What a day!!!...........Jesus ............I
have not felt a disturbance in the force
like today in a long while. It's 1:30 am
Saturday morning ..............I'm on an
"all meat" diet for a few weeks
so that I can fit back into my 36's............LOL................so
I'm full of energy! This morning was unreal
................almost every pair I'm breeding
were locked up ..............I though my
hand was going to fall off marking down
all the copulations ..................I
have received hundreds of emails each week
from all of you....................and I
have noticed many of you are following my
journal day by day...............and breeding
your snakes the same method that I'm doing.............as
far as resting and feeding the breeders
..............I get the "breeding temps"
question a lot.............so I'm gonna
note what I do as far as temps here for
all of you ................I start breeding
in October............in the first week
of October I begin the breeding temps...............and
I do it like this..............my heat in
the off season is always set at 95 degrees...........and
my heat in the breeding season is also set
at 95 degrees .............I breed from
October till the end of March............that
entire time I set the day time temps to
95 degrees and the night time temps to 82
degrees................this is the temp
of the heat tape.........right on the tape.............95
day...............82 night..............that's
it.............now what I also do is manipulate
the lights...............my very first night
drop in October is set to start at 7 pm.............that
is when the HELIX switches to the 82 degree
night time drop................and that
is when ALL the lights go out in the room
..............I do this for a few weeks...................then
as the winter days get shorter .............I
turn the lights and the day heat off at
6 pm...............the when "day light
savings time" kicks in ..........I
shut the heat and lights off at 5 pm......................5
pm is the final drop of light and heat .................I
work my way down to this, and it stays that
way until March 31st..................so
basically my snakes are going into the 82
degree night time drop and the darkness
at 5pm from the end of November until the
end of March.............it's that simple.................and
it is easy ................I just slowly
bring the snakes into longer cooler nights...................in
the off season they are used to 95 degrees
24/7...............lights on at 7 am and
off at 9 pm.............at the height of
breeding season .......November through
March............the lights and heat are
on at 7 am...................and off at
5 pm................so that is 10 hours
of heat and light.................and 14
hours of night time temp 82 degree tape
and darkness.................that's when
the breeding happens..............at night................My
actual air temps during the day in the room
are around 80 to 82 degrees during breeding
season and almost 88 to 90 degrees in the
off season................my air temps at
night during the breeding season are in
the low 70's...............so at night ..........there
is 70 to 75 degree air temp............82
degree heat tape temp............and 14
hours of darkness..............it works
like a charm for me..................the
best part is that at night when the lights
go off and the heat drops down.............the
entire room slowly gets cooler .............everything
works perfect.................then in the
morning when the lights come on and the
heat tape turns up to 95 degrees..............the
room slowly gets warmer..................it
is noticeable to me...............and majorly
noticeable to the ball pythons..............it's
a season..............it's "making
weather" in your own basement...............that
will be another lesson..............."how
to make cold fronts in your home".................the
snakes go nuts for those. Now..............you
want to know when I put my pairs together...............it's
real simple..................In the first
week of breeding temps ................I
let all the pairs stay alone .................I
give them one week to feel what is going
on in the room..................in that
week the males and females get restless.................they
know it is time to breed .................after
that first week ...............I introduce
the pairs...................and I keep breeding
all the way till the end of March the next
year ..................rotating the boys
through the girls................the girls
through the boys.................two boys
through one girl ..................three
girls with one boy ...............I do what
ever it takes to "trigger" breeding
.................sometimes it is as easy
as putting a pair together and that's it.................but
sometimes it takes a lot more patience on
finding out what exactly makes certain males
or females "tick".................thats
the fun part!!...............I'm always
aware of what my snakes are doing ...........I
know who is breeding well and who ain't................I
know what females are responding and which
females are being "stuck up"..................I'm
majorly aware of the size of the follicles
in my girls that have been bred well ...............depending
on the size of the follicles and the way
the female is acting determines whether
I need to even keep a male with her or not...............when
a female is done..............she is done..............she
