3/21/07:  Great news!  Got a call from Ben today asking me to guess which female had laid eggs.  After a few guesses and a few clues from Ben and I still couldn't guess.  When he told me which female laid, I was still having trouble figuring out which female it was because we both didn't expect her to lay.  When he told me Aster had laid I was speechless!  We have some jungle jags on the way.  She laid 11 good looking eggs, and one that is not so good looking.  Well, the second clutch, and another jag clutch.  The jags got a nice early start this year.  It's nice to see them after such a long time waiting from wanting jags to producing our own.  I really think that the jungle jags are some of the nicest jag crosses of all.  Hopefully these eggs will make it and we'll see some nice JJs hatching in a couple months.  The reason this clutch was such a surprise is that we hadn't seen any obvious copulations or other clues that she was going to lay.  A few weeks ago Ben thought she looked a little uncomfortable, but this clutch was a very nice surprise.  Here are some quick snapshots of Aster on the clutch with Napoleon and another female coastal in the background as well as the eggs by themselves. 

Female jungle, Aster, on her clutch of eggs from breeding Napoleon, our male red jag (at right)	Aster moves a bit to reveal her eggs.  They look pretty good.	The eggs all set up in the incubator.  Hopefully we'll have a good hatch rate.

Spring has sprung!  I checked the local garter snake den late last week and there were some out and about.  My daughter caught her first garter snake and learned to identify the two different types of garter out at the den.  It's cool to have such a large concentration of snakes all together in one place.  There is also a rattlesnake den up the canyon that I would like to check out sometime soon, that is if I can find it.  It is right next to a climbing route, so I may take up the ropes and gear and climb a bit while I am at it.  If I do find it, I will be sure to take lots of pictures for the site.  I will also get some pictures at the garter den with my new camera.  Spring is always a great time of year.  I am not a big fan of the cold and winter time, but it sure makes you appreciate a warm spring day a lot more.  Spring time also means yard work, and we are getting ready to renovate the front yard.  My wife is really gung ho about the yard and the garden; one might say she is slightly obsessed.  Needless to say, she is also very excited for it to be spring.  Ben and his wife took a nice little trip down south to Saint George to get a little bit of a spring break, and had a great time, other than a little stress from a snake shipment sent Delta Dash that didn't get scanned into the system before getting on the plane.  Thankfully, Rob T, the recipient, worked at a shipping company and knew all the little quirks of the shipping scene and was very helpful in getting info and helping ease our minds.  I hate it when a shipment doesn't go smoothly, but this one worked out well, just a little stressful. 

Speaking of shipping jungles, we have had a lot of fine snakes leaving us.  It was really hard to let these go, and I am starting to think we may have made a mistake in selling them.  I am just glad they are going to some good people, and I sure hope to get some occasional updates from time to time.  I think they will be some fine trophy jungles.  We are planning on starting a hall of fame page for the website, so if you have any of our animals that you think should be in the hall of fame, send us an updated picture and we can put it up in the hall of fame.   When I get a few pictures, I can begin putting the page together. 

The jag hatchlings are doing well, and are shedding out and starting to feed.  It will be hard to decide which ones to keep, but we are very curious to see how they will mature.  There are a couple we definately have our eyes on, so we may end up keeping quite a few.  If you really want one of our red or normal jags as well as sibs and red jag sibs, then let us know soon so we can let you know once we have them ready to sell.  They are sure nice to look at, and we are very happy to have them thriving.  The two twins are looking good, but are very small.  It will be interesting to see how they do as they shed out and begin to eat.  I will put a few pictures of some below so you can see their progress.  We will also begin photographing them all and getting them ready to sell soon, so watch the availble page for individual pictures and descriptions.  The naming of jaguar types has been messed up early on, so it is difficult to know what to call the types.  Each breeder seems to ignore conventional naming put forth by Jan Eric of Jaguar Breeding Center, who produced the first jags.  We have been talking to some of the jaguar breeders in the country to see how they name the jag morphs, but are a bit more confused than when we started.  We will likely leave off the names, except for some descriptive names like red jag or reduced pattern red jags, and just grade them like we do with the jungles.  It will be hard to see a lot of these guys go, but I guess you can't keep them all.

