. I mixed their hatching substrate substantially drier than I would for ball pythons and it was still too much. I think they may need some circulating air while I use sealed egg chambers for me balls. Hopefully we'll learn next year.

Anyway, I have in the incubator so far:

Clutch #1: Woma eggs, 14 originally, 4 left
Clutch #2: Pastel x Pastel, 4 eggs
Clutch #3: Pastel x High Yellow, 9 eggs
Clutch #4: Ghost x Het Ghost, 6 eggs

I expect a few more this week and then it'll thin out quite a bit. I'm expecting 10 or less clutches this year...ouch.

On the boa side of the house, my male albino Whitewater finally got his groove on and has bred with all 4 of his ladies so hopefully that will work out. I have an albino female, two het females, and a normal female all for him this year. All the other rosies have been doing very well. Sand boas are going pretty good so far, it looks like my Indian is going to go which is cool, that only happens once every 2-3 years.

Alright, I'm beat. I was in Nashville, TN the past 2 days with work and after the shop today the family and I went geocaching. Went 7 for 10. Until next time.

Wow, 2 months. Those were supposed to be our 'dead' months too. The basketball season was absolutely exhausting. We ended up winning the league though, the kids worked really hard. We lost the final tournament, it just wasn't our day. Regardless, I had a good time and the kids taught me a ton.

A long 17 days after the basketball season ended, we had our first baseball practice. First two practices in sub-40-degree weather. That my friends is ridiculous. They really need to move it back a few weeks. Anyways, I'm helping coach the baseball team and it looks like this is going to be a fantastic team. We've got mostly returning kids and then most of the kids that came up from the minor leagues are studs. I've been pretty fortunate as far as teams go. Last year our baseball team won the league, the basketball team did well, and I expect this baseball team to do pretty well.

We just had a nice (but quick) spring vacation. Misha's brother and his wife were in town from Colorado (by the way, for those that don't know, I'm finally going to be an uncle...of TWINS!) so we visited with them for a few days in Lafayette. From there we went up to Gurnee, IL north of Chicago and spent a few days at the Key Lime Cove indoor waterpark up there and shopping at the Gurnee Mills Outlet Mall. We also did some geocaching while we were up there. I think we knocked out 10 finds in one afternoon actually, it was quite productive.

Well, the '08 season has officially started, we had our first clutch today. We got a 14-egg clutch of womas. Woo hoo! This is our first year with them but if we have success in hatching these, I can forsee these being a staple for us. We picked up those, dumerils, and hognose to try this year and I'm not sure how the other two are going to work out. Doesn't it make sense that the one that works out are the $1500 adults and not the $200 adults, grrrr.

Not really sure how everything else is going. The rosys have been breeding pretty well. My male albino Whitewater has a TON of work to do this year (one albino, two het albinos, and a normal) doesn't appear to be doing jack squat but everybody else seems to be doing okay. My male hognose wouldn't breed to save his life so I just got in a backup male and am quickly trying to run him through although I'm afraid it may be a little too late. The balls...well, the verdict is still out. As of right now, I can only feel follicles in about 5 or 6 ball pythons. It appears I've missed on most of my important stuff. My spider to pastel breedings look to have gone kaput for the 2nd year and my pied breeding doesn't look good. We'll just have to see.

I've got a small rant. I'm going to start trying to do more of these, the rants and raves type of things. Not because I like to be dramatic but because I don't have a lot of avenues for venting. I have a small tight-knit group of friends and most don't give two hoots about my rants :) So here goes...within two weeks, we've basically lost two good friends. Both of them did things where they were in the wrong (one was more drastic in the other) but won't apologize. Part of being a friend, and just being an adult, is being mature enough to go "I was wrong, I'm sorry". That's it, that's all it takes. On the reciprocating side, a friend will understand that people will make mistakes and accept the apology. But I'm being a stubborn a$$ and I refuse to apologize for things I didn't do wrong and both of these people need the help 'growing up', it's one of their only character flaws. As much as I value their friendship, I'm not giving in to these. I guess my tight-knit group of friends just became tighter. So there's my vent...people, if somebody means anything to you, do two things. Be mature enough to accept that you did something wrong, and apologize. I apologize all the time to my friends just because I THINK I may have said or done something wrong. When it's clear you did something wrong, be an adult about it.

Anyways, I've got some pics from vacation and some more breeding, etc. but my battery just went belly up so I'll pull those off for the next time. Until then, hope everybody is doing well!

Brief little note. I forgot to mention on the last entry that Richard helped me pull the rosies and hogs out of brumation a few weeks ago. They took their 2nd meal tonight. I've got the ball temps on their way back up. Every pair that I put together has bred, it's out of my hands now...well, not really, but figuratively speaking I can't MAKE the girls take.

