I gotta get back 'in tune' with updating the page more often. I apologize for those that have been checking it to find a lack of updates. Richard and I busted out that last plastic order and for the past 6 weeks have been building more rodent racks. We have already started breeding mice and we have a holding rack that's almost done now. Should be close to self sufficient here in about 6 weeks (which is good, because that's just about as long as I can afford to keep paying my rodent bill!).

We have 4 clutches of ball python eggs on the ground and about another 4 that are due within the next month. 2 clutches of pastels, one clutch of spiders, and one clutch of axanthics so far with a total of 28 eggs. I'll get some pictures up as soon as I can.

The rosy future looks...well, rosy. Every girl except one (that I gave the year off to) looks like they're swelling so this is good news. I don't think we'll see anything until probably July but it's a good start. The sand boas started off slow, mostly due to my lack of males!

Show season start in 6 weeks, that's friggin' crazy!

I'll update more shortly and include some additional pictures. Until then, take care!

Wow, the time has gone fast. Weeks go like days anymore. Must be a sign of getting old and staying busy.

The facility is done! I'm waiting on my big 1500-watt thermostat from Helix which should be here tomorrow and we need to get a mouse rack done but other than that, it's done and it's great. We got our utility tub installed last Thursday (thanks Chad!) and it's exactly what I wanted.

The rack biz is CRAZY! I usually sell about 8 racks between November and March. I had a dozen racks made up before we started working on the building thinking that'd tide me over. No way! We've gone through one plastic order and are on our SECOND one. I hate to complain about having good business (and we DO thank every one of you, who would have thought our little company would be selling 150 racks a year...not me!) but I hate telling customers they have to wait. That's one thing that makes us different, we're usually ready to ship out the next day. I've been working off of a backlog for about 6 weeks now. At this rate, we'll hit our 2006 sales mark before the show season even begins.

I'm working on a page that shows our facility throughout the progress. Keep in mind folks, this was mainly myself and 2 friends...and none of us are pros or anywhere close to it :) You can see it at facility.html. Below are some pictures.

We also dove into the world of rodent breeding. Almost have to when the weekly bill is at $150 on bad weeks (and that's without feeding babies). We have a rat rack built and plan on doing a mouse rack as well. I gotta say I think we did one fine job! We have our first pregnant rat and it's been less than 2 weeks. Thanks for the hookup on rats Cory!

Alright, gotta give props. My man Richard has been down here with me every friggin' weekend for like 3 months now. He has done absolutely everything from cleaning to building and everywhere in between. We could NOT be where we are at today without him. He even hauled over a big ole freezer the other day for us. We owe you BIG.

We have everybody out of brumation. We lost 1.1 hognose in cooldown this year, I think that was my own fault. And a HUGE kick in the gonads, my albino Whitewater died in cooldown too. I was afraid that would happen, he wasn't looking too good. That was one of my favorite projects. Well, we've got several more rosies going (Arizona chocolates and Mexicans) as well as the remaining 1.3 hognose, so that will hopefully make up for it.

We've been asking about our '07 show lineup. I've got a bunch of stuff writen down but nothing solid yet. I know we'll be doing the Evansville Reptile Show in June and Tinley in October and that's about it :) We plan on hitting the road in late June and we'll stay there until October. We should have several hundred babies to go through this year so we'll be hitting the shows harder than ever.

Alright, I'm going to jump off and go to bed. I hope everybody is doing well!

Darn, winter is finally here. Man, getting wet and COLD!

The end is finally near on the building project. I think if we can work hard this weekend, we should be able for the finishing touches the next weekend and with the exception of rodent racks and installing a big wash basin to clean the tubs out in, we can call it a wrap. We've got the walls and such almost done, just need to cut in and sponge paint. We need to put up the shelving and install the carpet in the incubator after that, put the final details on the hall carpeting, and then just wrap up some loose ends then we're done with the 'inside' part. We then have to focus an entire day on the workshop. Need to clean tools and find new homes for them, move my tools and such from home over there, etc. When that gets to be on your list, that's a good thing. Anyways, it's been VERY nice having the family over there helping me, it's an entire different lifestyle and we're all enjoying it.

It was a slow start but breeding season is still going strong. I have 2 lockups at any given time over there. Below is a sample of what's been going down at the love shack the past couple of weeks:

VPI Axanthic & 100% Het Female, Ghost and 100% Het Female, Spider & Pastel Female

Het Caramel & 50% PH Female, Spider & Female, Pastel & Female

Sorry for the brag, just real happy with the breeding. Nothing's for sure until heads are coming out of the eggs, but this at least gives us some potential.

Until next time, hope everybody stays safe.

Sory I haven't updated in so long, pretty much every waking hour is being spent over at the building and has been for about 13 weeks now. We finally got the animals moved in the week after Xmas (thanks to the crew that helped me load 100+ snakes, 10 racks, 2 incubators, and a TON of other supplies!) and the two snake rooms are complete (for all practical purposes anyway). We're still working on the other rooms a bit at a time, I think we're all a bit burned out. We did have the inaugural feeding over at the building this week and it was really nice. The family came over on Monday and helped me clean everybody then they all came over for feeding. I'd say within 6-8 weeks we should be totally done and hopefully by then up and running with our rodent production (one of the major driving factors for us to do this). I have a ton of pictures saved on different machines, I'll try to post soon.

I hope everybody had a great Xmas and New Years. Hope Santa was good to everybody and everybody had a great and safe New Year's celebration. We spent several days up in Lafayette with family. Misha's younger brother and his wife were in town from Colorado. They're awesome people, it just sucks we don't get to see them but once or twice a year now that they have moved but we had a great time hanging with them.We went up to Shedd's aquarium in Chicago the day after Xmas. That was great as always. They have a HUGE reptile exhibit going on now, showcasing their CB Komodo dragon which was VERY cool.

Breeding season for the balls started slowly but the past week has been incredible. I think it may have to do with them being moved and having to sit out a night while the rack temperatures were 'tweaked'. No complaints though, the males are going like hotcakes. Spider has bred 3 girls (including a female pastel!), my pastel girls have conquered 4 girls, the het caramel male and PH female have been locked up like crazy, and the axanthic finally locked up with the big het female. Looking decent but we won't know for a while how things are truly going to go.

Well, I'm out. Think I may go catch a quick nap then head back up to the building. So far this weekend we've built a big shelving unit for rack storage, we've painted the doors on the two snake rooms, put tile down in the bathroom (not on the list but the concrete floor was driving Misha crazy I think), and got the incubator prepped for trim painting. Plan on going back and doing the same to the rodent room then we can knock the rest out in one swoop.

Take care everybody!

Big breath, it's almost over. We went 4 out of 6 weekends on the road all the while trying to get our new facility done. We're wrapping up this weekend in Morehead, KY and we'll be done for the year. What I don't sell off then I'll wholesale out or keep until next year.

We had a great time at the Indy Reptile Expo, hope everybody made it out. Logistics there were an absolute nightmare but the show ran well. A bit scared on Saturday when we had only sold a rack and 2 snakes but Sunday was a GOOD day. Got to meet a ton of people and we sold a ton of racks and snakes. That show wasn't cheap so paying the bills certainly helped. It also saw us move about 14 animals which is incredible for us. I now actually have a manageable amount of heads to feed :)

Facility is still going up. We got about 3/4 of the way done then I decided I wanted a design change. In the end, it's a wise decision. You can kind of see it from the pictures below. The first picture is where we were at after 2 days, must've been 8 weeks ago now. The 2nd picture is where we were at 2 weekends ago RIGHT before we decide to make the major alterations. As you can see from the picture, we've now added another wall making a long hallway. The 4 doors on the right are a 12x8 rodent room, a 5x8 walk-in incubator, a 10x8 quarantine room and hopefully a tub washing room if I can find a utility sink big enough, then the regular bathroom. The big room in the bag left is broken out into two separate breeding rooms and a supply closet. The entire top of everything is covered in 3/4" tongue-and-groove plywood and is as sturdy as a rock. We'll be using that area up there to store our Sterile tubs, shipping boxes, and lots of personal junk as well. The rest of the area there is all workshop space. I'll build and store the racks in that area, about 18x20 or so. I could always store upstairs too if I felt like breaking my back getting them up there.

