Journal
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| March 9, 2006 |
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First off I'd like to welcome you to the site! It's been a long time in the making. I think I started out back in 2002 working on a website. I'm not very "web creative" so I learned very quickly that I'd need a web designer. Well 4 years later and countless web designers later I finally have a website. Why is it that most web designers I've run across are lazy???? I don't think that is part of the job description...lol. Anyways, I only had a couple I had to fire. The rest just didn't work out. Jon Kendrick (Niagara Reptiles) has helped me out these past couple months getting things up and running as he is a little more advanced than me as far as website stuff goes. I can type in the text and change the font and that is about it. I'm slowly learning!
Now for the breeding season. This year is looking awesome! Most years I hit on about the 50% odds, being that 50% of the females that breed produce offspring. Unfortunately for the 2005 breeding season I moved in November 2004 (bought a house). I thought everything was going to be "fine" as all the adults ate great and bred up a storm. However, the proof was in the pudding so to speak and out of 87 adult female balls being bred only 21 clutches were produced. A dismal 24% average. I did also produce a clutch of Borneo Bloods and 2 clutches of Red Bloods.
This year, 2006, so far to date, 126 adult female Balls have been bred as of this writing. Right now I have 15 females that have ovulated and another 40 or so who are building up for ovulation. I don't want to "jinx" myself, however, at this point it's looking like I'm going to produce close to 70 clutches of Balls!! Of those 126 females about 20 of them are 2004's. They are big enough to breed (1500+ grams)........but I just don't have the best of luck getting younger females to produce eggs. For me I usually hit on 1 out of every 10 younger females will produce. So, out of those 126 females I'd say only around 105 actually have a "good" chance of producing eggs. I should know what all is going to produce come the end of April. If a female doesn't have large follicles by that point she's pretty much done for the season.
Once I figure how to put pictures up in the exact spot that I want them then I'll add pics to the journal. Hopefully I figure it out soon as it would be nice to have pics in the birthing record! I have no problem using photoshop to resize pics and do all that other good stuff. It's just trying to figure out how to make them small, place them where I want them on the page and make them pop up in another window when clicked on that I don't know how to do. I'm sure it's easy to all you "web" guys and gals.......but when it comes to website stuff I'm still brain damaged.
Anyways, I'm done writing for now. I'm sure no one will read this thing but I'm writing here anyways!
Have an awesome day!
Corey
PS: The website is still "under constrution". The PDF file in the "rodent" section has to be updated as well as the Photo Gallery links to the mutations. I'll slowly get all that stuff done. |
March 17, 2006 |
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This week has been interesting to say the least! With the warmer weather comes the flu season. Well, you guessed it I woke up on Monday morning just feeling like crap! All the typical flu symptoms for the first couple days of the week.........so basically those days were spent coughing and sleeping. Then something weird happend in that it turned into a very sore throat on top of everything else. I've had strep throat before and I'll be the first one to tell you that it is not fun! So, off to the doctor I went and they couldn't find any traces of strep throat?????? Two cultures were taken and both came back negative. They really didn't have anything to tell me other than "it's a virus" and "it'll run it's course". So, they sent me home with Tylenol 2's and some weird mouth wash but things actually seem to be getting worse rather than better. I hope I kick this 'bug' soon as now I'm hardly eating or sleeping. I could stand to lose a couple pounds but not eating is not the way to do it! But, when your throat is so sore that it hurts to talk and swallow it doesn't really make you want to sit down to a 4 course meal.
Being in business for yourself things still has to get done. You don't have the luxury of having a sick day! So, deliveries have still been made, shipments have been sent out and the collection is being well maintained. Although, cleaning today has been a little slow as I'm not able to feel my feet for about an hour after I take a Tylenol 2 so I plant my ass down on the couch or in front of the computer when I'm feeling like that. I'm not a big fan of being on medication, especially pain killers. I don't like the way they make me feel especially when body parts go numb!
I'm expecting my first clutch of ball pythons next week, a clutch of 100% het Pieds. So, this week I setup 24 rubbermaids (approximately 16"x11"x9") in my incubator with vermiculite and the rest of the 50 bins I'll setup when I'm feeling better. The bins that are setup now will do me for a little bit so I didn't want to over do it while I'm not feeling well. I bought 3 more bags of vermiculite today so we'll see how far that goes......
When I built the incubator last year I setup the shelving unit to hold 72 bins with room for expansion. This year I think I'm going to need all those 72 spaces. 20 females have ovulated so far and another 41 have follicles developing. This time of year most of the females that are going to go start developing large follicles. The larger the follicles get the less likely they are to reabsorb them. A couple females have been "stalled" on their follicle development. They've gotten to a certain size and then just stopped. Each year there are always a couple females that look promising one week and then they reabsorb the next. It sucks but it happens.
Next week I have my electrician comming by to give me more power for all the "adult bins" that the 2005's are going to be going in before the 06's start hatching out. So, over the next 2 months I'll be moving all the 05's down into their larger bins. Most are ready for the move but some will be a little smaller than what I'd like them to be. I don't have an intermediate size of rubbermaid for them. I either have "hatchling" or "adult" size. I never really did see a need for a "grow up" bin. The adult bins start arriving next week and the water dishes the week after so I'll be good to go to start moving everyone down the middle of April. There is close to 100 yearlings to move into adult bins. I'm going to need a larger house soon!
This year is looking good for the "bread and butter" mutations. I'm going to have a lot of albino, ghost and pied stock this year. I should also do quite well with the Red Axanthic and Lesser Platinum stock too. I'm not sure if I'm going to produce a Red Axanthic again this year (I produced 2.0 in 2001 and 0.2 in 2002) as I only did 2 crosses that had the potential to produce the Red Axanthic. Red Axanthic back to his mother, who hasn't produced since 2002, and I also bred a pair of hets together. Both females aren't doing anything for me which sucks! But on the good side I will see the outcome of a couple crosses involving the Red Axanthic gene which is good!
Well I'm getting the feeling back in my feet so I should get back to work!
Have a great weekend everyone!
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