The articles on this page will cover my Cadmium Morph breeding project as well as other snake related experiences I have.
After 20 years of raising snakes I’m turning my focus to other hobbies and am slowly pairing down my collection to just my 3 best pairs of adults (which I didn’t even breed this year).
Last year (2020) I actually had quite a bit of time off of work and I really started to focus on my home, land and other out-door interests that are more satisfying.
Meanwhile, my interest in raising snakes has been waning and now it just seems like an expensive chore.
Somehow I messed around and didn’t post about eggs.
I decided to mix up the gals and guys this year since I’ve had one female fail to lay the last couple years (the 2010 in case you care).
The good news is everyone laid! (I am currently waiting to see who double clutches.)
First up was my 2010 Female who I bred to the 2006 male:
Next is the 2012 female who I left with her 2012 brother. I made a booboo here. She was the first to shed and ovulate so she was the first to be introduced to a male. I didn’t record it and then promptly forgot so 30 days later when she sheds I assume she’s the last to breed. Imagine my surprise when she lays eggs 2 weeks later. TAKE GOOD NOTES!!
Last was the 2006 female who, for some snakey reason, refused to use her lay box. This does let me share a lesson I learned the hard way: If you get ANY aspen shavings in the incubator substrate (I still use vermiculite) it will mold like crazy and ruin your eggs. Especially look for shavings in between eggs that are stuck together.
All together I have about 50 eggs sitting in the incubators right now. We’ll know in about 3 weeks how many hatch but they all look good.
When I posted 7 weeks ago there were about 200 cases of Covid-19 and 1 known death in the US. Now there are 1,000,000 and 54,000 deaths. This is not the place to go into the political and economic things that are happening, but it’s fair to say this will be an unprecedented piece of world history. The part of it that interests me the most is the long term effect of “social distancing” and “shelter-in-place”.
I am a single, middle aged man living in a rural area with a job, a dog, a bunch of snakes and no real family or friends. All my non-work activities are done solo except when I go to town once per week for groceries. I make fewer than a dozen trips per year to any city large enough to have a movie theater. While I do spend a lot of time outdoors I live in a place where that’s possible while avoiding interacting directly with most other people.
For the last 7 weeks, millions of Americans have been forced into a lifestyle very much like this and I’m interested to know how many of them are enjoying it (aside from the no-work-no-paycheck thing which sucks no matter who you are). I am interested to see how many people change their socializing habits when this is over. How many people will move back to the country (if they’re able) or at least out of dense urban and suburban areas. How many will spend more time learning about and working with things they love rather than just trying to fit in to some social group.
I know that socializing is an important part of human development and well-being but I honestly think we’ve turned most of it into a pointless game that stops people from thinking and learning about things that other people might judge harshly. It’s easier to just agree with the group and it is more often rewarded than standing apart.
Anyway, I hope everyone is safe and healthy. Here’s some snake pics
A pair of my 2018’s
Another couple of my 2018’s
This last one is a local rat snake I found yesterday. He decided to play ball python. I thought that was neat.
Well, I haven’t posted about my snakes for 4 months but I swear, there’s a good reason!
while I think of it, I’ll post about something else.
I have worked at the same company for ~23 years and I’m now the plant/general/production manager. This is good in that I have a great paycheck but it also means there’s no where to go, no time off, I can’t even begin to replace this job if I wanted to and I spend all day dealing with people, which is not my forte.
The company tripled in size last year and spent a ton of money acquiring new companies, man power and equipment as our primary market contracted. The manufacturing sector has been screwed up ever since Trump’s trade war with China started and, as I type this, the world is going nuts about the corona virus which is really hurting global economics. OH! And it’s an election year which always depresses spending by large companies which means sales are off.
So, I have a stressful job I’ve had for a long time at a company that’s suddenly growing and changing on top of unpredictable economic and social stuff all of which means instability and economic uncertainty!
What would a wise person do in volatile times like these? I don’t know but I bought some land.
It’s basically two iron ore hills and the valley in between covered with scrubby trees but I don’t have to mow it and that fills my heart with joy!