Reduced black red jaguar.  This guy is very nice	Another beautiful jag with a good apetite.	This one has a really cool head pattern	Another nice red jag, that is looking good.	This jag has a very cool banded pattern.

More clutches are also on their way.  We had pre-lay sheds from our two childrens pythons as well as our Cape York or Blonde spotted python, so they should be laying in a few weeks.  I am very interested to see how the baby blondies will hatch out.  There have been some cool reduced pattern high yellow blondes in Australia that I have seen on some of the Australian reptile forums.  Hopefully we will see some nice variation in the babies.  We should also be seeing some nice ball python clutches, and our male mojave has been breeding one of our pastel female, so hopefully we might see a pastave or two.  The hatchlings from '06 are growing well, and the Angolans are putting on some size as well as some of the ball morph females.  We will likely be replacing many of our normal female balls with morph females.  It's nice to see snakes we hatched out develop and progress well.  What  a great hobby.  Well, it is about to become a little more as we grow in our producing capacity and the collection gets a little more size.  I sent in the paperwork to register our business as an L.L.C., so from now on we will be Australian Addiction Reptiles, LLC.  Fun stuff.  Well, here are a few more pictures to help you GET ADDICTED!

Can't resist posting pictures of Nacho	Bredli showing a bit of spring love behavior	Our strange poss het pieds breeding	An '05 holdback PXP female jungle	She has a really cool striped belly	Fresh shed on this little red jag

3/5/07:  Well, a couple of the jag clutch have shed out and are looking pretty sweet.  I will be taking some pictures soon, and have included one of two different colored jags below.  The hypo red jag in the picture has not shed, so should be pretty incredible after that first shed.  I picked up a bunch of them from Ben's place, so it's nice to have this eye candy here too.  Well, our two screamer jungle hatchlings from '06 were sold this weekend, so it will be sad to see them go, but I am sure Rob will give them a great home and we will be seeing offspring from these beauties before too long.  We still have some great jungles left, so check out our available page to see what you can do to add to your carpet collection.  We will also be getting the jags ready to sell, so if you are interested in a jaguar or red jaguar carpet,  be sure to let us know.  Jaguars and the new carpet morphs are going to be huge, and are starting to take off.  They are a welcome alternative to the ball python morphs.  Don't get me wrong, I love the ball morphs, and we will always have some ball morphs, but the carpets eat well, are hardy, are very interesting to watch, are beautiful, etc., etc.  If you haven't had the pleasure of owning a carpet python, well that should be remedied soon.  They are definately favorites here, and we are confident that others will see this as well.  The new carpet morphs will only help with the excitement and investment potential.  Soon we will see granite jaguars, zebra jags, snow carpets, and the list goes on.  It is also nice to see different subspecies of carpets available, including the newly introduced (at least in the US) Darwins or Northern carpets and inland carpets, as well as the nice jungles, coastals, diamonds, Irian Jayas/West Papauns, and centralians.  While there has been some heated discussion on mixing and interbreeding subspecies of carpets, we don't take sides and will offer both cool designer carpet morphs, as well as pure-bred lines.  It's not all or none, so we figured that we might as well have fun with mixing morphs as well as breeding true.  Well, just thougt I would throw in this update, and I will also post the obligatory photos of the week.  Enjoy and GET ADDICTED!

New pic of jaguar hatchlings	Starla, dam of the jag hatchlings	Skunk and Opal snapshot	Female pinstripe woma, such a great looking woma	Nice '06 female holdback from Skunk and Deb	Het genetic stripe male, this guy is a pig.	Nice pair of womas, hoping for eggs!	66% double het albino ghost male with a cool pattern.

3/1/07:  Just waiting for those jags to shed.  They should shed in a day or two.  I am very excited to see them all nice and colorful.  Ben is lucky to have them at his place!  I have been comminicating with other jaguar breeders and finding out some great things.  It will be interesting to see the variation in our jaguars once they shed out.  Expect plenty of pictures of some cool jags in the next few days.  A few were very dark, and look kind of cool, and I am curious to see if they keep their dark color and huge contrast.  Others are very light red jaguars.  I am excited to see if we have any hypo jags in there, so  needless to say, we are very excited about this clutch!  Stay tuned for more updates hopefully in the next day or two.  

