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

Rat Breeding - How to....

So you want to breed Rodents? This post will be a brief summary on how to do it, and be successful. 

First and foremost, your going to need money. I'd say with about $200 (Already having your own tools), you can build a Rodent Rack, and stock it with 2-3 tubs of Rats to start off your colony.

Now to building your Rack, your going to need to get some tools. You can rent/buy these at your local Lowes/Home Depot, and return them all within the same day. 

Tools you'll need ... 

1. Miter Saw/Hand Saw - Whichever you can afford. I'd go with the Miter Saw, it's 100 times easier. You can find them HERE.

2. Screws - You can go with either 1 1/4" Wood Screws, or 1 5/8" Wood Screws. You'll need at least 1 box, to be safe, I'd go with 2. You can find them HERE.

3. Drill/Screwdriver - Power Tools are always easier, so I'd go with the Drill, you can find a really good/cheap one at Home Depot/Lowes. You can find them HERE.

4. Drill Bit's/Accessories - With untreated wood, you HAVE to pre-drill it, or it will split, and you'll end up wasting wood. If your trying to keep this as cheap as possible, I'd go the safe route and pre-drill everything. You'll also need Clamps to hold your wood together so you can pre-drill them accurately. You can find Drill Bits HERE. You can find the Clamps HERE.

Materials you'll need ...

1. Wood - There's no real estimate on how much you'll need. It all depends on if you mess up, and have to scrap some. I'd say safely, go ahead and buy 10 2x2's and 10 1x1's. You can buy the bundles of UNTREATED wood for about $13-18 per bundle, so for the materials I'd say your gonna spend about $30-50. I'd go to Home Depot, they tend to be a little cheaper here in Virginia.

2. Tubs - Your going to need concrete mixing tubs to house your rats. You can get them at Home Depot for $4-5 each. You can find them HERE.

That's really the only things you'll need for building your Rat Rack. I followed some plan's I found online to build mine, you can find them HERE. You MAY or MAY NOT have to tweak/peak it to fit your needs, but follow these and you'll be sure to get it done in just a few hours.

Plumbing your Rat Rack ...

Your going to need only 4-5 things, and you can find them all online for a decent price. I'd say for just these materials, you'll need about $40-50. 

HERE is the website for the plumbing materials, I'll list what you NEED down below.

Original Large Drinking Valve - (6) for a 6 tub Rack

Tank Connector - (1) for a single 5 Gallon Bucket

Flexible Water Tubing - Priced per Foot. I'd say you'll need about 10-15 ft. depending on how you route it.

3/16" L & 3/16" T Fitting's - You'll only need 1 'L' fitting, and 5 'T' fittings. You use the 'L' fitting on the last tub.

Mounting Clip for Large Drinking Valve - (6) for the Large Drinking Valves, easy to use.

5 Gallon Bucket - Found at your local Wal-Mart or hardware store.

You can buy other stuff if you'd like, but if you don't want to spend more money, nothing else is needed. 

After you have all of this stuff, and have your rack built, it's time to buy rats. This can be probably the most time consuming part. You DO NOT want to go to a pet store, and buy feeders and use them as breeders. Feeders are your 'bottom of the barrel' rats that the person/company deem as 'non-breeders'. If you live in a populated area, and you don't have a local breeder that you can buy from, you may have to go with Pet Store Feeders. Either way, you want to buy the following Rats for a 6 TUB Rat Rack:

6 Medium Male Rats

24 Medium Female Rats

**If you buy Pet Store Feeders, after your VERY FIRST litter, you want to replace every female that you have, with all of your female offspring that you have.**

As I stated earlier, this is a summary of how to breed your own rodents. If you have the time/money to spend to do this for your reptiles, I highly recommend it vice going to the pet store everyday, you know what your rats eat, and you know they are QUALITY.

If you have any questions, please comment below, or message me via Facebook.

God Bless!

 
 

Mazuri Rat Food - Product Review

Mazuri Rat Food, the key to my success in Rodent Breeding. This stuff is amazing. They actually have a formulated bag for strictly rodent breeding. The ingredients can be found HERE at their website. (1) 50lb bag for roughly $30, and if you have a small colony of rats, this will last you well over a month. I personally keep my rats on a relatively strict diet, so their feedings are proportioned to fit the need of the tub. If I have a nursing mother in a tub, then I will feed her a different amount than if I had 4-5 Small non-breeders in a tub. Rat's can eat like theres no tomorrow, and it's very important to keep them regulated because if you put 50 pellets in a tub, they will eat 50 pellets before you can leave the room. 

The Pro's:

1. This product is very accurate by what they put into it. Everything is as perfect as you can get it. A perfect balance of protein, and other necessary vitamins and minerals for your breeders is what make's this the key to your success.

2. Price. Let's assume you aren't breeding rats. You buy your feeders once a week, and you have 10 snakes. Let's say you have to buy 5 SMALL Rats ($2), and 5 MEDIUM Rats ($3) ... those are the prices I was paying for those sizes. That's roughly $25 a week, $100 per month, $1200 a year. Now lets calculate what you'd pay for Mazuri Rodent Food if your following MY Diet Plan, $30 Bag every 5-6 Weeks .... $258 PER YEAR. 

You see how much money you can save? Mazuri is GREAT for your feeders, and you breed QUALITY feeders. Not Pet-Store Junk. 

The Con's:

1. Make it more available in Pet Stores.

That's the ONLY con.

Im really adamant about breeding quality feeders, and I'm just trying to share my success and information with you, the reader. If you have ANY questions about it, comment below, or message me on Facebook. 

I will be posting a 'Guide' to help you get started with your own Rat colony if you have room/time. It's very easy, and fun to do. 

More Rats Born!

I'd say every week or so, I have at least 1 Female Rat give birth to a litter. As I stated they can have as few as 3 babies, or as many as 18. I'd venture to say that the average is around 10-14. Well today, I walked in to check on my animals, and discovered a litter of pinks had been delivered between last night, and this afternoon. 

These particular pinks in this picture are actually going to be a new set of breeders. I try and rotate my females when their litters start dropping below 5. The particular female that gave birth to these, Mayble, will not be rotated out for probably another few months, but her time is coming. She has given me about 6 litters so far, and she only gave me 8 pinks this time.

Rat breeding is great for saving money on feeders, but believe it or not, you can actually sell them for a nice penny to people who have them as pets. Their called 'Fancy Rats" ... just another name for them, and it allows Pet Stores  to put a higher price on them. I will give you just 1 example, of my Rats actually making me money. 

I have 1 Hairless Female Rat. I bred her to my Dumbo Male, and had Dumbo's 'Het' for Hairless. Meaning the dumbo babies, had the recessive hairless gene. Well, I bred one of the Hairless Females offspring to her, and had a litter of all Hairless Dumbo Rats. I sold some for $25-30 each to quite a few people. 

I find the key to successful litters (i.e. Mother not eating them), healthy babies, and great quality breeders, is all in the food. When I first started, I did probably what a lot of people did, I fed dog food. I was still having litters being born, but the babies were always eaten, or turned out smaller, made smaller breeders, etc. That's when I discovered a certain 'Rat Food', which I will write about tomorrow, and boy it has proven to be the key to my success in the Rat breeding world. 

If you'd like to know more about how to breed rats, check back this weekend, and I will provide a 'Step by Step Guide' into breeding rodents. It is not rocket science, but I believe I can provide some helpful tips & resources to get you started.

God Bless.