I have got the '08 breeding schedule online. You can see it here.

I still owe some breeding pictures. Here are a bunch to give you a fix :)

Axanthic to Het Axanthic; Ghost to Het Ghost; Mojave to Normal

Flame to 'Big Momma', Pastel to Pastel, Pied to Het Pied

Spider to pastel, Spider to pastel, Womas breeding

Alright, gotta hit the sack. Until next time!

Wow, what a long time. I hope everybody had a great Xmas and a happy new year!

I do have excuses as usual for the lack of updates. For starters, I got a new computer 3 weeks ago and just got all the data moved across and Dreamweaver set back up and ready to roll. Second, I am coaching my son's school basketball team. For those that know me, I coach a lot, 2 'seasons' of basketball and 1 season of baseball a year and I've been doing that for almost 4 years. Each of those is usually a night a week for practice and a night a week for games, somewhat manageable. This basketball league is actually competitive (my first time doing so) and it's incredibly time-consuming. We practice 2 nights a week, have a game one night a week, then another game on Saturday afternoon. So our schedule has been booked solid EVERY day for the past month +. It's awesome though, I love it. The team is great and we've made a strong opening season at 4-0.

Breeding season has been going incredibly well...well, hit and miss...we'll have a good week followed by a dud week, but that's still two good weeks a month :) So far, everything has bred at least once or twice, and some have bred 4-5 times. As usual, we have a strict breeding schedule where each female will only get bred with one male. I'll post some pics soon.

Richard and I have been working our tails off in the shop on Thursday nights and all day Sundays. So much for a dead winter, the rack sales are keeping us going strong fortunately. Pets Galore in Louisville, Kentucky is now the one and only reseller of Jason's Jungle rack systems. Tim & Pete down there are outstanding guys and their store is amazing. They have a HUGE reptile room and they truly care about their animals and make sure their customers are well-informed, something I really respect. Anyways, I took a load of racks down there a few weekends ago and all but a few sold so Richard and I have been cranking out more, I think there are 18 in this next round (10 small units and 8 large units). We're really excited about this partnership with Pets Galore, there is such a large reptile base in the Louisville area and Pets Galore seems to be the focal point for them all.

Anyways, that's about it from our side. As I said, I have a ton of breeding pics I'll put up soon as well as some of our other projects (hognose, dumerils, Russian sand boas, etc.). All in due time :) Until then...

Hey all, sorry it's been so long. We ended the year with a bang doing 5 shows in 4 weekends. We have a long break now then we'll be doing the St. Louis show on 12/30/07 then we'll be done until spring.

Rosys and hognose are in cooling, big snakes are cooling and breeding, and ball pythons have been cooled and are starting to get it on. I'll have some pictures of those up soon.

I have a picture of our show in Evansville, our new ghost male (that's the surprise purchase from Tinley), then 'the gang' at Indy (what was to be our last stop...that's Richard, me, and Brett).

We'll update with breeding pictures soon. Hope everybody had a good Turkey Day.

Hope everybody has recovered from Tinley Park weekend. What a madhouse. As the past years, it was a ball python festival. Some cool stuff though. I enjoyed seeing the Cyrstal Balls in person and also the axanthic pinstripe that BHB had. We've yet to see the potential of the axanthics, mainly axanthic pieds (and to think I have the potential for this and I'm not doing it), axanthic clowns, etc.

As most of you know, we didn't have a table. We were on the waiting list for many months but it never came through for us...so we were on the opposite side of the table for once, it was kind of nice. One thing I was amazed about is how many people we knew there and how many of our customers were there. Seemed every 10 steps we ran into somebody. Feels pretty good to know so many of you...but it made for a long day making it around the show HAHAHA! I'll share pictures of our new investment as soon as I get them downloaded.

Show season is winding down but we have a ton of babies left. In case you haven't caught it, here are the deals I'm doing:

'07 100% Het Ghost Pairs - $200
'07 Pastel Pairs - $350
'07 Anery Kenyan Pairs - $100
'07 Het Anery Kenyan Pairs - $75

In addition, I can do some group discounts on the het ghosts and Kenyans. I just produced a few too many Kenyans too late in the year. Had I had some back in June when I started doing shows, it would have been okay.

We also still have our Trim The Fat Sale going on. We have a few animals on there left.