We've actually come a long way since this picture. The wall down the middle is complete with a window and a door. All the insulation is up (walls and ceilings...took 6 hours on Saturday alone to put up all the ceiling insulation), all the walls are boarded, just need to hang some ceilings....Anyways, this is what we've been working on with the limited amount of time we have. Our friend Brett has been over there any time we need him and we certainly couldn't have done 1/2 this without him. Also got some time in from Stephen and Michael who tore through the stairs like it was no tomorrow. In addition Richard has put quite a bit of time in (the insulation guru) as well as Joe and Josh. Thanks guys...only a few more weeks until I quit bugging you!

Well, hope to catch some of you at Morehead here this weekend. If not, keep in touch and we'll see you in the spring. We're getting a late jump on breeding season due to wanting to time the cool down with the move. I'll still keep this updated and stuff throughout the winter. Until next time!

Hello all, hope everyone is doing well. Still been chaotic around here but hopefully only for another 4 weeks or so. We just got back from the Tinley Park show on Sunday evening (well, thanks to traffic, Monday morning). Although we've tried the past 2 years, this was our first year being a vendor. Had a scare on Saturday morning when we arrived to find our spot taken by another vendor and no free tables. The coordinators slapped us together something and it worked, fortunately it was a great location. We got to meet several of our good customers for the first time face-to-face and of course catch up on customers we've seen before as well as make a few new ones. The racks did really well. Kinda got dealt a blow when a big order backed out on us so we were telling customers all morning Saturday "It's sold, it's sold, it's sold" and then on Saturday afternoon they finally fessed up that they were backing out. Fortunately we were then able to move some and only came home with 4 out of 12 racks and I never would have expected 2 of them to sell. We unveiled the new 28-slot hatchling rack on Saturday morning with great reviews. I REALLY like it. I gotta give props to my boy Gib for helping me out all weekend long. The guy actually owns more JJ racks then I do, it was only right for him to pitch them for me. He did really well. Wish I could pull him to more shows with me.

We did sneak in one more litter this year, although it wasn't a great one. Our high-white anery Kenyan dropped 3 babies but 4 stillborns and 8 slugs...and it looks like she may have retained a few. If she doesn't pass them soon, she'll have to go in for surgery...which may kick her out of the breeding program...that sucks, she's one of my favorites.

Big news that I haven't shared with much of anybody except those really close to us is that we're moving into a new facility. Been working our tails off for the past 5 weeks and will probably continue to do so for the next 5-6 just in time to get them settled in and cooling season to begin. It has everything we've wanted (well, it will when we're done building it) including two large breeding rooms, a walk-in incubator, a rodent room, and plenty of room to build and store racks. Look for pictures soon.

That's it for now. Hope to catch some of you at the St. Louis show this coming weekend or at the big Indy show November 4th and 5th. Until then!

Didn't realize it had been so long since I updated. Been pretty chaotic around here. Still have babies running out our ears. Think we're actually done for this year, had about 80 sands and rosies combined...nothing like the 'big boys' but enough to keep us busy. Started our little crazy schedule of shows a few weekends ago. I have the last weekend in September off but it's my annual golf trip (i.e. great guy's weekend) and that's about it until the end of November. That's a lot of babies to move out in a short time...hope we can do it.

Also have a round of racks being built to try to meet the demand of the upcoming shows. I'll be unveiling my new 28-slot hatchling rack at Tinley Park. I'm ixnaying my 48-slot, just too darn big and bulky. I can easily carry this one around plus it's 6' tall just like my other towers.

Still need to get the last two litters of rosies online here shortly (gotta get their pictures and everything first, that's the holdup). I'll have that done by Tinley Park as well and will have them there with me.

Alright, I'm tired as heck. Hitting the sack. Hope to see everyone in the following weeks.

Been a rough few weeks. I was plagued by computer problems so backed up my data and started from scratch. It took several nights being up until 1:30 until I got it all done. Got it up on Friday night, printed stuff out for the Sunday show on Saturday afternoon and while we were gone on Sunday, we had a lightning storm and not only blew out the computer totally (gone, dead, see ya), it got my network gear as well so I've been without Internet for a few days. Got everything replaced and I've temporarily stolen Kyle's computer :)

Well, had our last rosy litter drop early last week. For those that are counting, that's EVERY single girl we have. 2 San Felipe litters, 1 Whitewater litter, and 2 100% het albino Whitewater litters. We're tickled pink. We just got an Arizona chocalate trio of rosies, female needs some major fattening up and we need to decide which male to let go but they're pretty cool. Also looking at a breeding pair of albino rosies so we'd be able to produce albinos next year as well as hets.

Also, big news...Big Momma dropped! Not the record we were hoping for but she had potential. She had 24 babies, 2 stillborns (they could fit on a dime!), and 6 slugs...so that was 32 potential babies. Quite happy with what we have though. Man that's a buttload of babies! It was their first week eating this week and I can already feel the dent in the pocketbook :) I'll have them online within the next week (don't have any of the sands or rosies yet...to be coming soon).

We're heading to Shelbyville, KY (just east of Louisville) for a show this weekend then in 2 weeks we'll be at the new Eastern Kentucky show in Morehead, sounds like the new place is pimpin', a brand new expo center there. Hope to catch up with some of you then! Until next time.

Finally have some Kenyans on the ground...man, what an odd year...it's always the same...right after the last ball pythons hatch, here come the sand boas...almost as soon as they're done, here come the rosies...well, I had 4 rosy litters before I got my first Kenyan litter. Still have Big Momma and two anery litters we're waiting on. So, needless to say, we've had several litters that we haven't gotten updated. They are below. First is the 2nd litter of San Felipes. The mother of these was in horrific shape last year and I wasn't sure if she was going to come around but she did, in a big way. Second is our original rosy (named 'Rosy'...how original) who bred our albino Whitewater male so these will all be 100% het albinos (and we should have another litter of the same). Lastly is the first Kenyan litter of the year. I only bred anery males this year so I'll only produce het anery and anery babies.

Been working on some 8x5 postcards to have for the upcoming shows, almost have it finalized. Thank goodness I have my friend Troy in Illinois, he's a genius with this stuff and sets me on the right path all the time.

Well, cutting out and going to spend some time with the boys. Take care everyone.

Had another litter of rosy boas on Monday, this one our first litter of Whitewaters. This is a pretty exciting litter because this was 'Kyle's snake'. When we bought our original trio of rosies 3+ years ago, it came with a baby that was about 4 weeks old. We've raised it up since then and she's the one that gave birth. 5 babies to a mom that was less than 500g and she still looks good. She was the only girl to breed my normal Whitewater male, all of my other females bred the albino and will be 100% het.

Not much happening other than that, just waiting for some sand boas to drop so we can start hitting the show circuit hard. Have quite a schedule layed out for the next 3 months including NARBC at Tinley Park in October than a few weeks later at the big Indy show.

Hope everyone is doing well...until next time.

Wouldn't you know it, we go out of town this week on vacation and all of the excitement starts...we had a litter of ten, yes...TEN...San Felipe rosy babies. I have never heard of such a large litter. Mom still looks great too, couldn't tell she just laid an entire baseball team's worth of babies. I'll have some pictures up soon.

The pastels and Indians are ready to go, just need to get their pictures online, look for that soon.

Hope everybody is doing well, we'll post more soon!

Just spent about 3 hours on the website. If something's out of place, please yell. Got some updated pictures online though, went picture crazy last week.

I also have a Trim The Fat sale page up. Getting rid of a few projects and some other things. Check it out and let me know if you're interested. I'll leave it open to my own customer for a few weeks before I advertise.

Lost one of my new Indians yesterday. Just randomly died and it wasn't the runt. Here's a picture I got of it and the big one the night before:

Well, I'm ready to retire to bed, it's been a long one. Take care all.

We have had good 5 or 6 days here and expect it to keep getting better. A nice twist to keep our mind off of last week, although we all wish Steve was here to see it with us, he loved to see babies hatching.

