A few more...

These are the last clutches to have hatched over this past weekend, and I am very excited to say that this first clutch is a first for Heather's Herps.

I have a Lavender Albino male, but had never hatched out any until this weekend.

YAY!

Not the best odds on the hets with 2.0, but I did get 1.2 Lavenders, which makes me very happy in terms of holdbacks.

Now again, the question is, should I hold everything back that I want?

That discussion is for a different time.

They are so cool looking! I wish I had an Albino hatchling to put next to them, but to no avail.

Oh well.

And this last clutch was supposed to be Pastel Yellowbelly to Spider, but apparently the Super Pastel Lesser got a hold of her instead.

One Bee died in the egg, and these guys survived.

1.0 Queenbee, 1.1 Bumblebee, 1.1 Pastel Lessers

Not too bad, eh?

I am looking forward to seeing these guys all shed out and glorified.
When that happens, more pictures for sure.

Have a great day, my friends!

Spiders and their powers

I have a friend that contacted me recently asking me what I thought about the Spider market. He was considering selling out everything, and moving on with different projects.

Why? Because they do not sell quickly/well.

I sat there for a minute, trying to think about that statement.

Yes, there are a lot of spiders out there.

Heck, I feel like I have a ton myself.

But the reason why there are a ton out there is because they are awesome!

I remember about four years ago where selling Spiders was as easy as listing them. 

And now we are seeing that those spiders are now grown up, and other people are producing them.

I could see my friend's point. I have a Spider male currently that no one has inquired about at all. 

But then I thought about the amazing stuff that Spiders make.

Some of my goal snakes have Spider in it....

Axanthic Killerbee, Crystal Spinnerblast, and a few others...

And I'm sure I'm not the only one!

So in the end, maybe the base morph may not be as easy to move, but the combinations are still worth their weight in gold. 

What do you guys think? 

Let me know, chime in. Let's start a dialogue on this. I'm intrigued to know what other people think.

Have a great day, my friends!

Houdini... Freaking me out

So once upon a time, there was a Queenbee female that I had acquired over this past season that I had put in the smallest tubs.

She was good there for a long time, without any ill effects and without any issues. After coming to me, she ate, she drank, she had no problems with anything.

Over the course of the month or two that I had her, I kept checking in to make sure she was good, to make sure she was still thriving like the others.

No problem.

And then, one day (aka Friday), the tub she was in was open.

Now, its been a crazy week (as you could see from the lack of blogging over the last few days), and I could not figure out if it was me being absent minded and left the tub open, which is VERY unlikely, because I have dealt with MANY tub things over the years, and my habits of leaving things closed and double checked is ingrained into my brain...

OR...

The dreaded thought..

She managed to get out.

.....

NO WAY... This snake didn't try and get out before, and I had had her in that tub for a while...

So after a slight surprise and a tiny bit of dismay for having to crawl all over the room looking for her, I did.

Fifteen minutes later, I found her across the second level of a set of vision racks, near the heat cord.

Okay, little miss Houdini, let's put you back in the tub.

I triple checked that I put that snake back in the right tub, with the tub closed.

Crisis averted!!!


Saturday rolled on by, and Sunday is the super cleaning day of the week!

So I go in, sleeves rolled up, ready to roll.

I turn to look at the baby rack and WHAT???????????????

This is what I see:

I am annoyed, a bit freaked out, and more than anything fed up.

HOW THE HECK DID THIS SNAKE DO THIS??

I know now that it was NOT me last time, that this freaking snake has found a way to get out of the smallish tub by doing some type of contortion act to push it open. She was larger than necessary for the tub, but I tend to give the newer animals smaller tubs to make sure they eat well first.

This girl is getting a bigger tub as soon as I find her scrawny ass.

So here I go again..

I take tubs out, I use a flashlight, I crawl on the floor, I stand on my step-stool.
I move racks around, I move things around.
I check the closet, I check the tops of racks, I check the bottom of racks.

Around thirty minutes later, I find her.

She is wedged between the wall and the tub of the TOP tub of one of my Boaphile racks, clear across the other side of the room, and on the top.

Did I mention the TOP? This rack has ten 32 qt tubs in it, and somehow she manages to get from the floor to the TOP tub. We are talking like 6 feet off of the floor.

How the heck these critters do this is absolutely beyond me.

All I know is in my several experiences looking for lost snakes, they tend to end up in the weirdest places.

So learn from me, my friends. When in doubt, look in the weirdest places ever! You will probably find them there.

Her name is officially Houdini now. And she is in the Vision baby tub rack with plenty of space, and no way to get out!

Have a great day, my friends!

Getting there

Gargoyle

It has been an interesting week already.  In the midst of doing all the normal things I do every day, work, class, home stuff, snake stuff, I have gotten into trying to do things early and often.