Well, a nice surprise yesterday with the introduction of Morelia Inc. website going public with the presence of albino Darwin carpets in Europe.   It will be great to see them over here, not only for the albinos, but also to have pure Darwins, aka Northern carpet pythons here in the States.  Henric has a nice selection of jags, axanthics, and granites, not to mention spencers goannas.  So many cool herps! 

The available jungle pages (PXP and PXU jungle carpet pythons) were recently updated with current photos and prices.  They are turning into trophy snakes.  It is fun to keep some over the winter to see how they turn out when they start to develop their colors.  There are some real stunners, and we are so fortunate to be working with such nice lines of pure jungles.  We are waiting on a bunch of clutches, and it will be fun to see what we get.  I have posted a couple pictures of ovulating or gravid females, including Lilly, our PXP jungle dam, childrens pythons, and double het ghost albinos, as well as some snapshots of one of our bredli, bumblebee male, and our nice striped female.  It sure is hard to get a good picture of that striped jungle, as her colors just don't come out well.  Well, enjoy the pictures, and I will be back with updates and more pictures soon.  GET ADDICTED!

Double het albino ghost pair, with gravid female	Trio of VPI line childrens pythons, 1 girl ovulating	Snapshot of one of our female centralian pythons	Can't resist a snapshot of Nacho, our bumblebee male	Lilly, our PXP line dam is getting ready to lay soon, notice the swelling	A nice PXP female from '05, who is a part of our stripe jungle project.

 


2/17/07:  I can't resist posting another quick update as a lot of cool things are going on.  I also want to post more pictures on this page to show some of the cool stuff, and make it worthwhile to anyone reading this page.  It's always nicer to have pictures to illustrate rather than just having me drone on and on.  I will post smaller pictures linked to larger versions.  Click to enlarge.  So, first off, we couldn't wait and opened up the jag eggs to see what was inside.  It looks like about half are jags, and a couple of those are red jags.  There are also some nice red hatchlings in there, and we are very excited for the babies to come out, and we expect they will be out in the next couple days.  There is some controversy among herpetoculturalists whether people should slit eggs or just let the eggs hatch on thier own.  We generally have let our clutches hatch out on their own, but with some clutches we just get too excited and have to have a look.  They all have hatched out fine after they were slit, and we generally only slit after day 52 or so.  I do think there is a problem with slitting too early in the course of incubation, and one should slit an egg only if the hatchling is far enough along in incubation to be able to come out on their own.  Anyway, pictured at the left is a red jag in the egg.  There will be many more pictures once they emerge.  They look like stunners so far.

    The Antaresia are doing well and are all the females are looking nice and gravid.  Hopefully we'll have a few clutches in the incubator very soon.  Pictured are a gravid childrens python and a Cape York spotted, both exhibiting belly-up basking behavior.  They are hugging the heat, and look a bit uncomfortable.  I am surprised that the female spotted is going to lay, as I thought we would have to wait for next year, but it was a nice surprise.  I sometimes forget that these guys are so small as adults with the centralians and womas across from them.  That's how it goes with the smallest genus of pythons.  I also got some pictures of a unique looking poss het pied female, Velvet, that got nice and big.  She has been breeding a male poss het pied that has a similar pattern.  They look kind of look a bit like harlequins, so we thought it would be worth it to breed them together to see if there is something going on with the appearance of these two.  The super harlequin is pretty cool, so I imagine the super-harlequin pied would be a sight.  These two have pretty strong "het pied" marker, so there is a good chance they are het pieds.  She has some nice size and has been eating well, so we are hoping for a good sized clutch.   It appears as if some of the other ball pythons are looking big and should be laying soon as well.  We expect quite a few mojave clutches as well as some nice pastel clutches.  The pied has also been breeding some nice het and poss het pied females, so we are hoping for a bunch of pieds this season.  The womas are also doing well, and hopefully we will get one or two clutches of womas.  This is a great time of year and it is fun to have eggs hatching even before other clutches have been laid.  Our jungles should also be ready to lay soon as well and are looking great. 