First, I produced Indian sand boa babies for the first time! Man, what sight these things are. They're incredibly pretty (especially when you look at their parents that are basically dark brown all over...the 'turd snakes' as my kids and I call them) and they're HUGE. No wonder they only have a few. She had three, one at 40g, one at 46g, and one at 48g. That's over 4x the size of a baby Kenyan.

And more good news, we finally produced pastels. It's been a long humbling ride, but after years of trying we finally did it. Ball python gods were watching out for us too, we have 7 pastels and 3 normals. So far we have 1.2 pastels and 1.1 normals, the rest should be coming out of their eggs today.

Well, that's it for now. Have the Indy show this coming weekend, hope to see some of you there. We're then taking two weeks off then plan to hit the show circuit hard after that. Take care!

Got hit with a tragedy this week. Steve Scott, a good friend of ours (and to snakes everywhere) passed away this week. Steve was one of the main reasons I got into rack building and then back into ball pythons. My very first 'project' was to help him re-do his basement from 10-gallon tanks to rack systems. Since then he's been a confidant and has always been willing to lend us a hand whenever we need it. Anyone from the area will recognize Steve as he's been coming to the Indy show for years. A historic picture of our first rack way back 4 years ago is below.

RIP Steve, you'll always be in our thoughts and prayers. I miss you buddy.

Got finished doing the Indy show yesterday. Not a real good start to the 'die-hard' show season but it'll get better. We're still waiting on rosies and sand boas to drop so until then we just have a table with a few ball pythons on it..and it's hard to compete with the 'big dogs' and the people carrying $10 imports. Did move a few racks though which is good.

Didn't stop us from spending our life savings though. Misha and I have both been dying for a piebald for some time now and Terry Heuring had one there yesterday that was to die for. We have a 100% het male that came from Gateway City Reptiles that will be more than ready to go next year so this girl is a perfect fit. I'm a proud papa, I took about 40 pictures today...not so unusual for me to do that but usually I whittle it down to 1 or 2...couldn't pare it down to anything less than 10 :) Here are a few.

I've updated our main page a bit to show some show dates so everybody can see when we'll be in your area.

Well, it's almost 11PM and I have to run to storage to pick up a rack. I'm outta here. Until next time...

Hope everybody had a great holiday. We had a great time down in Louisville. Quite a roller coaster week or so for us. We had our largest girl (4000g+) give us a clutch of 8 slugs (5 slugs laid before the rest of the eggs) and 2 'good' eggs. Those eggs have since gone bad and had to be tossed :(

On the plus side, our 2nd largest girl (right under 4000g) give us an enormous clutch of 10 good eggs and 1 slug. Even after 1225g worth of babies, she still weighs in at 2685g or something like that. Crazy stuff. Anyways, she was bred to or pastel, so that should be a fun litter to hatch out. Here are some pictures of both clutches. The picture of the 2 eggs was taken just a day after they were born and you can tell they've already gone south.

Not much going on other than that. Finally got the last round of racks wrapped up...just in time to put in another order, never-ending cycle. Still waiting to see some rosy or sand babies...my guess is that we'll see them within 3-4 weeks from now. Big Momma dropped on 6/25/06 last year and around the same time the year before that so I'm guessing she'll go here pretty soon. The rest of the sand boas and rosy boas shouldn't be too far along after that.

Well, winding down for the night. I just put the 3rd clutch of ball pythons on the Available page. Check out M05...he's the runt. His brothers and sister weigh about 70g, he weighs 39g.

Until next time...

Hey all. I have the first two clutches of babies online in the Available section. I won't be letting anything go until they get a few more meals into them but I'm taking reservations.

Just got some breeding pictures uploaded as well. Actually haven't seen a ton of breeding the past few weeks, I think everybody that's going to go is all ready. Looks like a litter of roughscales, a litter or two of Indians, a few litters of het anery Kenyans (including Big Momma...going for a record this year), at least one litter of anery Kenyans, one litter of het albino Whitewaters, one litter or normal Whitewaters, and a litter of San Felipes. Looks like a lot of potential in the rosy/sand boa arena...which will hopefully make up for my lack of great luck in the ball python arena. Here are a few of the pictures:

Other than that, just finishing up the last round of racks and hopefully taking a trip down to Louisville on Sunday and Monday and hanging out with our friends Chris and Amy as well as dropping off some racks to our buddy Will who's hatching out more stuff than he can keep up with.

Until next time, take care.

It has been WAY too long. Work has been a bear recently and between that, baseball, keeping up with the snakes...I have a new addiction...online poker <drool, drool>. I've been playing Hold 'Em for several years now (before it was on TV at any hour of the day) and truly love it. I was content with playing most Friday nights with the guys. But now I've found online and I can play anytime...so some read before they go to bed, I play poker :)

Anyway, LOTS to talk about. First, Kenyan and rosy breeding is going VERY well. It looks like every one of my rosies has taken. I bred the new albino Whitewater to two females and then bred the normal male to one female. The new albino is quite a stud, a great investment if I get some babies.

STILL finishing up that last run of racks. Just about done. Have several big orders going out, just haven't been able to find time to finish them up and deliver them.

Well, to the most recent news...and the news I shouldn't have skipped over the past month. I have BABIES!!!! All 3 of my ball python cluthces have hatched (last clutch just today). The good news is that we had 100% hatch rate. I even had two eggs that were windowed and went moldy about halfway through. I never would have expected anything out of those two but sure enough, they were the first babies to pip in both clutches! Not sure if you can see the baby in Clutch #3 to the right below. It's SOOO small, probably 45g compared to it's siblings at around 80g.

Now the bad news...this kicked me in the balls so hard that I'm still carrying ice packs with me...I bred my yellow ghost (this isn't a 'questionable' ghost, he's a true yellow ghost) to TWO 100% het female ghosts, both from large/trusted names...I got ZERO....ZILCH....NADA as far as ghosts. I was okay with missing the odds on the first clutch (although we did get 1.3) but SIX eggs in the second clutch and not one ghost! IBGD! So we have an absolute buttload of 100% he ghosts, 4.7 right now with 3 more coming out of the egg soon. The first 4 shed the past few days and every one ate tonight, a really great start to say the least.

We'll be in Indy this weekend for the Midwest Reptile Show. If anybody is heading that way please stop by and say hello. Until next time!

Howdy hey everybody. FINALLY it's spring. 80 degrees outside today, awesome.

In the middle of my largest run of racks ever. $3900 worth of plastic alone. It's 11 oversize (6' tall) racks and then 14 regular ones. Crazy stuff. Spring break and busy weekends have reaked a bit of havoc on making quick work of them but we're getting there.

I promised some pictures of the new albino Whitewater and pastel female so here they are. No other big news other than it looks like a few of our huge ball python girls may have taken after all. I have one in shed now and two more that I swear were ovulating 2 weeks ago so we'll see.

Hope everyone is doing okay and we'll catch you in Indy in a few weeks!

Well, had our 3rd clutch on Friday. This was from another virgin girl bred to the ghost. That guy has been a stud! This girl was at about 2400g and even after laying is still above 1800g so assuming she starts eating, she'll be primed and ready for next year. In pusre hasteness and excitedness, I took her off the eggs, got the eggs in the chamber, and the chamber into the incubator...then I realized I forgot to take picture! So I pulled the eggs back out and snapped some pictures but I don't have any of the mother on them.

Invested in some animals the past few weeks. We got a breedable albino Whitewater rosy boa and a female pastel ball python that will be ready to go next year (can you say BumbleBee maker?). I'll have both of those photographed and online here shortly.

Well, until next time...