One of those things is the blog, and the other is photography and social media. Now, don't misunderstand me when I say getting to do Social Media early and often. I actually have been trying to stear clear of Facebook more often, as it tends to get under ones skin, but Pinterest, for the sake of my plannings and sharing with others, I have been trying to get more involved.

Queenbee in Shed

Pinterest, being that of both photography and social media, is an interesting place to be. You post up photos you like, and people comment and like them.  Since I have been trying to take more photos, I have been sharing things on Pinterest more so than before. (NOTE: I have not posted up the snakes anywhere but this blog)

Thus comes this quote I found on Facebook that I found amusing.

I pinned it up, and went on my merry way.

Within an hour, it went VIRAL on Pinterest.

I got so many likes, pins and comments my head started to hurt. I think the count right now is around 14,000, which for any of my other photos on my board, is HUGE.

Why am I bringing this up?

Well, I got some HATEFUL comments about this.


"This is idiotic and otherwise known as an "Excuse To Be A Heinous Bitch"

"attitude is a selfless choice that you make to serve others whether they deserve your wrath or not, When you act with grace despite them your attitude becomes your character which in turn reflects your personality and who you are. Its sad that so many people like this quote...."

"This is such a bunch of crap. If you are allowing your attitude to be affected by others then your personality is pathetic. You can change your personality and should be in control of your own attitude!!!"

WOW! I was floored. Seriously.

While I understand where they are coming from, I interpreted it in a way more open minded way, and found it to be a positive spin on something that could be often misconstrued. How often is it that there is that one person that just drives you nuts, and you knowingly are just more trite with that person? THAT is the type of understanding I got when reading this... 

But apparently it was blown out of the water in terms of establishing an opinion on it.

I am still shocked at how passionate some people are about this saying.

So I present it to you, my blog friends.

How do you interpret it?

I want to hear from people that I know more so than those random faces on Pinterest. I want to know what you think.

And of course, with a sprinkling of pretty snakes to boot.

I will still post to Pinterest, and so far have done so with other quote photos right after the photo quote above, and they were received with much less viral tenacity.

It's interesting how that works...

So with that, I bid you a good day, my friends.

Think on it, comment on it.

It's interesting to think about.

Have a great day!

Mojave Spider

Once again...

I have nothing of importance to share..

The next clutch to hatch will be next week sometime, and the next clutch to be laid is around that same time. There is a LOT of random spaces in between this season, and I try not to start breeding things until the end of the last season is over. Which... it is not.

So not only do I try not to think about pairings (which I haven't had much time to do anyway), I have not had much to talk about snakewise.

So I will delve into the photo galleries and post up random photos and talk about them.

TSK Axanthic Spider

I absolutely love the Axanthic Spiders... They look GREAT and they have not lost a touch of their silver color at all. I am really excited to put them in with the Pastel Axanthic stuff and finally make my Axanthic Killerbee, which is a project I have been gunning for for the past several years.

And add to that the fact that they are all possible het Albino or 100% het Albino, I plan on doing Snow Spiders and working that in there as well. It's going to be a great fun time with Axanthics, and although some people just don't like them... I do, and I see plenty of potential with them.

I am debating on making some double het TSK Axanthic Pieds or something like that.. Work another recessive in there. Can you imagine a Snow Pied? THAT right there would be a fun and difficult project to work on..

Queenbee

 

And I can't help but admire the Queenbee. It is a great animal to have in terms of genetics (Pastel, Lesser and Spider), but look at the WOW factor on this one! I LOVE THE ORANGE on the sides! I really am very excited to see how the sides color up, and how this gal grows into her colors. I am so excited to have her in the collection, as she is going to be one to watch for a while...


So of course, we go into another weekend, but this time I actually get to relax and enjoy some snakes! I hope to get everything settled and updated very soon, just in time for the Sacramento Show.

Have a great relaxing weekend, my friends.

Clutch 37 and pictures

This weekend has been very busy, but I got to see a clutch I have been waiting on for a long time! My only Genetic Stripe female that I bred this season finally laid her eggs, and I am very glad to see them!

She was bred to the Pastel Super Mojave, so I look forward to seeing some Mojaves and Pastel Mojaves het Genetic Stripe. Fingers crossed for a lot of Pastel Mojaves!

I am excited to see this clutch! I am hoping for a few late clutches as well, so that this isn't the last one...

And of course, I promised some photos, and I thought these pictures would be a good start to the week. These two females look similar, but they are not.

To the left, the Pastel Mojave Spider female. On the right, the Pastel Lesser Spider female.

Just one gene difference, and they look so different!

Considering Lessers and Mojaves do very similar things, I am surprised how different these guys look, and wanted to take a comparison shot. Of course, the Queenbee (Pastel Lesser Spider) decided she was not interested, and kept trying to bite the camera, but I got the general concept with this photo.