has been bred well.................she starts
to "lay cold" ( lays at the cool
end of the cage, maybe even around her water
bowl, this is when you can almost always
feel big marble sized follicles in her,
she is done!! ).............she ovulates......................she
sheds...................and she lays eggs..........no
need to "dud your male out" on
a girl that is done..............use him
on the girls who are still warming up during
the day.........I also offer food to all
the snakes at least twice a month............usually
every week...............some eat.....some
don't.............if they eat thats great..........they
get a meal and some rest..........I rest
them on the weekends or two days after a
meal..............I also do not feed big
meals.............meals during breeding
season are smaller............because of
the lack of belly heat at night............I
have had ZERO problems doing this...............the
females that eat bounce back much quicker
after laying eggs................so anyway................that
was a good five minutes worth of "inside
info"...............I hope this helps
some of you..............make sure you copy
this journal entry ...............because
it's a good one!!............:)
Getting
back to the day................man it was
just crazy today................with the
phone calls and the emails ................I
will breeze through all my "Friday
crap" now..............then I will
get to the good stuff ...............Today
was rat cleaning day................Robbie
and his little bro Billy did 90% of the
work.........Phil and I got there late..............we
fed everyone and helped sweep the place
and blow it out...............then we all
went and had dinner ..............Earlier
today Lou and I went down to the airport
to pick up our new Clown female................she
is awesome!!...............we really love
her..............she has hardly any side
pattern and a cool black back.............so
that all went perfect...............she
came in nice and warm.............she is
plump and happy..............we have her
set up in her new home.......:)...............Lou
got robbed!!!............yep..............poor
Lou had his garage broken into............he
had some tools stolen...............he thought
he knew who might have done it.............so
on a hunch..............he called some local
pawn shops to see if anyone had brought
the tools in there to pawn...............sure
enough a pawn shop called back and said
they had all of it................so Lou
flew down there and got the tools back...............it
turns out that he knows the kid who did
it................the kid hangs around Lou's
garage a lot..............anyway...............the
kid said that he was going to bring the
stuff back once he got the money to get
it back out of pawn??????..................I'm
not sure if Lou is pressing charges.................or
going to make the kid be a slave for life???...............but
Lou is happy to have gotten all his stuff
back..............Lou loves pawn shops.......he
knows all the local owners of all the shops
in the area...............so this poor kid
was shit out of luck by pawning the stuff
locally..........LOL..............Lou busted
him in ten minutes..........so that's that................that's
the day...............not including the
hundred emails and 50 phone calls to "Big
Brother Ralphie"...........all about
two things..................and here they
are.............like it or not guys. They
are.......... the post on Kingsnake Classifieds
about the "two week" sale on het
Caramel Albinos for $3,000.00 a pair or
1.2 for $5,000.00......................and
"Morph King Reptiles"............what
a double whammy today was!!!
Lets do the easy one first...............the
guy selling the het Caramels was emailed
by some meanie like me................email
is below>>>>>>>>>
That's
just bull shit man.............there are
a handful of Caramels on the planet and
your selling hets at this price??............they
should be no less then $4,000.00 to $4,500.00
a pair for the 2003 season...........I actually
though the price of the hets would recover
and stabilize this year, until I was sent
to your advertisement .........I think you
should re-think your price .........you'll
get the $4,500.00.........forget the two
weeks.
Ralph
Anyway
.............I had emails and phone calls
from all over asking me what I thought about
this............and the above email is what
I sent to him expressing my point............well
it turns out that he had a "brain fart"..............it
happens from time to time..............his
reply is below>>>>>>>>
Ralph,
You're right. I decided to sell something
else as opposed to a pastel female I'm raising
for my Caramel male. I should have sold
her instead of deposits on lower-priced
hets that have yet to be produced. Paying
f$%$%** bills when the work has been slow
causes some stupid things to happen. The
way I was looking at it was I know I have
money coming in the first of next month,
hold on to what I am raising to breed at
all costs. Just didn't think it through
clearly. I was actually reading your journal
when I realized what an ass I was when I
came to the part about Pete and what he's
selling his pied hets for and that you're
gonna make money getting in early. I like
your journal, though there are some stories
I could tell you about Jerry "The King"
Lawler that most people don't know, as I'm
from Memphis and so is he. Long story short,
I've realized my mistake and have taken
down the ad.