Alright, I'm tired as heck and need to go to bed. Hope everybody is doing well. We'll be in Indy this weekend (oh yes, calendar changed, no PA this weekend, don't have enough racks and plastic won't be here until Thursday), St. Louis the weekend after, Shelbyville the weekend after that, Iowa the weekend after that, then finishing up in Evansville where we started this year. Until next time!

Well, Sammy scolded me for not updating in a month when we have the most going on so here I go...and apologies to all 6 people who read this :)

God, where to start...well, we had our first litter of true Mexicans, 2 babies and a slug. The Mexicans are small snakes and they have small litters, which is partly why the Mexicans are in higher demand (that and because they look cool as heck).

On the rosy subject, we had about the craziest thing happen (and maybe one of the only true 'good luck' things that's ever happened to me). We leant our friend Troy at Reptilian Projects a pretty Whitewater that we own, she almost looks like an anery of sorts. He bred her to his albino Whitewater male (black eye) and produce 5 healthy babies, but two of them were ALBINOS!!!! So this pretty girl was a het and I had NO idea. So not only do I get to keep my portion of the litter (one albino boy and a het female...keeping the female, will sell the male here in a few weeks), but I now get my girl back, now a proven het albino female. Cool stuff, that's one more litter of albinos I can produce next year.

We hatched out our last clutch of pastels for the season. I finally got some girls. I had like 9.4 pastels this year and 6.4 normals. This clutch was 1.4 pastels and 1.2 normals...I like it. Some of the prettiest it appears to. I think my holdback girl is in this group, we'll just have to see which one eats well.

Last bit of cool news...saving the best for last..in more ways than one...the last clutch of balls to hatch...and I FINALLY produced a ghost. This was the FOURTH year I tried breeding this het girl, if she didn't go, I was selling her as a normal and being done with her. She only had 3 good eggs but we got a beautiful ghost male. I know this is smal potatoes but those who know us know how much of a struggle it was to get here. We had our original ghost male die on us 3 years ago then last year the incompatability problems killed us...so finally, with BIG thanks to our pal Tim at Snowballs for lending us a male, we got a ghost.

Mexicans being born; Mexicans and mother; "Surprise" rosy litter

Pastel (Clutch #9) hatching; THE ghost hatching; Clutch #10 babies

We did a show up in Lake County, IL a few weekends ago. The racks did INCREDIBLY well. Other than some pastels that Tom Furr had on his table (Tom, those things were HOT!), we had some of the nicest balls in the place and the only rosies and sand boas...but only sold a pair of normal ball pythons...god I love this business sometimes. Wasn't a total loss though, we met some great people and the racks went over well. I love it when we have people fighting over racks before they even come off the trailer HAHAHA!

This past weekend was the Indy show. Not a bad crowd considering the weather outside was PERFECT. For the first time in..well...ever...I didn't sell a rack there, but we did pretty well with the animals.

This weekend we're off to Morehead, KY...one of my favorite shows. This is a pimped out facility and Jarrod and Jamie really know how to run a show and treat their vendors right.

Oh, almost forgot, Trim the Fat Sale 2007 has started. Each year about this time, funds get tight, racks get full, frustation gets high, etc. and I cut back the collection a bit, 'trimming the fat'. Often means perfectly fine animals that may have attitude problems, eat mice, or are finicky eaters. Lots of ball pythons on there, including some of my monser breeders. I always offer these animals to my friends and customers (meaning the 6 of you that read this) first before I advertise publicly. So there you are, check out the Trim the Fat 2007 page and let me know if anything interests you.

Until next time...

What a roller coaster of a weekend. Richard, Brett, and myself spent all weekend at a pair of shows in Michigan; Saturday in Kalamazoo and Sunday in Grand Rapids. These were NOT close, about 5 1/2 hours away to Grand Rapids and about an hour closer for Kalamazoo. Anyways, we did our usual setup, brought it all. We were one of the only people with ball pythons (a RARE occasion anymore and what seemed like a perfect opportunity). We sat there, and sat there, and sat there. I didn't make a SINGLE sale all day on Saturday. No racks, no snakes, not even a thermostat. I had to write the Collion's a friggin' check to pay for my tables. I've never had that happen before. I can't remember the last time we went to a show and didn't sell a rack. Someday soon I'm going to break out into a "Why do people CONTINUE to buy disgusting wild caught animals from gross vendors?". It's becoming the trend. I saw SO many animals move recently that hadn't been out of an 'airport box' more than a few hours. Not for here or now though.