I knew it wasn't going to be a while but I thought it'd be another day or two. The 2nd clutch of eggs is here. I'm quite proud of this one. The mom is 100% het ghost that came to me as a 'finicky eater'. What I got was a 3-year old snake (with full paperwork) that weight 590g. She was RAIL thin. She took to our setup very well and within a week was chowing down. She got up to about 1400g before breeding season. At last weigh-in before tonight, she was 1280g. Tonight she was 780g. Yup, 500g worth of eggs. 6 nice big healthy ones (not to bad for a virgin that was less than 600g 9 months ago). She was bred to my ghost as well so in 3 days that's 10 eggs from ghost to het ghost. I'm excited to say the least. Can't wait to cut those eggs open! Here are some pictures from tonight:

Hmmm, where to start. Well, the best news is that 2 days ago we got our first clutch of the season, from our ghost male to our #1 het ghost female (think we have at least one more het ghost going to go as well...we SHOULD produce some ghosts this year darnit...if not we'll be stocked on hets). She had 3 good eggs, 1 windowed egg that at least candled good, and then 1 slug. Here are some pics:

So not a bad start. Just hope that's not it :)

We've commited to doing the Indy Reptile Expo in November, it's going to be a big show, along the lines of the NARBC show in Tinely Park. Lots of tables, lots of good vendors, etc. Indianapolis has never had anything this big before. It's being run by Brian Hahn who puts on the Midwest Reptile Show. Brian knows how to run a show that's for sure. Check out the site and make your reservations (for tables or hotels) and come to the show! Should be a good time.

Speaking of shows, Midwest Reptile Show is a week early this month, it's this comig Sunday. If you're in the Indiana area, come.

Just got done with a BIG round of racks and have half of them spoken for already, time to order plastic before I even get these out of the garage! Season started with a bang this year. Keeping John and I busy for sure.

Well, guess that's about it for now. Should be getting several more clutches of ball pythons here in the next 3 weeks. I'll update as I can. Until then, take care!

What a slacka$$ I am...almost 2 months??? C'mon, I can do better than that :) This one's for you Austin..since you're the only one to notice what kind of slacker I've been :)

It's been D-E-A-D around here until a few weeks ago. Rack sales are booming already. I sold 3 in 2 months and I've sold 6 in less than 2 weeks, that's how much of a turnaround there's been. Thanks all! We're going to be getting things in full force here soon.

Well, I finally have some pastel breeding, YEAH! Hopefully it wasn't too late. Now folks, when looking at the picture below, keep in mind that the pastel is over 1100g and notice how he's dwarfed by that female...she's a little over 3800g!!!! Yup, she's a horse. I guess the pastel likes the ladies with some junk in their trunk HAHAHA!

The ghost continued his streak and ran through all 3 het ghost females 3-4 times PLUS tackled two normal females. See, it's not me, it's just my choice of pastels! Here are some pictures of the ghost in action:

That's about it for now. I have some females getting ready to go into (what appears to be) pre-lay sheds, so hopefully here in 70-80 days we'll have some good news to post.

We're still undecided about the Indy show this month. I was going to take 3 months off, but with business picking up so soon already, I'd be a fool not to go. We'll decide when the time comes. Take care all!

Just a few quick breeding updated. My perfect streak for picking gay pastels is still alive. I have a 1200g male and a 1050g male (both early '04s) trying to breed now and they have no interest. Please, ball python gods, don't let me go pastel-less AGAIN this year!

The ghost on the other hand is proving to be quite the stud. He's 3 for 3 on the het ghost females. Probably going to throw a normal at him as soon as he's done with those 3 again. Here are some pictures of him and het ghost females #2 and #3.

Finally have some racks sales happening. It's been a quiet 4 weeks or so. 'Tis the season though, it happens every year.

That's about it from our side. We'll be doing the Midwest Reptile Show in Indianapolis the Sunday after Thanksgiving (guess that's next Sunday) then we'll be calling it quits for a few months. Hope to see you all there. Until then...

Howdy hey all! Been dog slow around here the past few weeks. I think I've shipped one or two racks out in just under a month. In peak season, we do 2-4 a week. Very little sales too but that's pretty usual for this time of year.

We started cooling our temps off about 3 weeks ago and finally got to our desired breeding temps last week so we put some animals together. The results are positive. The pastel still hasn't locked up but the ghost and the het caramel are already going to town. Here's a picture of them...yup, it's the that time of year for SNAKE PORN! :)

That's about it around here, as I said, it's been pretty dead. Haven't had a rack-building weekend in about 6 weeks, but that's a good thing sometimes.

Take care everybody!

Long time no write...hope everybody is doing well. Everybody gearing up for the next breeding season? We still have some rosies to sell and still have our adult breeder Saharan and Indian sand boas to sell but other than that we're done with '05. Females are probably about ready to stop eating here shortly and then it'll be time to cool.

Tinley Park show was last weekend...we had to sit and talk long and hard about it but we decided to invest in some animals. We did pretty well selling off some of our normal girls and the albino project and we have no intentions of quitting so we decided to invest in some new projects. Here's a picture of our new purchases:

That is a normal female on the left, a VPI axanthic male in the middle, and a spider male on the right. We love them all!

Okay, done bragging now...I don't like to do that much but I'm pretty proud of these :)

I'm out for now. We just got back from our yearly golf trip and I'm absolutely beat. We'll be at Indy next weekend, hope to see you there!

Howdy all...nothing too exciting going on here. The 'cutbacks' have gone quite well. We sold all of our normal female balls (not all, just the ones we were trying to sell, that leaves us at least 8), found a buyer for the albino project that I'm quite sure will treat the project as well (if not better) than I have and enjoy it, plus it looks like we have a buyer for our female roughscales which is cool, they won't be disappointed.

In the process of a rack-building session. With plastic prices still going up, we got enough plastic for about 12 racks to have on-hand to hopefully tide up over for a month or so.

Other than that, I have the Whitewater rosies online in the Available section. Think we're done for this year. I had hoped for one more clutch of ball python eggs and one litter of roughscales, just doesn't look like it's going to happen. Better luck next year.

Hope everyone is doing well and hopefully we'll talk soon.

Just finishing up a LONG day. Had the Midwest Breeder's Show in Indy today. The show went fan-friggin-tastic. That's the most animals (10) that we've ever moved at show. They were all $40-$75 Kenyans so we're not exactly talking retirement but we did get to sell to some first-timers and some return customers alike, all-in-all a good time...except that I'm tired as heck. Just updated the Available page with all of the things that sold...man, those 51 sand boas sure didn't last long....

Just wanted to thank everybody for coming out today. Also wanted to mention that I put some of my roughscale, Indian, and Saharan breeding stock up for sale if anybody's interested. You can see all of the details on my The Big Sale page.

Thanks all and take care until next time...

Hey all, just a quick blurb or two then I'm going to hit the sack from a long weekend.

ROSIES! ROSIES! ROSIES! I had another litter of them this morning, these being Whitewaters so I got my litter of each (one San Felipe litter and one Whitewater litter) that I was hoping for. This girl was a virgin and gave me 7 healthy babies and no slugs. REALLY glad I waited that extra year on her; she could have gone last year but I decided to be better safe than sorry. Here are some pictures (thanks to Julie for doing all of the work so I didn't have to drive 30 minutes bright and early this morning!):

Along the same rosy topic, I have the San Felipes online on the Available page now. 5 of the 7 took their first meal this past Thursday so once they get a few more meals in them, they'll be ready to go. In the meantime, I can take deposits on some if you'd like to hold them.

Looking forward to the Indy show on Sunday, think we're going to take some of our breeders with us, at least the pastel and albino ball pythons plus I'll probably bring Big Momma and one or two more. Hope to see you all then!

We survived St. Louis. What a great show! We moved more animals there than we ever have. We only sold 6-7 but that's a lot for us. Moved a few racks too. The folks over there are super nice. Only gripe is that $60 for a table is pretty step for a show like that. Fortunately we did have a good day and were able to pay for the trip over there. With the storm we had on the way there and back and the van really not liking the trailer anyway, we were averaging about 11 mpg! That was about $130 in gas just to St. Louis and back. Without the trailer, I could have made it each way on a tank.

Looking forward to the Breeder's show in Indy on the 28th. That's always a good show and Brian treats the vendors right that day because the table fees are increased.

I have some good news, some bad news...and then more bad news...

The good news is that I finally managed to get the rack page updated with some new pictures and finally got some of my other racks online...only about a year in the making :)

First tidbit of bad news...you'll see on the page...I had to increase my rack prices. I have managed to keep them the same for 3 years and went through a couple of price hikes on the plastic without worrying about it. However, my plastic just went up $12/sheet and the tubs themselves have gone up (don't think about it much, but most plastic is made from petroleum...price of gas goes up, so does plastic), not to mention the cost of delivery and us traveling to shows. I raised them up $25 which is just about a wash with the new prices included. Sorry I had to do that.