Take
care,
Skip
Thanks
for the reply Skip..............your country
thanks you and I forgive!!!...............I
would love to hear the story about Jerry"
The King" Lawler...............Im glad
my journal inspired you..........:)................So
that is the first disturbance in the force
I mentioned way up at the top of this "
when the hell will this butt head shut up?"
novel........:)..............but I'm on
a roll...........It is 2:20 am ..............I'm
still loose and full of good ideas ......Theresa
is up in bed snoring away..............shes
so cute when she snores...............not
to mention I would like to end January with
a huge pain in the ass to read journal entry..................:P..........so
on to the final saga of the day .................which
is actually not going to take up more then
probably 1000 words...........LOL........I
can't believe I'm going to "plug"
these guys?
"The
Morph Kings"...............Joey and
Wess.............they posted a bunch of
pics on Kingsnake's ball python forum today.............pics
of their Lesser Platty, Spider, Axanthics,
Caramels, Albinos, Mojaves and the list
goes on.............these guys have the
goods for sure!!.......Joey bought a ton
of stuff from all of us "big breeders"
last year................I made a post up
on KS congratulating them on what they had................and
a wise crack remark that it was funny how
all the breeders were doing these huge deals
with Joey.............yet everyone kept
quiet about it .............including me.
What I think is funny about the whole thing
is how Joey "didn't want to really
breed anything" ..........."he
just wanted some awesome snakes to look
at"...................I like Joey..............and
I knew his line was a crock...............but
he spent huge money with me...............and
others to..............so I was cool with
it ............I had no problem selling
him a Lesser Platty and some Pieds.............and
other stuff too..............it was a sweet
pay day...................what I didn't
know was that he was going to partner up
with Wess.............who is active in the
herp world...............and I'm sure knows
how to work with snakes................but
it's all good .................I'm just
sure that all of the breeders who sold him
these super high end mutations did not see
this coming ..............I know I didn't..............but
I'm happy for the guys.................Joey
spent a a couple hundred thousand on the
snakes and Wess will do the breeding ..............sounds
like a plan...........So after my first
post telling Wess and Joey how great I though
it was that they owned all these awesome
mutations .........I decided to go check
out their web-site .................I wish
I had not done that ................I seen
my CROWN and a slogan that says "We
Sell Them For Less"............well
the word "Less" is all I had to
see ..............I will get over the crown
thingy...............but the slogan just
struck me wrong..............it makes me
feel that all those awesome morphs are not
so awesome anymore ................CHEAP
is the word...............and I don't like
that!............Here all the big breeders
sell off all this great stuff for major
coin................we are all happy as
clams................and then all of the
sudden...............BAM!!..............there
is all of our stuff out on one web site..............it
looks awesome..................and it is
"LESS"...............so basically
I'm pretty pissed off about the whole thing
.............I think their "unveiling"
was poor............it got ZERO responces...............they
do not seem like they are going to be very
"protective" of the market .......the
word "Less" coming from a person
who has the mutations that everyone drools
over only hurts the market............it
will actually scare some buyers away from
investing.............because they will
feel like they can not catch up before the
snake is worth low dollars..........."Less
Wess".......I'm sure they will read
this and be pissed off that I feel this
way..............but that's how I feel.................that
slogan is so "used car salesman"
it's pathetic.............and Joey sells
cars...........LOL..............Then to
add fuel to the fire Tracy has to dig on
me about these guys using a crown in their
logo.................and I have a crown
as well...............LOL...............your
a bad girl!!!............It's great to be
the King ..............nobody tells it like
me..............you guys need me..............and
I love you all............lmao!!.............it's
late and I'm getting delirious for sure....................but
I had to sit down and write ..............I
feel like sometimes I'm the only breeder
out there who even gives a hoot about what
is going on ..............I know others
think it..............but they don't say
anything.............they email me instead..................and
you KNOW I will always say what's on my
mind.............that's why Joey and Wess
love me so much...............So that's
it folks...............this is one of my
best pieces of work here on the journal
that you all love so much to read..................and
I know you do because I see the visits ..............I
thank you for reading it too ...............I'm
a blabber mouth .............I enjoy jotting
down my day to day routine and things that
happen.................this is where it
will be...............and to all my breeder
freinds................as I said on KS.............I
know we all can not get along with each
other ALL at the same time.............that's
cool.................but I know I'm right
on, as to what we all feel when we see that
our hard work could be messed up by a few
bone-headed moves in the industry ..............I'm
totally here to stay ..............I have
my policeman's hat on at all times ......................I'm
out!!!....................cages tomorrow
and then Karaoke!!!.............410-984-5194...........to
chew some ass or throw flowers............:)..........
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