I’m super excited to see what crawls out of the tree stumps and rocks this summer. I’ve already found a few interesting things but before we get to the good stuff we have to address the shirtless hillbilly in the room. For many years this property belonged to some white trash plumber who tossed all the old hot water heaters and broken fixtures on the property. So far I have hauled off 3 trailer loads of scrap metal and water heaters. There are at least 2 more trailer loads of water heaters and busted toilets and sinks to contend with and then I can get to the stuff I’m going to have to winch out of the woods. Yup…these are “my people”
But I know what you’re thinking “There must be snakes hiding in all that junk!! You are correct!!
Behold!
The rare water-heater rat snake!
This one took a ride up the hill before I found him. I was afraid he’d been sm00shed but he’s fine.
And there are other cool things there as well. Like this teeny tiny spider who was hiding under a rock.
That’s pretty cool. There are also squirrels, rabbits, foxes, coyotes, deer and all the other normal East Texas forest stuff, but I’ll wrap up with one cool thing you might never have seen. In some places where they replant with pine trees you sometimes get this bright blue mold. I’ve found it on sticks a time or two but this whole log was covered with it. Neat.
Finally, down to business. I’ve warmed up the snakes, begun feeding and soon it will be time to make baby snakes again. I really do need to sell about 20 animals this year but we’ll see what happens. My time for this hobby is being taxed pretty heavily and I have other grown-up stuff to concentrate on now, like building fences.
Of the 28 babies I hatched this year, 26 were 12-14 grams upon hatching. The notable exceptions being one that was 8 grams (named Tiny) and one that was 16 grams (named Biggie). This is enough of a disparity to follow up on their progression. What do I have a couple months later? Well, despite offering the same food in the same environment, the small snake is still 1/2 the size of the large snake (12g vs 24g). What does that mean? Who knows? Do I look like a herpetologist to you? I have no way of knowing what’s going on genetically. I can tell you that some of my morphs are noticeably smaller than their hatchling kin. I have adult male rat snakes that exceed 6 feet in length while other sub adults look like they’ll never make it. to that size. Who has 10 or 12 years to learn these things? (Besides me?) Do I have a dwarf gene? If I do then my Hobbit reference in the title to this post would be ridiculous and I should go back and make some kind of joke about Smaug or the King Under the Mountain. I’ll let you debate that one among yourselves. Until then here’s pics of Biggie and Tiny.
What I didn’t do this summer was post about my snakes. (I’m getting pretty bad about that)
So let’s talk about the 2019 breeding season. I have 3 sets of adults left for breeding, pairs from (2006, 2010 & 2012) . My 2010’s didn’t breed this year and I’m not sure why but it’s good, for the health of the female, to skip a year every now and then.
My 2006’s did well but the babies all look pretty normal.
2006 female
2006 male
The first baby to hatch was a chunk and it occurred to me that I’ve never weighed hatchling snakes.
So, I broke out the kitchen scale and weighed each hatchling as they emerged. Out of 28 snakes from two different clutches they were all between 12 & 14 grams (except for one that was 16 and one that was 8…I’m going to do a follow up and compare these two siblings in the future.)
The 2006 clutch was lots of healthy good looking snakes but pretty unremarkable. Since it takes a year + before they start to show any real color (and since I’m not dealing with 60 snakes) I decided to hang on to them all to see how they look next summer.
Roadie was not impressed by the babies.
My 2012’s gave me ALL MORPHS! I don’t know what’s different about these snakes but it’s cool.
2012 female
2012 male
There were only a dozen babies but everyone displays broken patterns, broke stripe through the eye, light ground color and faded centers of the dorsal markings. This is my 3rd year with this pair breeding exclusively and this is what they give me every time.
The reason I bring this up is that their offspring from past years all develop mixtures of yellow and red turn a wonderful lavender color in most animals.
So, I apologize for not keeping things up to date around here but my company bought another company and now yada yada yada. It doesn’t matter. Lets talk about snakes!
There was some snake breeding. My 2006’s and 2012’s did great. I got 40 good eggs and zero slugs. My 2013’s (the blind ones) did not produce again….the female really looked gravid but their physical problems have convinced me to scrap that line.