Second tidbit of bad news is more severe...worse than anything I've had to put on here before. We're cutting back our breeding stock. There are many reason why, most of which are on the page. Please see The Big Sale page for all of the details. It looks like a lot but we're keeping at least twice as many as we're selling so we're not going anywhere, just having to regroup after some bad investing and a pretty pathetic year in general. I am not advertising the snakes for another week or so to give my customers (meaning the 4 or 5 people that actually read this page HAHAHA) first dibs on anything on there. After that I'll post them up on Kingsnake and will sell to the public.

We hope to catch all of you on the 28th at the Breeder's Show in Indy. If you're within driving distance you need to be there. Bar none the best show in the Midwest aside from Tinley Park.

Hello all! We made it through the 'end of the month' rush last month doing the Indy show and Fort Wayne show on consecutive weekends...just had enough time to recover to do it again. We have the St. Louis Reptile Expo next weekend (which means it's building weekend this weekend for SURE) and then the Midwest Reptile Show's Breeder Show in Indy the next weekend. Should be fun!

Well, we have our possible het pieds online now. All but 1 took their first meal tonight. There were 4.3 of them total. We'll hold them for any interested buyers until they get a few more meals in them. Just had the time last night to take some pictures so went ahead and got them on here. I never did update with the pictures of the babies so here are a few:

Exciting news, we got our first rosy clutch today...WHILE I was feeding snakes. When I got there she has just laid her 2nd and I got to watch her off and on lay her 3rd, 4th, 5th, 6th, and 7th! 7 good healthy babies and one slug. I actually have some video of it too, just working on getting it transferred over to the site. For now, here are some pictures:

I'll update some more next week but that's it for now. Hope everyone is doing well and staying cool!

Geez, I now know what hell is...I just finished photographing and editing the pictures of all 26 of Big Momma's babies. Getting 'worms' to sit still is not easy then going through and keeping them all straight is a chore too. It's done finally and they're all on the Available page.

Our 100% het yellow ghost babies (just 1.2) of them are also on there now.

We have possible het pied babies hatching right now, I'll add pictures next week. For right now (knock on wood hoping that's not all), that's all of the clutches cooking in the incubator. I still think I have a few more coming but my girls are just driving me insane trying to figure out what's going on so if we get eggs, we get them. :)

John and I are making racks as we speak (well, John's making them right now and I'm in here on the computer right now) as well as trying to get the feed cards made for all of these babies. We're out of 18-slot hatchling racks and 5-slot sideways racks and we have shows next weekend and the weekend after so the push is on to get some knocked out.

That's it for now. Hope everyone is doing well!

Big sand boa news...Big Momma dropped this morning. She's been looking miserable with a capital M. For those that don't know, she's our 'signature' snake, I've had her for almost 12 years and she's produced 11 of those years. She's a staple when we do hands-on events, she's just dog tame and so lovable. She was just a few shy of breaking the record for most offspring from a Kenyan (or at least as far as I know of). She had 26 healthy babies, 0 stillborn, and 0 slugs found. I've always bred her to N-M-1 but he passed away this past year (he was about 12 years old, it'll happen) so I bred her to AN-M-2, an anery male. So not only did they throw a lot of beautiful, healthy babies...but they're all also 100% het anery. Here is a picture of them breeding, mother with some of her babies (as we found them), then one of just a buttload of babies :)

I have all of the anerys catalogued and photographed (wow, THAT was not an easy chore), probably put them online tonight although they technically won't be available for a few more weeks. We're also putting up our 2nd clutch of possible het caramel albino balls up for sale. It was the 11 egg (9 bad) clutch from my huge 3500g girl. It resulted in 0.2 50% possible het caramels and we thought we would keep them but we've changed our mind.

That's it for me. Take care!

Hope everybody is doing well. We're getting ready for a big weekend. Taking off to Fort Wayne tonight and doing that show tomorrow. Should get back in around 9PM tomorrow night, going to bed, restocking, then doing it all over on Sunday for the Indy show. I'm still very short on animals to see but hopefully here soon things will get better. You'll see why in a minute :)

See the last entry where I said AN-F-5 was 'close'. Well, she popped the next day! 15 healthy little anery babies. For those that don't know, I regard AN-F-5 as one of the prettiest anerys in the country and her babies are INSANE! They are black and white from the first shed, none of the gray and baby blue on these. Hopefully they will have all shed and start eating by next week then we should have them available a few weeks after that.

On the same morning, our ball python clutch #3 started hatching. These were from breeding Casper to a normal female so these are all 100% het yellow ghost babies. There were 5 eggs total, we had suspected one was going to go bad and it did...then one of the other ones had a full-term baby in it that died, looks like it was a BIG baby in a small egg and it just squished itself to death. Unfortunately you will have that. We did get 2.1 100% het ghosts though so all efforts weren't lost.

Well, that's about it for us. Did just finish a large run of racks in about 10 days. Busy as heck. All done though so I'm looking forward to the break for a few weeks.

Hope everybody is doing well and hopefully we'll see you soon!

Hey all! Hope everybody is doing well. Don't have any major news to report. We sold all of our possible het caramel girls from clutch #1 (Thanks Steve!) so I was marking those as sold and thought I'd just say hello :)

Been making racks like hotcakes, just got finished with the last round a week ago this past Saturday and another round of plastic got delivered last week and then more coming on Friday. Going to be a busy build week next week then we're off for a full weekend. Hitting the Fort Wayne Reptile Expo on Saturday then coming back and doing the Midwest Reptile Show in Indianapolis on Sunday. If any of you see me on Sunday and I look like a zombie, you'll know why :)

Still no sand or rosy babies yet. Big Momma and AN-F-5 both look absolutely miserable. They look like they just swallowed a small cat. Hopefully they'll bust some babies out here soon and make both of us relieved (I could REALLY use some variety at the shows right now, it's currently just a few ball pythons). We do have our het ghost clutch of ball pythons due to pip tomorrow or Friday so that should be cool. Looks like 4 of the eggs made it (one was windowed badly, I knew there was a chance it wouldn't make it) so we'll just hope for some good odds.

Hope to have some baby pictures online shortly. Until then, everybody take care!

Just came back from the Fort Wayne show...not a good day for us. Got to debut some of our new toys but that didn't bring any customers in. Oh well, you'll have those days. Met some great people and got our name out there, have to be happy with just that sometimes.

Speaking of toys, here are two of them :) We finally broke down and got a trailer. This will be worth it's weight in gold. It will allow us to get packed up before shows, it will stop me from breaking my back even further loading up the van with racks, and it will allow us to travel as a family much easier. We'd either have to take two vehicles to shows, or I could only take 2-3 racks. We put the whole arsenal (one of most of my racks) in there with plenty of room left over. Secondly, we invested in a pop-up display for shows. We LOVE it. Goes up in about 15 minutes and comes down in about 10. Maybe a bit overkill for most of our shows, but it gives us a good space to put some pictures (we decided to get fabric on the front and put on our own pictures rather than having graphic panels done). Anyways, here are some pictures of our new trailer on the outside, how it worked out loaded, a picture of our new display, then a shot down the aisle at the Fort Wayne show today.

I should have the first clutch of het caramels on the Available page tomorrow...oh yeah, almost forgot, the 2nd clutch has hatched. This was the 2 eggs that my monster girl gave me (well, those two plus 9 slugs...). Here's a picture of the first one right after it came out plus I snuck in some pictures that I just took this week playing with the new camera with some different lighting/backdrops and such, middle one is of my pastel male and the last one is a close-up of the albino.

Well, take care everybody, I'm outta here...going to go hang out with Boyce and Julie for a bit and then stop by and pick up the two new babies and get them settled in.

I was just putting some pictures online so I thought I'd take a minute to drop a little note. We're finally getting into the swing of things for '05, our first clutch of ball pythons are almost ready to go, racks are in full production, etc.