And the Stingerbees shed out, so I took some photos of them as well. To the left, an Enchi, the middle are the Stingerbees, and the right is the Spider. I really like how they look now, and I will be taking some photos individually soon.

I look forward to sharing more random photos soon as well!

Have a great week, my friends!

Sorry, but YAY!

Sorry, everyone.. I didn't take my camera to the show. It was in and out and I didn't even stay for more than a few hours.

BUT...

I do have a ton to share about what happen this weekend here at Heather's Herps!

These ALL hatched over the weekend, and I have to say, I wasn't ready for the huge group of critters that popped out.

These guys were from clutch 16, and they were hopefully going to be Albinos, but now I have a bunch of Pastels and Normals het Ghost 50% possible het Albino.

These guys ended up being: 2.2 Het Ghost 50% ph Albino, 3.1 Pastel het Ghost 50% ph Albino

And this group is from clutch 19, hatched out early...

I FINALLY got my Queenbee, and it is a girl. I am pretty excited about it!
The rest were:

1.0 Pastel Lesser, 0.1 Lesser, 1.0 Bumblebee, 1.0 Spider, 1.0 Normal and 0.1 Queenbee.

And clutch 20, the clutch that I didn't even expect, hatched out with EVEN MORE than I didn't expect!!! It came early, it came small, and it came out BLAZING!

The female is a Het Axanthic, and I managed to get my Pastel Axanthic out of it.

End results were: 1.1 Pastel Het Axanthic, 0.1 Axanthic and 0.1 Pastel Axanthic.

Clutch 15 was also a huge surprise, and they came out on Friday..

Six Genetic Stripes from Seven eggs from Visual male to Het Female. I saw it and needed to blink a few times... But I am stoked for this one!

4.2 Genetic Stripes, 0.1 Het Genetic Stripe. Would have loved to have more females, but hey... I can't complain!

So now I'm done for now...

Enjoy the week, I will get much more stuff to share soon, and I hope you have a great day, my friends!

Clutches 18, 19, and 20

 Before I begin:

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, JOEL!

Okay.. I'm done.

Oh boy! Well, I got back in late Sunday night, so I didn't really do much but prep some shipments and get myself a bit of rest.

So on Monday, I went thru to check on everyone, and lo and behold, MORE CLUTCHES had been laid. Some of these I wasn't even prepared for (meaning I didn't expect them to lay). 

Lets begin with Clutch #18.

This is my Pastel female bred to my Lemonblast male. I have yet to produce anything Killerblast, so this clutch will be fun to see what pops out!

Six eggs! They look great, and I can't wait to see what they hold. Here's to some Killerblasts.

For those of you who follow the blog over the years, do you remember the devastation of my last Queenbee clutch?

Lesser Pastel to Spider..

Last year, all the eggs went bad. 

This year, that better not happen...

Different Spider female, more hope for the future.

I have six chances to finally produce my Queenbee. 

Fingers crossed again for these.

And Clutch 20..

This clutch is the one that I didn't expect at ALL.

Take one look at this gal.

She is TINY.

She is a Pastel 50% possible het TSK Axanthic female I got in trade a few years back, and although I knew she was old enough, she was less than 1200 grams this season. She was not supposed to be bred, but apparently I put the TSK Axanthic male in with her once or twice.

So imagine my surprise when I see these eggs in this tub! 

She is even more tiny, clocking in at 703 grams after laying. 

And the eggs have more than likely been in the tub for a bit, since I didn't have her on egg watch while I was gone. But I wrote down the date I found the eggs as the lay date on these guys. We will see!

The eggs look great, albeit smaller than usual.

Now that they are here, I just hope that she proves!

Fingers crossed on this one too, as this will be (if she proves) a part of my Killerbee Axanthic project.

So there you go, my friends. YAY for being in the twenties for clutch count, but I need things to start hatching soon, or else I'm going to be running out of incubator space. 

Have a great day!

Clutch #19: Pastel Lesser x Spider

This clutch makes me very excited, because I have always loved the Queen Bees (Pastel Lesser Spider).

I decided to use one of my older female spiders who had never been bred before, and for a while, doubted her ability to produce, but here we are, with a great pearly clutch!

She is one of my spotty Spiders that I have had for a while, and hopefully she throws some beautiful Queens for me.

Plus, I would love to have another triple combo morph male or something in the collection. Can't be mad at those.

Here's to five lucky rolls of the genetic dice that I get a Male Queenbee.

And here's to hoping.

And this weekend, I'll be going to San Diego for the Reptile Show, and will be there on Saturday, just walking around. If you are there, stop and say Hi!

http://www.reptilesupershow.com/

Have a fantastic weekend, my friends!