The big surprise is my 2010' female hasn’t laid yet. She should lay any day now so we’ll see.
In case you were wondering here’s pics of some snek secks
My 2018’s are starting to show some colors and I did probe them the other night. I have 8 males and 6 females so we’ll see who wants pairs and who wants a lone male or two just because they have extra rats laying around.
FYI: I will be updating my Snakes For Sale page in the next few days
This brings me to something controversial I want to talk about. Who I sell to.
I’ve had some weird interactions with people who email me looking for snakes. Several people emailed that they want snakes and then ghost me without saying “Sorry, I changed my mind” but I’ve had a few other weird inquiries of people who insist on sending money orders and don’t really ask about the snakes at all or groups of people all emailing at once without me posting or doing anything to stimulate the interest. So, I did something recently that may have been awkward, but I’m glad I did it.
I got two inquiries on April fools day at almost the same time and I asked both people if they would link me to their social media or websites where I could see that they were actual, experienced herp keepers/breeders. As soon as I did it I felt like I’d screwed up but both guys were forthcoming and proved credible. I sold snakes to both of them and I hope they are happy with what they got. I think I’ll make this a policy going forward to at least ask potential buyers about their experience and other interests. It’s definately awkward but I think it will be worth it.
I’ve had some good conversations with people who have emailed me about snakes and while I don’t spend a lot of time socializing and I’m slow to respond to people, I feel better knowing these animals are going to people who at least take their hobby seriously. It makes me confident people will be happy with the animals they’re getting from me.
That being said here’s some pics of my 2010 & 2012 males. Good looking guys if you ask me.
Back in 2017 my 2013 male developed milky eyes. This happens sometimes if snakes donm’t properly shed their eye-caps. In young snakes it can be a big problem because there’s a gap for bacteria to grow and cause infections and it’s aporblem that can compound itself with each additional shed. trust me, I’ve peeled a bunch of eye caps in my day. A towel soaked in warm water and a pair of tweezers will fix them up real quick. This guy didn’t seem to have retained eye caps. So, I let it go for 1 shed cycle to see what happened. One eye cleared up a lot but the other stayed about the same.
At this point I started to re-evaluate this snake. He has some bad ribs on one side (hey! I ain’t raising race horses) I chose him originally because
A) he had great colors
B) I had a female from the same year with the same dad
C) he was SUPER calm. Like, kitty-cat-wants-a-saucer-of-milk calm. He damn near purrs…
His half sister was the same way and I was interested in calm babies, so it made sense to add this par to the breeding pool.
But the other day I was cleaning his cage and noticed something.
He never strikes. He never jumps. He never recoils. He never makes a jerky motion (without being touched) AT ALL. I thought about this for a minute and then did some tests with waving things at him and making quick gestures around him. he never reacted. I tried shining light on hm and blocking it out. very little pupil activity and no snake reaction.
I tried these same motions and gestures with other snakes. All of them flinch or react at some point except him ….and his half sister…..
They do not follow fingers or food without their tounges guiding them.
....I have a pair of blind snakes…..and it may have a genetic component……
so now I face the ethical question: Do I breed them?
I tried last year but got nothing. Maybe they are infertile as well.
There are a lot of “maybes” to this one but I thought about it and decided to give them one more go.
So, what happens if……
A) they have beautiful, healthy babies that make me glad I spend the money I should be investing for my retirement to feed snakes? (easy answer)
B) they have blind babies each requiring a specially trained dogs to help them navigate public spaces? (I guess I’ll need to get a bunch of handicap placards and install an ADA toilet)
C) They don’t have any babies again?
Well, my faithful fans, I was raised on a farm and you don’t feed what you can’t eat or doesn’t work. I know it’s heartless and cold blooded of me but this may be where this branch of the family tree ends.
We shall see.
I sold some more snakes recently to a very nice lady who, at one point, asked me how related all these animals are. Despite having put together a comprehensive conspiracy-theroy-esque wall to track lineages I realized I couldn’t work backwards from current animals more than one generation so……..
I started working it out for specific animals and found out I had missed something…...another male had gotten his snake goo into my perfectly in-bred line of weirdos.