Did our first '05 show in Indy yesterday and it was definitely good to be out and about again. Great show they had yesterday, the place was a sell-out, vendors from wall-to-wall. We're planning on going to the first-ever Fort Wayne Reptile Expo this Saturday, hope to see some of you there and we wish Kurt and Kevin the best of luck with their new show.

We had our 4th ball python clutch of the season on Saturday morning. This was from my original adult female (BP-F-2). She was on her way out this year if she didn't produce, it would have been her 3rd year trying. She had 7 good eggs and 2 slugs so not a bad clutch at all. She bred to one of my het pieds so the resulting offspring will be 50% possible het pieds.

Still looks like we may get some albinos, ghosts, and pastels this year but as usual, my girls are saving the best for last. We have possible hets and true hets coming first it looks like. Just a waiting game right now :)

Hope everybody is doing well and I'll update the site here in a few weeks with our first available ball pythons as soon as they get a few more meals in them.

Well, they're finally hear...the first of the ball pythons hatched out on Wednesday. I've included a little photo story below including the first pipped baby, then the eggs all cut open, then all of the babies together. These are 50% het caramel albinos and weighed in at about 68g each on average. Hopefully we'll have some eating by the end of the month and will make them available.

Still have another two weeks on our 2nd clutch of eggs plus it looks like we have at least 8 more females that are going to drop for us, and that's where it should get nice and juicy (pastels, ghosts, albinos, etc.).

Hope everybody is doing well. Hopefully we can catch you at the Midwest Reptile Show on the 22nd or the Fort Wayne Reptile Expo on the 28th. This will be the first Fort Wayne show ever so we're going to give it a shot.

Howdy all. Man, Indiana weather sucks! 83 degrees earlier this week, last night it was 36 degrees and SNOWING! Yup, that's right...snowing in late April :)

Good news is that we got another clutch of eggs last night. These eggs were from our ghost, Casper, bred to a normal female so they'll all be 100% het ghost. She had 5 good eggs and 1 slug, as you can see in the pictures below. One egg has some 'nippling' on it but the egg showed veins so we'll hope it's a good one.

I was getting pretty disappointed there for a while thinking we missed a bunch of girls, their due dates came and went...well most of them have come around with another shed so things are looking pretty good. Looks like we have about 8 more clutches coming in the next few weeks so it should be interesting to say the least.

Racks are still selling very well, thanks to all of those who have purchased and those who have referred (I still haven't advertised in over a year, return customers and word-of-mouth sales keeps me busy enough). Below is a picture of the garage this morning and is pretty common for this time of year. I build everything in assembly-line fashion so I'll frame up 10-20 racks and set them aside, then I'll route them all, then I'll clean them all, then one-by-one, I'll pull them aside, put the heat tape on, put the back on, wire it up for heat, put the feet on, then do the final touches (good cleaning, screw caps, etc.). The racks below (18 total I believe....six normal 5-slots, six sideways racks, four 18-slot hatchling units, and two 10-slot towers) were built over the past two weekends and just got routed yesterday so they're all ready for backs/heat/wiring/etc.

Today is the Midwest Reptile Show and here I am typing on the computer...nothing to sell unfortunately. We'll be in full swing next month, should have some ball python babies hatched by then and many racks made up and ready to go.

Well, time to sign off. Hope everybody is doing well and hope to talk to you or see you soon!

Well, you win some and you lose some. We had a 3400g+ girl that was due tomorrow. She laid yesterday and we really expected a ton of eggs. Well, we got them, 11 to be exact. Unfortunately, 9 of them were slugs. It looks like the other two should make it. Here's a picture:

We have several more clutches due in the next week, then running all of the way into the beginning of May. Doesn't look like we're going to have as many pastel and ablino clutches as we originally thought, but hopefully we'll get a few.

Hope everybody is doing fine and hopefully we'll have more goodies soon.

Wow, breeding ball pythons is not for the impatient :) Still only have the one litter down so far, should have a few more next week.

Got a new pastel and ghost in last week. I haven't really publicized it (for embarrasement reasons), but we lost our breeder pastel a few months back. He was just breeding right along this year when one of the girls he bred to started showing signs of RI. I pulled him from the breeding regimen and watched him closely. Sure enough, he started showing signs of it. We got him to the vet, got him on meds, and he died a few weeks later. The girl that he got sick from? Still have her, she's doing fine. RI is a crazy, crazy, thing. So there it is, I lost another one. So this pastel is to fill that void. Hopefully he'll be ready to go. Here are some pictures. First is the pastel we lost (RIP), the new pastel, and the new ghost:

Finally caught some sand boas breeding. With the current setup, it doesn't lean itself well to capturing pictures like I have in the past, but these two were locked up long enough we were able to. In addition to these, we've had several lock-ups with the roughscales as well. Below is Big Momma breeding my awesome anery male AN-M-2 and my het anery breeding breeding my other anery male AN-M-3.

Racks are selling like hotcakes, the big round of 22 that I JUST finished building is down to about 6 right now...yikes, time to do it all over again :)

Take care and HOPEFULLY I'll be updating again here real soon.

Who says skepticism doesn't pay off. Got the call this morning that our first clutch had arrived. Typically you wake up to find a clutch so we started to remove the girl from the 3 eggs that she had. We got a good look at her (it's easier to see them when they're not coiled around the eggs trying to KILL you like she was trying to do this morning) and her belly was still really full. We put her back in her tub and she laid a 4th, then we got to see the 5th one come out in its entirity which was very cool. Got some pictures as well although they're not the best as we had to turn down the lights to make her comfortable. So, in the process of laying the 5th one, she abandonded 2 of the original 3 eggs (which we had already marked) so we got those put in the incubator while she nested. We checked back on her around noon and she was nesting on 6 eggs, so 8 total. All appear to be fertile! From a 2500g virgin girl, that is a great clutch. This is BP-F-23 who bred with our 100% het caramel albino so these will all be 50% het caramel albino. Pictures are below of the copulation, after 4 eggs were delivered, as she was passing the 5th, and all of the eggs in the egg chamber.

So when will the next clutch come? One can only wonder :) Also, for anybody that was curious if adult balls can be housed/bred in 32-quart Sterilite tubs, here's the proof. She was 2488g before she went off-feed, bred a 900g het caramel albino, and had a clutch of 8 eggs, all in the same 32-quart tub.

Also got the rosies out of pseudo-brumation and into their racks. Females already ate last night which is good. I'll get a few more meals in them then start breeding.

Take care everyone!

Two weeks huh? Wow was I off-base. I think I said that what, 4 weeks ago??? Geezlaweez. I still have at least 8-10 balls that ARE going to go, just kind of missed a few dates. BP-F-14 had another shed two days before her due date so the clock starts again with her. It does look like BP-F-29 who bred the albino and BP-F-21 who bred the pastel may have re-absorbed their follicles but we definitely still have several pastel clutches coming, several possible het caramel albino clutches, at least a clutch of possible het pieds, and a clutch of albino and het albinos. Lots to look forward to but I can only be SO patient :) I bet we don't make it to the end of the week without seeing some and I have a feeling that when it starts to rain, it's going to pour.

Sand boas have started to breed already. I've already seen several lockups between the roughscales, the Indians, and the Kenyans. I cut back a bit from what I've been known to produce but I did some 'weeding out'. Those that I kept are strong breeders and good producers so hopefully things will be a bit more efficient this year.

The rosies are in intermediate brumation. Rather than taking them out of the 60 degree cooling area and throwing them in 89 degree racks, I set them in the snake room for a few weeks to get acclimated, then I'll put them on heat. One problem...I'm out of rack space!!! I do this every year...I take the rosies into brumation and then I'm like "Wow, look at all of this rack space!!!" so I fill it up. Then when it's time to get the rosies back out, there's no room. I'm a goof, what can I say :)

We'll keep you posted on how things go here, hopefully they'll get better soon. Take care everybody!

Just have about 2 weeks before the ball pythons eggs start coming. We have 2 that have already been through pre-lay shed and another 4 that are in pre-lay shed now, then another 4-5 that will be following not too long after.

