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Snake of the Day 08-18-18m

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Yes, I did it again.  NO snake toDAY, but an example of a topic that’s crucial to snake keeping; MICE.  I have only skipped two or three years of raising mice since 1971.  As long as they are housed outside the home, they are a joy to have, and are a convenience that also facilitates profits in the business of selling snakes.  Naturally, I may love having them because they are so critical to the success of my first pet passion, reptiles.  I thought for sure the featured mouse toDAY was going to have 19 babies when I photographed her a few DAYs ago, but alas, she only had 17.  I’m positive the record litter surpasses my lifetime record of 23 live-born babies from one mouse, but the strain I have now is highly fertile.  Like my friend, Jud McClanahan in Kansas, I have not added a single specimen to my latest strain of these highly productive lab mice since 1999 (Jud has gone even longer than that).  Starting with 350 units (seven Freedom Breeders) in 1999 I’m now down to using only two racks, containing 80 units.  I still spend over $25K annually for frozen mice, in spite of producing an average of 120 pinkies per DAY (when most of my mouse breeders are young adults, the average is over 200 per DAY).  Were it not for the restrictions of time and energy, I’d get back to 5-7 racks, and perhaps be able to stop buying frozen mice.  BTW, we never sell snakes that are eating only LIVE mice.  I only have live mice so I can freeze the very smallest pinkies for those newly hatched corns. BONUS  PIC . . .

Snake of the Day 08-11-18

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Okay, not really a SNAKE, but collaterally related to snake keeping.  I find 10-20 of these in snakes cages every year; dead, alive, and sometimes drowned in water bowls.  I also find between three and 10 scorpions inside snake cages in all three of our reptile buildings.  While I have never proven that any of my snakes were ever impacted by them (since their tough scales largely protect them from the fangs of Arachnids) it’s remotely possible for spiders to be responsible for reptile injuries and perhaps even deaths.  No, I do not like spiders, but knowing that their secondary purpose for injecting venom is defense, it’s not as dangerous as one might suspect–to let a spider crawl on your skin, but I don’t recommend agitating them while in contact with you.  That reality did not make me complacent, however.  I never took my eyes off this Reclusa during photography with my cell phone.  Especially when it raced up my arm a couple of times.  Thought I was going to need clean underwear during one of those sprints toward my shirt sleeve? 

Snake of the Day 08-04-18

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Along with three of his 2018 siblings, one of these (Shatter Corn Snake with distended stomach from eating a pinky mouse) was featured yesterDAY.  Parents of these Cinder types were both het for Diffused, Cinder, Masque, Sunkissed and Lava.  The second one from the left has slightly red eyes, but the others all have dark eyes.