Specifically, as I was going back through old spreadsheets I discovered I was wrong about where my 2007 animals came from.
My whole Texas rat snake breeding program kicked off because some white trash kid quit his job and moved out of the trailer park in the middle of the night, His boss called me the next day to say something like “The kid left a mess and I have to clean it up but the landlord won’t go near the trailer because it’s full of snakes.” (I might be mis-remembering this but it’s close enough) The point is, one of these snakes was a skinny, ugly Texas rat snake with a weird white spot on his back. I never could determine whether he was piebald or it was just some sort of injury. I bred him a few times but had no real interesting babies so I forgot about this…until I went back through old spread sheets and realized that some of his progeny are in my in my breeding program.
In previous posts I did a breeding family tree that mislabeled at least one 2007 female as being the offspring of my original 2002 male when, in fact there are two 2007 females who came from this guy that are part of the current bloodline. What follows are the updated breeding family trees.
Worth mentioning, I have confirmed that all the offspring have the same maternal origin. One Eve and two Adams. (Insert joke about my divorce here later)
So, in 2013 the family tree looks more like this:
In the last couple years I’ve been focused on the 2010 & 2012 bloodlines since they are throwing pretty constant traits. The 2010’s are yielding lots of broken patterns (including something kind of mosaic)
The 2012s have lots of reddish/lavender colors (which I kind of like)
but I now I have to look back on years of unimaginative, poorly managed snake breeding and wonder what could have been?
Or not.
It’s pointless to wonder “what if I hadn’t been so stupid in the past” once you realize that future you already knows all the dumb stuff you’re doing right now. Let’s try not to disappoint our future selves by being smarter today!
So, what is the state of my breeding program?
Well, I have four pairs of breeding adults:
1) The 2006 male & female who gave me all the 2010’s and 2012’s (grandma & grandpa to my hopes & dreams)
2) A 2010 male & female (predictable and comfortable like an old pair of shoes you can’t buy any more)
3) A 2012 male & female (still young enough to party but old enough to go to bed at a reasonable hour)
4) And a 2013 male & female!!!! The hope of the future….{cue up record scratch}
uh oh…..The 2013s I chose to keep for breeding are both from the 2010 & 2006 lines with no link back to my missing-link snake.
So what am I going to do?
Well, as it turns out I do have two 2016s that are from the alternate blood line. They both have the same 2012 father but their mothers are sisters so let’s consider them genetic brothers with different great-grandfathers. That’s the best I can do.
So I haven’t been posting this winter while the snakes are cooling but a few people are actually reading this stuff and I suppose they deserve some content.
Comment #1 I bought a new phone that takes much better pics. I know that seems counter intuitive. For the last century if you wanted better pics you bought a better camera or lenses…...welcome to the future
comment #2 red phase snakes! Last year I noticed that I had some babies that looked very red indeed (scroll back through past posts for examples of this) but it wasn’t until people started buying them that I realized that they all came from my 2012 snakes…..this made me go back and look. my 2002 snakes gave me my 2006 snakes that gave me the awesome looking hypo melanistic very yellow 2010 snakes.
Those same 2002/2006 snakes gave me a bunch of 2012 snakes
These 2012 snakes are yielding a bunch of very red/lavender snakes. Should I call this another morph? I wish I had great pics of them but in lieu of that…how the hell do I know? FYI: all of the best baby snakes from last year are from 2012 pairings so we’ll know more by July. In the mean time here’s the last of my 2015 snakes who is also the offspring of a pair of 2012 snakes.
This brings us to the last interesting snake of this post. I’ve seen hundreds of baby Texas rat snakes and they all pretty much look the same. But this gal looked weird when she hatched. The margins of her markings were unusually clean and for some reason I kept her.
Now she is an amazing lemon yellow with orange popping up at the head. I have no idea what she’ll yield when I breed her but she’s basically just like her grandfather who started all this.
I wish I had more technical info to give you about which genes cause what in these snakes but I’m basically a post-paleolithic sheep herder keeping the sheep I like and hoping the lambs are like their parents. I guess the unknown is half the fun.
