CONGRATULATIONS TO ANNE BROOKS!!!

SHE HAS BEEN SELECTED AS THE WINNER OF THE BALL PYTHON GIVEAWAY VIA WWW.RANDOM.ORG.

CONGRATS AND THANKS TO ALL WHO PARTICIPATED!

An email will be sent out to the winner immediately, to the email that was listed in your entry. 

I hope that all will continue to visit my Blog even though the contest is over, expect another one to begin very, very soon. The next one will be for a color morph Ball Python. Get your friends here, have them sign up, follow the same rules as last time, and they wont be disappointed. 

Again, Congrats to Anne Brooks, and Thanks again to everyone who took the time to sign up, it means alot to me. 

The more traffic we get here, the more stuff I can giveaway. So tell your family, friends, and relatives, and I can give more stuff away! 

When Disaster Strikes!

    When keeping any type of animal, your eventually going to have to deal with them passing on to the big wide world in the sky. It stinks, but it's apart of the cycle of life.

    Recently, I had to deal with this. Over the last 3-4 days, I've had a decent amount of my rats pass. I have no idea why, and that's the part that hurts the most. I feed/water/check everyday to make sure they have exactly what they need to thrive happily, and healthy. If you know you're doing everything right, you take the time to care for your animal's properly, clean, water, feed .... it does NOT make you immune to some sort of disaster. I saw disaster because I don't like using the word death/dying.

   My situation was pretty rare, I wont go into details about what happened, but I will give you the synopsis of how I found them. Base on what string Im working, be it Days/Nights/Eve's, I check my rats everyday at the same time. Well, I checked them the day before, fed them, checked on my wife's favorite rat Mayble, she's good, everything is A J squared away. I go to work, come home, sleep .... wake up. Open my shed, and I could just feel it. I checked my Small Rat tub, they're good, Breeder Tub #1 ... oh crap ... Breeder Tub #2 ... What the? ... Breeder Tub #3 ... How? ... Seeing the animals that I work so hard to care for, laying there lifeless was a big shot in the gut. I immediately checked on my snakes, because I didn't want what was hurting my rats, to hurt my snakes. They're all good.

   After I got the tub's cleaned up, and disinfected, I re-situated my breeders and small rats. I lost 11 Rats, a few rat pinks, in just 24 hours. I know how, and what hurt them, it was something that you probably don't hear about ... ever. Let's just leave it at that.

   Dealing with this type of stuff is something you never get used too, it's always hurtful, especially when you have the work you do for them down to a 'T' ... but we have to grab it by the horns, and deal with it.

   I apologize about it being so long for me to post, I promise it's gonna be more frequent from now on, now that I know exactly when I'm working, and when I'm off.

                                          **Give-a-way ends tomorrow, good luck to you all!***

God Bless.

Heterozygous Genetics - Not my favorite thing.

Well Hello again, I'm terribly sorry if I've kept you all waiting for another update, but I started at a new command earlier this month, and I'm still trying to get the schedule down. Unfortunately it's taken some time away from my Blog, but alas everything is squared away.

Heterozygous Genetics - By far one of my 'least' favorite things when it comes to breeding. Not because of the process to prove them out, or waiting for that perfect season to hit on your het's, but because people are sketchy, and will do anything for a dollar, including lie. 

Take these pictures for example, these are my 2 personal 100% Het Albino Ball Python's. I bought them from BHB Reptiles, Brian, in July and I have them for sale at the moment. This pair has a guarantee on their genetic's, they come from a reputable man in the Herp Community, and I trust his knowledge when it comes to his animals.

(No Sales Pitch intended)

The 2 things are VERY important when your purchasing animals with recessive gene's. Mainly because if you look at the 2 pictures above, what do you see? You see 2, what appear to be, normal ball pythons. In fact, they are NOT. They are 'Het' for the Albino gene. 

Here is why those 2 things I mentioned earlier are important:

Anyone can go to a pet store, buy a normal looking animal, and claim it's Het for ANYTHING. When you slap Het on it's label, what does that do? Increase the price. Maybe not thousands of dollars, but sometimes they can be a pretty penny. If you can't afford to buy the 'high dollar' animals like myself, you have start with Het gene animals, and build yourself up.

Buy from a REPUTABLE SOURCE - Just because your local pet store write's 100% Het Clown on it doesn't mean it's true. That just means they get to slap a few extra digit's in the price tag. Even your local 'breeders' can be unreliable sources. Get to know your people, learn what type of people they are, what they do, before you spend your HARD EARNED money on stuff.

KNOWLEDGE is POWER - This statement has so much truth to it, it's hard to summarize it. I'll just give an example. If you don't know anything about genetic's, you may get lost here.....When I was new to Ball Python's/Reptile's, I had no idea what I was doing, had no idea they had different color mutations, nothing. I was in my local pet store, (Not AJ), and the salesman/douchebag was trying to sell me a 100% Het Spider Ball Python. I wish I could make this up. I had no idea, but like always, I do a little research before I buy. I now know that Spider is in fact a 'Dominant' gene, and there's no such thing as Het Spider, Pastel, Pinstripe ... etc. Had I not done my research, I would have paid $200 for a $20 Normal Ball Python. If you don't know, ask. If you don't have anyone to ask, go online, google stuff. It's fun, and you learn from it.

That's really my rant on Het's. I apologize for the grammatical errors, as well as punctuation. I haven't typed in a while.

I hope you all have a great night, and I will be writing again tomorrow. Any topic suggestions? I only have 12 followers, I'd love more! Spread the word!

God Bless!

Update!

I know it's been a while since I've posted, I've been pretty recently lately. It's hunting season, breeding season, and I just transferred to a new command. Juggling 2 things that I really love and am passionate for, and work .... it's TOUGH. I will do a full new post tomorrow, but I'm pretty beat right now, so I'm gonna sign off for the evening!

God Bless All, and have a great night!

**Remember the GIVEAWAY, If you know friends/family that are looking for a snake, this is a great starter snake. He's very tame, and eats like a champ!**

Trey