We contemplated on heading home but thought "Really, can it get any worse? If it can, wouldn't it be kind of funny?" so off to GR we went. Smaller show but we actually did better there. We were able to sell 2 snakes there and met some good people (a lot of the same vendors that were present on Saturday). I know there's more to it than money but just doing some rough calculations, I put about $300 in the tank, we spent about $150 on hotels, $95 on tables, and about $100 on food. That's $645 if my calculations are correct. Total receipts for the weekend, $185. OUCH!!!! Not what I needed right now. Richard did mediocre on Saturday but sold a ton of stuff on Sunday, glad one of us did well at least.

Quiet ride back to Indiana on Sunday, got back to the shop to unload the animals and BOOM! Hit with some major good news. First, my favorite anery (a girl I held back and have raised up for 2 years from my prime stock) was having babies as we watched. We saw her with just the 2nd one out. Then after we let her be for a few minutes, we found 4 Arizona chocolate babies and 6 more San Felipe babies. In the end, the anery had 21 babies. For those paying attention, that's two virgin anerys that have produced so far, those are usually 4-8 baby litters...I have 36 so far. I'm just shocked.

Anyways, here are some pics then I'm off to bed. Still have some more updating on the site to do, will hopefully catch some more this week.

Been a busy week but I need to take a second to put some updates in. Had a big weekend last weekend traveling to Shelbyville, KY and then on to St. Louis. Had a pretty decent weekend. We moved an abnormal amount of sand boas and moved only a few racks (odd for those shows). All in all, a good (but long) weekend. The in-laws were in town from Texas and I was gone all weekend, felt pretty bad about that. Had a good visit with them what short time I was able to spend with them.

Been a busy week animal-wise. We had our first boas last Thursday, 15 anerys from an anery Kenyan that couldn't have been much more than 300g, just crazy! This week we had 4 babies from Kyle's Whitewater rosy and then 10 babies from our main San Felipe that we call "The Machine". Still have 2-3 girls yet to go for the rosies and probably 4-5 for the sand boas. I should be crawling with anerys here shortly. In addition, Brutus finally had his very own shed. Wow, what colors he has!

We're off to Michigan this weekend. Two shows I've never done up in Kalamazoo and Grand Rapids. Brett and Richard are going to help out. Should be a fun weekend.

Here are a bunch of pictures. I may have snuck one in of my new albino Kenyan as well :)

Sorry for the quick update but I need to hit the sack. Until next time!

Thought I'd take a second to write a quick blurb. Had a decent show in Wisconsin last weekend. That was our first time up there. Met some great people. Show was cramped and hot and it was just a long day. Didn't really sell much other than some pre-orders but it was fun nonetheless. We're on the road all of the next 2 weekends, 5 of our 14 shows this year are within 3 weekends, yuck. This is when it gets tricky to hold everything together: keeping racks made, keep the animals taken care of, and trying to hold the family together. Anybody who's been in the situation knows what I'm talking about. We're definitely looking forward to the next few weekends. This coming weekend is familiar, two of our favorite shows in Shelbyville, KY and then to St. Louis, MO. Next weekend is up to Grand Rapids and Kalamazoo for some new shows for us.

No big news, had some more het ghosts hatch out. I'm finally showing a picture of Brutus below, he's the sole axanthic we hatched out this year. He's itty bitty, only about 30 grams at the moment. We're working with him and giving him some extra TLC (which doesn't seem to deter the fact that he wants to kill me every time he sees me). Hopefully we'll have him available within the next month or so. I'll have the first clutch of het ghosts online later this week and will have some with me the next few weekends.

For those taking bets, it's now August and I STILL don't have a single boa on the ground. I've got probably 5 sand boas gravid and 4 rosies gravid...not a single baby. Above is AN-F-8 (Anery Kenyan) and SFRB-F-2 (San Felipe Rosy) both busting at the seams, I'd expect at least one litter this coming week.

Hope everybody is staying out of trouble and hope to catch some of you the next few weekends. Until next time...

Howdy, howdy, howdy. Hope everybody is doing well. We're getting ready to hit the show season hard. We do Wisconsin this weekend (just Misha and I, the boys are staying with the grandparents, this will be a nice change), then Shelbyville 8/11, St. Louis 8/12, Kalamazoo 8/18, and Grand Rapids on 8/19. That'll be our first time doing the Michigan shows, we're looking forward to it.

Anyways, Richard and I have been going gung ho on racks (minus the week we took off to go on vacation...family and I went to Colorado...I may just post some pics of that). We have 2 of almost every rack ready to go on the trailer and one spare of everything to backfill if we sell.