Racks are going like hotcakes, I sat with an abundance of inventory in-stock over the past few months and it's gone (well, I have a few 5-slot adult racks in stock but that's it). So, this was building weekend. We finally, after years of doing every bit of this by ourselves, got some outside help. I'd like to welcome Dan aboard as 'the' Jason's Jungle staff. I put him to building some racks this weekend and he did a terrific job. I'll put him to harder work once all of the pythons are born this year :) On an accident, I think he came across something that's actually going to be added to the product line. It's an 18-slot hatchling rack. The normal 12-slot sells for $225 and I can sell this one for under $300. Look for pictures on that when it's finished, I'm actually excited about it.

The last thing we need around the Jungle is another animal, but my wife really wanted a new dog for her birthday (today actually...I'm building racks and updating the website on my wife's birthday...man, I'm bad...), and we just couldn't say no to this one. Her name is Nika and she's a chow/lab mix. Misha grew up with chows and by looking at the puppy, she's going to be about 80% chow. Look at this face!!!

That's it for now, just had to get pictures of our new baby online. Until next time...take care.

Bueller...Bueller...Bueller...Still the waiting game. I've had a lot of this recently...this is BP-F-20 ovulating. Looks like I may have sold myself one or two clutches short, looks like we'll have at least one more pastel clutch that I didn't think was going to happen.

Racks have flown off the handle!!! Out of nowhere...BOOM! I'm putting in a big order for plastic today and am going to try and pre-build some of the popular units for spring (a few 10-slot adult racks and a few 48-slot hatchling racks...as well as some normal sideways and hatchling racks).

Got the incubator all fired up over the weekend and I'm testing it thoroughly right now. I'm up to 90% humidity in the egg chambers and the incubator only has a .6 degree variance from top to bottom. Here's a picture with two 'dummy' egg chambers in it.

Well, that's all for now. Hope everybody is doing well.

Electronics..I tried everything the other day to get my camera to turn on and nothing. Came home today and no problem. Argh! :)

Anyway, here are some more albino breeding pictures as promised. Here's one of him breeding my 100% het albino female (can't tell that I'm hoping for some albinos can you???) and then one of him breeding my 66% het albino female.

Sorry, just had to get those online. Take care everyone!

As you can tell, it's a pretty quiet time for us right now. Ball pythons have almost wrapped up the breeding season, rosies are still in brumation for another few weeks, and the sand boas are getting ready for another big breeding season.

My camera is on the fritz (starting about 10 minutes ago) so I can't upload some more albino breeding pictures but I do have a few others that I haven't posted yet. Here's one of the het caramel male breeding BP-F-14, and another one of him breeding BP-F-24...that girl is a MONSTER. I can't even weigh her, she tops out my 3200g scale...I'd say she's around 3400g.

So far, it looks like we're going to have 2 pastel clutches, one het albino clutch, one albino/het albino clutch, 1 clutch of possible het pieds, and 2 or 3 clutches of possible het caramel albinos. Not bad. I certainly was looking for a few more clutches of pastels, but I'll take what I can get.

This is a dead season for our rack business. I assume it's industry-wide, if not, it just must be me :) I've had a few people with some interest the past few weeks and hope to do some sales at the Midwest Reptile Show this Sunday but other than that, it's quiet. I haven't had to have a building weekend in probably 2 months, no complaints from me, it's friggin' cold outside :)

Hope everybody is doing well and look forward to seeing you soon.

Haven't updated in a while so thought it was about time. Not much going on other than ball python breeding. The rosies are in brumation (early October), the sand boas are on full feed for now, and the racks are still going like mad.

Ball pythons are looking pretty darn good. The pastel finished up his breeding cycle (which was cut back to 4 rather than 5, our big girl got pulled out of the picture) with BP-F-22, I gave him a few weeks off (in which time he decided to start snarfing down food for the first time in months, then he went right back at it again and is on his 3rd girl of the second round. Here's a picture of him breeding B-F-22. The het pied is also getting his job done, only one girl for him this year. Here he is breeding BP-F-2. The het caramel is on his 3rd girl as well, here he is breeding BP-F-23.

Lastly, my albino project. The het albino girl put the feedbag on for me about 3 weeks ago, snarfing down whatever I'd give her pretty much...that's great news. She's already locked up with the albino twice. The albino has also bred BP-F-28 but still needs to do something with BP-F-29.

So in a nutshell, we're looking to possibly produce a clutch of possible het pieds, 2-3 clutches of possible het caramel albinos, one or two clutches of 100% het albinos (hopefully with an albino or two for good measure), 100% het yellow ghosts (again, hopefully with some true yellow ghosts in there from our two het girls), and several clutches of pastels.

Looking to setup one last time for the year at the Midwest Reptile Show in two weeks before taking a month or two off. With the babies almost gone (I'm down to 12 and I have 5 or 6 of those possibly sold), it's not worth the extra table and hauling the racks up there every month (especially in the cold) is just not that appealing. As soon as the ball pythons start popping, we'll be back there lickety split though :)

Hope everyone had a great Halloween and if I don't update here in a few weeks, everyone have a great Turkey Day!

Just taking a little break from rack-making (I have about 14 to make up...should keep me busy for a few weeks) to get some pictures online. The pastel has been VERY busy. He's breeding his 3rd female right now and has two more to go (including our big 3300g girl). Here he is breeding BP-F-20 and here's another of him breeding BP-F-21.

Heading out to the Midwest Reptile Show in Indy tomorrow. Hope to see you there.

Fortunately things have settled down a bit from the last entry, could you tell I was at the end of my rope? :) Sorry about the venting...

We did the St. Louis Reptile Show this weekend. Major letdown. Not only were the Cards and the Rams both playing, but there was a reptile symposium in town and it really took a bite out of the show, vendors and buyers. We'll still do it again, met some great people there.

Racks are going like hotcakes, I can barely keep them in stock. Every few weeks I'll make 6-8 up and think "Okay, that will tide me over for a while" but they sell out. Not complaining though :)

The balls have started breeding!!! The pastel was locked up with BP-F-19 for over 62 hours!!!! Here's a picture. That's a good start. One down and 5 to go!

Well, I'm finally getting the het anerys and the last litter of normal Kenyans online. Check out the Available section.

Migraine, migraine, migraine...I've been sick for more than 3 weeks now and don't have the energy to get stuff in the event that I have time. Now Jacob's sick with hand, foot, and mouth disease and let me tell you, a screaming 1-year-old is NOT pleasant. I still need to get the last two Kenyan litters online ASAP. I did get the albino photographed and online. I got the babies photographed, just haven't sexed them and labeled them yet.

Preparing for Tinley Park this weekend. We're not setting up again this year. I don't have the inventory of snakes or racks to compensate the $450 table fees there. We will be going and browsing though. Don't have the funds to buy much but I still wouldn't miss it.

Weekend after that, we'll be at the St. Louis Exotics show which should be great. We've heard nothing but good things about that show. We hope to meet some new faces there and St. Louis is one of my favorite cities in the country.

House is finally on the market! Yeah! We still have quite a bit of touch-ups to do, still not quite 'show quality' and we're having an open house next Sunday...the day after the Tinley Park show.

That's it for me, need to get scooting. Hope everybody is doing better than I am <sniffle, sniffle> :)

Wow, I actually had to set time aside to update the website. It has been so hectic I can't see straight. Still trying to get the house ready for the market (getting there slowly but shortly...we've moved the date to the end of the month now) between juggling the business and normal jobs as well.

Well, good news, we've had two litters of Kenyans. Bad news is that I didn't get pictures. With the snakes over at the new place, I just forget to take my camera over. The first litter was a het anerythristic to anerythristic breeding which produced 1 stillborn, 4 live, and a ton of slugs. Guess which one was the anery? Yup, the stillborn, so we have 4 100% het anerythristic babies that will be up for sale soon. The 2nd litter was from Kyle's snake and she had 5 babies with a ton of slugs, actually better than we thought she'd do. She got weak and sick during her pregnancy and she's now actually getting some TLC in our quarantine area. Hopefully she'll pull through or it's going to be VERY rough for Kyle, he loves his snake. Those will also be available soon.

