Fall update



We haven’t reported a lot this season, but we have been busy.

Several clutches with 3 gene animals were hatched, like Lesser Bees, and Bumble Bee butters, as well as a LOT
of double and single gene animals. Almost no normals this season.

One odd clutch was 4 normals, from a female that was bred to a pastel super butter. This SHOULD have produced all butters, and butter pastels, instead the result was all normal females, that look similar to their mother. We believe this was a case of parthenogenesis, where the egg was never fertilized by the male, yet it still reached maturity with just the genetics of the dame. All four are doing quite well. The female had been bred in previous years, but to males that would have made sperm retention VERY unlikely. Maybe I’ll expand on this in a longer blog posting later.

I also hatched a male Lesser Bee, that is a little duck billed. I had to assist feed his first couple of meals, but it took to it quickly after that.

I ended up with a lot of Butter, Lessers and combos of each. Shaun had a LOT of Enchis and Enchi combos.

We only added 2 animals to our Cafe project this year. One more female Cafe, and a Cafe Pastel, now known as a Decaf. We have gotten the cafe and both known cafe combos listed in the World Of Ball Pythons database, which is known by most, as the go-to morph database.

I have let go almost all of my normal females now. I am keeping one very large girl, and a rescue girl I picked up about 4-5 years ago. The rescue girl has a very bad belly scar. I can only assume she had belly rot at some point well before I got her. Shaun is still keeping some normals.

Part of the reason I let most of my normals, and some others, go; is to reduce space. I moved my animals twice over the last 8 months, and went down in space by two racks. I now have them in a location I can call permanent.

Many of our younger animals we have been growing up, are now ready to breed. These will take place of some of the animals we let go. Some are double gene males, as well as some single and double gene females. It goes without saying we have more young stuff we hope to be ready NEXT year.

We’ve also added several animals. A proven Vanilla Scream, a Pastel Sugar, two Black Pewter Ghosts, a Super Vanilla Citrus Ghost, a Citrus Ghost Spider, a Pewter Bee, and more.

Today, I finally attached my scale to the snake computer, to make it easier to keep weights updated in the database. This is the scale for the larger animals. I don’t use it on hatchlings because it rounds to the nearest five grams. Five grams isn’t a lot to worry about, so I may start using it with the little ones as well.

On the programming end, I have mad a lot of changes to our database system, both the back end, and the the public website. We’ve added additional ways to track things, as well as share information.

I have two animals I cannot get to take rats still. They will eat only ASF rats, and maybe an occasional mouse. This means I’ve had to keep a colony of ASF (African Soft Furs,) of which I had a few, but they all started eating their babies. I could no longer get them to multiply, so I had to start over with a new colony I picked up a colony from up north. It’s now doing well.

Lastly, after moving, I no longer have a place to raise rats and mice of my own. Since selling feeders was a bit of an income, and really offset most of the costs of buying feeders this means I’ve taken a bit of a hit. Maybe I can find a new location sometime soon. Ideally a detached outbuilding nobody is using, with at least minimal electricity, and maybe running water. If I could find some property, I might be able to setup a temporary building (used mobile trailer) for rodents. We will see.

All in all, it’s been a busy year, with much change, most of it good.

Thank you, to all who we have done business with, as well as everyone in the ball python community who we have associated with, and/or bounced ideas, questions, and answers with.

The holiday season is just around the corner, so I would say we have a lot to be thankful for, and loving families to be with.

Talk to you soon!

Thomas Tremain
Northwest Reptiles

Fall update was last modified: January 2nd, 2015 by Tom
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