Had a ton of hatching here the past 10 days and also had 2 late clutches of ball python eggs. STILL no rosy or sand boa babies to speak of although I have gravid girls everywhere. Looks like 5 rosy litters and 5 sand boa litters but we'll just have to see what happens. Not going to count my babies before they...umm, not technically hatch...umm, deliver? :)

Here are some pics of the last 3 hatching and also the two clutches born last week. The middle picture is pretty neat. I had a clutch of 3 eggs from a pastel clutch and 1 egg from a spider clutch in the same egg chamber since they were born a day apart and to save room. One of the pastel babies came out last night and began "nesting" around the egg from the spider clutch. No shock, it's a normal, a TOTAL strikeout on spiders/bumblebees this year, @#$&!:

Hope to see most of you on the road the next few weekends and hope you're all doing well.

Hope everyone is donig well. We have a bit of a break here between baseball season (if anybody cares, the Minor League Reds won the division, quite proud of them!) and show season. We had a pre-season show in Evansville but we kick it in full gear here at the end of this month. Richard and I have been stocking up with the first round of racks. We'll need to have another one of these before the rough October but this should tide us over for a bit.

Still don't have any sand or rosy boas on the ground, it's getting close. It looks like I have 5 Kenyans gravid, 4 rosies gravid, and a roughscale gravid. Not exactly the ideal year I was looking for but not half bad for moving during the middle of our cooldown.

We had our 3rd clutch pip early last week, complete with a spider...unfortunately a stillborn. Grrrr.....

We have 2 clutches pipping right now, our axanthic clutch and our ghost clutch. I have 2 babies out right now in our ghost clutch and they both look normal. I slit eggs and don't see anything unusual but we'll have just have to see. I'm going to be so disappointed if this het doesn't prove out, I've had her for almost 4 years.

Speaking of disappointment, I made my biggest mistaken in herping. It's embarrasing as hell but hopefully it will stop somebody from making the same mistake. I cut my axanthic eggs before they pipped (mistake #1, I have NEVER done this...I always wait until the first one pips then I cut). That by itself wasn't a problem. What was a problem is that I started poking and prodding the babies inside to see what they were (just looking for that first axanthic). This is a really stupid idea by itself but throw in the fact that I did it with my scissors that I use to cut the eggs. Short story long (and using some educational guessing), I poked a hole in their embryonic sac. The embryonic fluid (or egg 'guts' I suppose) seaped in and basically drowned them. I did have one stillborn that I don't think was my fault but I have flushed 3 additional babies down the toilet in the past 5 days. It was one of the most depressing things I've had to do. That clutch was our lifeline this year and I pissed it away. I have 3 babies that appear to have survived, it's hard to tell yet what they are, they haven't made their own way out of the eggs, but they are still alive. Just have to hold tight and cross our fingers, could be a bumpy road ahead. Lesson of the day is to not get over-anxious and to let nature run its course.

Have our 2nd clutch of eggs pipping this evening. I'll try to get pictures posted up soon. Looks like it's 3 pastels and 5 normals, making up for the good odds on the first clutch. It always does seem to even out that way.

Had our season opener show in Evansville this past weekend. My buddy DJ put on a heck of a show. He busted his butt and it showed. To pull almost 800 people into a small town show like that is phenomenal. The crowd (vendors and patrons alike) were all great and we enjoyed being back on the road and seeing some of our friends. Plus, we ended up selling quite a bit of our '06 stock which is awesome, we have to move it to make room for the '07s (that sounds like a cheesy car dealership commercial HAHAHA).

Our setup in Evansville; DJ the promoter and is daugher Sidney, and one of our '07 pastels

I just made up feed cards for the first clutch of babies, most of them took their first meal last week. I'm going to go ahead and put them on the available page this week and start taking orders. None will ship out until they eat 4 times though, that's a JJ rule :)

Alright, I still have to run over to the shop and get a rack boxed up (Thanks Heather!) and check on eggs and babies. Until next time!

Well '07s are officially here. Our first clutch of eggs started pipping on Thursday and were all out today. 10 eggs, 9 hatched. Official count is 4 pastel males, 2 pastel females, 2 normal males, and one normal female. Not a bad start. Here are some pics.

As you might be able to tell, those are a bit better quality than my usual pics. After about a month of investigating, we finally decided to invest in a few camera. After reading review after review and talking to people we knew, we decided on the Nikon D40, a dSLR that has a lot of nice features we like. As you can see, the results are pretty fantastic. It'll be even better after I figure out what I'm doing :)

Richard and I have been going non-stop in the shop since last weekend. We got 19 racks built, sanded, and routed. Next weekend we'll finish off the ones we need for the Evansville show then take our time finishing up the other ones. Kind of looking forward to show season started again, it's been a long hiatus for us.

I'm beat, I'm heading to bed. Hope everybody is doing well and we'll update here more by next week. Ciao.