Even better news, our albino ball pythons is coming tomorrow!!!!! We splurged a little bit (i.e went in debt further) and have an '02 male albino coming. He will go with our 66% possible het female and our 100% het female for sure and we'll probably do another female or two with him to produce some hets. Just have my fingers crossed for just one albino baby this year.

That's about it, just getting some racks ready for the Midwest Reptile Show next weekend, then a BIG month in October...2nd weekend is Tinley Park, 3rd weekend is St. Louis, and the 4th weekend is the Indy show again. Wow, non-stop action.

Hope everybody is doing well and look forward to seeing you at the shows.

Winding down from a long day at the Midwest Reptile Show's annual Breeder's Expo. It was a great day. Sold lots of babies and met some great people...and of course talked with old friends, always a good time.

I just finished adding the anery Kenyans to the Available page. Those that had shed took their first meals this past Thursday so they'll be ready to go in about 3 weeks, please let me know if you'd like to hold on.

Been a busy few weeks for us here. For those that don't know, we've decided to sell our current house. We've bought 2.1 acres just south of where we are at currently and plan on building our dream home with a 30x40 snake building. We (with the help of the snakes) have outgrown our current house and we've decided that additions aren't for us anymore. We look forward to the new place but we're a LONG way away from that. We first have to sell, then rent somewhere until the new house is built. In the meantime, we decided that having 130+ snakes in the house wasn't such a good idea while trying to show a house so some friends of ours, Boyce and Julie, kindly rented us out a room in their basement. We couldn't be more thankful. The setup fits perfectly in there (I kept the high-dollar snakes and big girls here with me) and it worked out great. That was after a LONG weekend...4 car/van loads of racks, snakes, and equipment later, we were finally done. Here is a picture of the first trip (not yet fully loaded) with our van and Boyce's Roadmaster (we'll call it the Red Rage HAHAHA), a closer view of the inside of the van, as well as a picture of the main wall at the new temporary Jungle.

Things at the new place worked out well, the snakes seem to like it and we had a ferocious feeding week...capping off our incredible Thursday...Thursday...wow, what a day. First were some new acquistions, a proven pair of eryx johnii from Scott Miller who my proven roughscales came from (we love Corkscrew but have doubts on his breeding ability so we got a backup), a 700g female ball python, and get this...a 3200g female ball python. Her name is Gi-Normous...or Norma for short :) And lastly, we got a breedable 100% het albino female ball so our odds of producing albinos this year just jumped up.

Short story long, at lunchtime I went to put the snakes away and found that our long-anticipated litter of anery Kenyans had finally come!!!! This litter was from two outstanding parents, quite possibly the prettiest anery I've ever seen. Here is a picture of the mom and a baby and then all the babies isolated.

I'll have a few of those on display at the Midwest Reptile Show in August but they'll a few meals short of being able to be sold. All of the Whitewater rosies have shed and will be available later this week. All ate their first meals this past week without a problem so they'll be ready to ship out in two weeks.

Oh yes, one last thing...and how could I forget. We finally have a female pastel in the collection. This was a baby produced by Jason at Circle City Serpents as part of a project we co-owned. What a fantastic job he did with her. She was born in early June and is already snarfing down large mice. If she keeps this appetite up, she may be able to breed for us in '06 but obviously that's a long ways off. Here's a picture of her:

Well, that's it for now. Hope everybody is doing well and we hope that everybody can make it to the Midwest Reptile Show in August!

Finally got some website updates completed including all of our normal ball python girls (that was a job and a half), our caramel albino project, and our albino project. Still have the pied project to go, but that can wait for a few weeks :)

Can't believe the response I had on the San Felipe rosies. I never advertised and sold 6 of the 7 in just 4 days. I hope I have the same response for the Whitewaters! The first litter of babies are due to shed here later this week then hopefully they'll take their first meal and will be ready to go by the end of the month.

That's it for me, just wanted to make a quick note. Take care!

EGADS! It's raining rosies!!! Had our 2nd litter of Whitewater rosy babies this morning, just 4 days after the previous litter mentioned below. This was a virgin female and she popped out 6 excellent babies and no slugs, I love it. Anybody out there waiting on Whitewaters, you'll be in heaven here in about 3 weeks, I'll have 12 of them for sale. Here is a pic of mom and the babies:

Hoping to finish up the round of racks I have going tomorrow. That should stock me up for a little while. It sucked being sold out (although a good thing). Other than that, not much going on.

Take care everybody!

It's seeming like no matter how hard I try, I keep falling behind. We FINALLY got some more babies ID'd and online tonight. I came into the snake room to upload the pictures, and low and behold, there's a litter of Whitewater rosy boas for me....6 so far although I think she may have a few more in there. Here's a picture from just about 20 minutes ago:

I still have at least one more normal Kenyan litter, one more anery Kenyan litter, one more roughscale litter, and a few more Whitewater rosy litters coming up within the next few months. Should keep me on my toes :)

Well, that's about it, I need to start working on putting the babies online. Check out the Available page to see what we have. Thanks as always!

Well, we're coming up on about the midway to our breeding season. The possible het albino balls are gone, all of the normals are spoken for (I have just one here and it's on hold), Big Momma's litter is disappearing fast, and I have several pre-orders for the rosies. They should be online by Wednesday. They've all shed and are ready to eat but first I need to get their picutres and get them sexed.

When we came home from the Midwest Reptile Show yesterday, we found a litter of Kenyans waiting for us from N-F-5. Unfortunately it's the smallest litter we've ever had (4 slugs and 4 live babies) but we're always happy to see babies nonetheless. Here is a picture of the babies.

Other than that, not a whole lot going on. The ball girls are all getting enormous (I believe they range from 2200g to 3000g currently) and hopefully the pastel is getting all juiced up and ready to go, we really need him to do well for us next year. We're also working on a het albino project and a het pied project. We have a 100% het albino male and a 66% possible het albino female but we're looking for another female or two. We have a 100% het pied breeder male but we need somebody to go with him!

Well, that's it for now. Take care everybody

Hey all! Hope everybody is doing well. It's been pretty darn busy keeping all the babies fed and moving them out. So far so good. It was a particular good day for us here. We started the morning off with a litter of San Felipe rosy boas. Not only did we have them but I got to witness the last one being born which is a first for me. Here are some pictures:

We also received our 100% het breeder pied male today. We're looking hard for some possible het or het girls to go with him next year. We also got our 100% het caramel albino male on Saturday. Other good news...well, I suppose it's good. For the first time in 18 months, I am totally sold out of racks! Sorry to those that are waiting on orders but holy cow, I went through 13 racks in less than two weeks, I never saw it coming. I have 11 more in the process of being finished currently and will probably have another building weekend here in a few weeks.

That's it for now. Stay tuned for some updated Projects pages and the rosies should be on the Available page within 10 days or so.

I know, this has to be the quickest update ever. Fortunately, it's for good reason. Big Momma popped on Friday evening. She had 21 beautiful babies, 2 slugs, one stillborn, and one crazy underdeveloped runt. This one meant a lot to us. Belive it or not, after 9 years and 18+ litters of Kenyans, we'd NEVER seen birthing. They've always done it at night and we woke up to litters. We happened to come home late on Friday and I caught her. We snapped some pictures then let her be for a few more hours before we did the final count.

Here are some pictures:
- what we saw when we opened her tank
- picture of the birthing
- picture of all babies out
- picture of the 'underveloped runt'

Her offspring should be available in a few weeks after they all eat. That's all the news I have. Take care everybody.

Finally getting all of this year's babies up on the Available page. That includes a clutch of 50% het albino ball pythons, a clutch of normal ball pythons, and a litter of roughscale sand boas. Please let me know if you have any questions about anything.

Have several girls that should be dropping with 6-8 weeks. I have at least 2 more normal Kenyan litters, an anery Kenyan litter, another roughscale litter, and both Whitewater and an Felipe rosy boa litters. I'll certainly keep everybody posted on those.

We're looking to sell off some our stock to cut back a little bit, look for ads on Kingsnake starting next week. We'll have some adult Kenyans and a pair of Tartar sand boas.

Racks are continuing to sell well. I quit advertising several months ago as I could not meet up with the demand. I'm working solely off of return customers and word-of-mouth sales and still selling at least 2 a week which is a comfortable number.