Nice woma female from '05	'06 female childrens python	2 '05 jungle girls	A nice morph trio, fem spider, male ghost, female mojo	Nice reduced spider from '06

    Here are a few more random photos of some of our herps.  First picture is one of our nice female womas that is turning out nicely.  Second is one of our holdback childrens pythons that think she is a death adder.  She flattens out and is a bit fiesty.  She is nice and red and is turning out nice.  Next is the jungle holdbacks from '05.  The striped female is killer and I can't wait to breed her to our striped male.  Next are some nice holdback ball morphs (spider, ghost, mojave) that are growing quickly and are ready for the next cage size.  Last is a nice male spider that has a great reduced pattern.  Hope you enjoy the increase in pictures.  It's so nice to be able to work with such cool snakes!  GET ADDICTED!


2/9/07:  Well, we are only a couple weeks away from the hatching of our first jaguar clutch.  I am really excited to see what pops out of these eggs.  We have around 30 that are still looking good, so hopefully there will  be a good percentage of jags and red sibs in the clutch.  If you are interested in any jaguars, then send and email and we will let you know when they are available.  I imagine we will be holding a couple back, depending on their looks and pattern.  This is the best time of year, when eggs are being laid and hatching, and it makes all the work worth it.  Opal and Deb, both bred to Skunk are hugging the heat, and are starting to show all the good signs of being gravid.  They should be amazing, and we are very excited to see how the Skunk/Opal babies will hatch out.  I imagine we will want to keep those around for a while, but you may be able to talk us out of a few.  This is one pairing that we have been anticipating for several years, so needless to say we are psyched to have this happening.  We'll keep you updated on this project.  JB and Lily, our Python Pete line jungles, were locked up last weekend, and we expect they will go another year of producing some stellar offspring.  The striped female is coming along quickly and I almost bred her to JB for our striped jungle carpet project, but I figured I would wait another year to make sure she was up to size.  I think she is probably big enough, but there is no harm in waiting.  Kip has also been busy with his 2 females, so we are hoping for a lot of poss het granite babies as well.  It looks like our Cape York spotteds will also be laying a clutch this year, which came as a surprise to me.  One day I found her basking belly up, and after a closer examination, she has a belly full.  This is her first clutch, so it will be interesting to see how many eggs she lays.  It also looks like our two VPI line childrens pythons will be laying this year as well, so more red childrens are on the way.  The ball projects are going well, and it looks like we will have several clutches this year again.  Nacho, our male bumblebee (pictured above), is growing very well, and is eating like no other.  He is up to 220 g now, and that is nice after his meager beginnings (around 35 g at hatching).  Our female ball morphs are also growing well, and we have a spider and a mojave that are both over 800 g.  Hope they continue to eat well.  The Angolans have such a high metabolism and can sure pack in the rodents.  It is fun to watch them grow up.  We are almost ready to warm up the geckos and get them breeding, but are waiting for our new dubia colony to start producing.  It will be nice to not have to order crickets anymore. 

The '06 jungles are growing rapidly, and are coloring up very nice.  We will begin shipping again in March, so contact us then to get that jungle you have been wishing for over the winter.  I will be taking updated photos at the end of the month and pricing the babies accordingly.  Some are turning out nicer than expected, and should make a great addition to your breeding programs.  I have pictured one of the nicest babies from '06 at the right to give you some idea of how our jungles are turning out.  This girl was a standout from the beginning and we had her tagged early as a holdback. The picture is taken in a "studio" set-up, and she is only on this background for the pictures.  I have had a few people ask what kind of substrate is that that I am using for the jungles.  Just shells for the picture.  The white sure brings out her yellows and velvet blacks.  We also have a few ball morphs left over and we will also be advertizing them in March as well.  It is fun to keep animals over the winter to have a chance to watch them grow and develop and it makes hatching snakes out worthwhile.  If you are thinking about breeding any reptiles, make sure you have room for their offspring, so you are not forced to "dump" the animals you produced to anyone who comes along.  I am a terrible salesman, and I would rather keep them all than sell them, but that is also not practical, so we let them go....reluctantly.  This is such a great hobby, and it is fun to be able to propogate such amazing animals.  There are so many more species I would love to get, but I have been pacing myself to make sure that the ones here get the best care they deserve.  Well, enough talk of selling these little gems, I'm off to enjoy them while they are here.  GET ADDICTED!!

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