How do you all have self-restraint???

Okay I started with little Kiowa the normal that I waited 4 months to get, biding my time until I felt I was ready to give proper care and had lots of free time to work on taming. I ended up with the most tame low maintainence child ever.

Then 8 months later I came across Wookie at my first show and I couldn't resist. After all, it is cheaper to buy fuzzies in bulk... And somehow 4 months after that Kitty fell into my lap. She was supposed to be just a foster...but yeah then she defecated on my back and somehow we bonded...

And for a couple months now I've been oogling this lav het blood on SerpenCo.com right? I keep watching all of his brothers get purchased and I just keep hovering over the "add to cart" button. Sometimes I even put him in the cart for fun. But I am restraining myself by promising myself a new purchase at the next show, when I'm taking woodshop and can build myself a huge snake display shelving unit cheaply.

I was thinking, all of you with room and money, how the heck do you restrain from getting more corns?!

ps- here is that most beautiful, drool worthy snake I've been oogling:
http://www.serpenco.com/shop/customer/product.php?productid=16626&cat=269&page=1 number 061574 :bang:

Beautiful Lav but...

It's extremely hard devoting an entire section of your house to corn snakes but with that being said...here's site that has lavenders for less than what you were looking at:

http://www.cornutopia.com/Corn Utopia on the Web/- CORN SNAKES - cornsnakes for sale Cornutopia.htm

Check this out also...

From cornsnakes.com forum:

http://cornsnakes.com/forums/showthread.php?t=61711

You will never have restrain in this hobby. It's a major addiction and you will find ways to feed it. LOL :rofl:

Oh and that ad you put up for SerpenCo..I just recently acquired the first male listed on that page. See...its so addicting that my hubby bought me that snake to make me stop looking at it. Yep, he feeds my addiction cause he'd hate to deal with the withdrawl. Hehehe

Haha you're not supposed to be helping! You're supposed to be telling me how to restrain! Lol

PS Bekers you are SO lucky! He was my second choice... lol =)

Hmmmm, let's see..... 23 snakes in past 6 months....
Yeah that's restraint.... NOT... LOL
Welcome to the ADDICTION!!

Yeah. Sorry. I don't think anyone here's going to help to stop the addiction. I've purchased 5, soon to be 8 by the end of the week, in the last four months. and I've just begun. My living room is turning into "The Snakes' room," and even the cat's have given up caring!!

lol well I just went to complain to the lack of help on restrain to my roomies and what do they do? They tell me they'd buy that rat snake of Kathy Love's if I wanted to buy one of her snakes and we could split shipping... you all are horrible! ;-)

They fueled me on and into my favorite thing. I thought I could only send the well-wishes on to you. Ha ha.
Be careful. Soon, you'll be needing to build a rack, like me.....

-Daneale

Here is my restraint.....
can you see my signature?
I have 4 planned purchases this year, a butter stripe pair and a pair of adult females. After that, any space I have needs to be dedicated to keepers.

And believe me, I have more projects planned than my keeper space allows!

I think I had six or eight snakes in Autumn 2005. Now I have 80 or so. My entire apartment is devoted to snakes. I've really only begun seriously restraining myself recently...

(((When you here the sound of my voice you will start getting sleeeepy))) Now repeat after me " I will buy more snakes. I will buy more snakes." hehehe

Boy, how to stay restrained. Well it was simple for me. I went 2 years without getting another snake... that being said, I had others constantly in and out of my house because they were problem feeders and I would get them eating and then return them to their owner (my friend who owns a pet store) So I never really had the room for my own. That helped.

So lets see in the past 6 months I have acquired 3 new snakes. All MINE... Now the HUBBY says NO MORE! This helps me.

I did tell him though when we got our bigger house with a room dedicated to what ever I wanted, I was going to be purchasing more with the intent to breed.

He He.

I have 10, and I don't really want anymore. I want to produce some particular things, but as I do that, I'll probably move some of my adults out. So you might hit your personal limit at some point. Of course, some people think 10 is a lot, so maybe that isn't restraint. But I did stop wanting more snakes once I got there.

I'm lucky I have a sort of "forced" restraint system at my house. When I run out of room, that's it. I'm almost there . . . .

Kathy

P.S. Cool tattoo, desertanimal. (Off-topic - sorry)

Roy Munson said:

I think I had six or eight snakes in Autumn 2005. Now I have 80 or so. My entire apartment is devoted to snakes. I've really only begun seriously restraining myself recently...

Click to expand...

Cause the option of getting a second apartment doesn't appeal to you? :rofl:

Yes, its addictive but I recommend to do it slowly like you have been doing. Nothing worse than Growing pains, and realizing how many snakes you need to feed. lol I miss the days of only owning 3 snakes. Feeding only took a half an hour, not 3 hours a night for 3 nights. lol

In my current circumstances I have pretty much hit my limit of 20 something snakes and 9 tarantulas. I have another 2 boas arriving in the next few weeks and thats all I have planned until the corn hatchlings come along and are all sold.

The thing is, I see so many people going out and buying 10 hatchlings at a time and think, do you realise thats 10 adult snakes? I have fun housing hatchlings because you can house so many in such a small place. What I have trouble with is remembering these will all be adult snakes. I like to get them into their adult enclosures as soon as possible because then I am not tempted to take up the spare space I see when I'm housing hatchlings.

Theres so many people selling off their collections for one reason or another and I can't help but think perhaps they should have thought about the hobby in the long term you know? Not only do you have the snakes to pay for, you have the appropriate housing costs, heating, stats, decor, substrate and the biggie... food. I am finding rodent prices are drastically raising in the UK. I have no problem paying for the twenty or so of my snakes to stay healthy and well fed, but many others do.

If I housed my smaller snakes in smaller tubs I could easily fit another 10+ snakes into the rack. I have empty drawers in the boa display rack that I could easily fill with adults or more hatchlings but if I do that, where are the baby boas going to go in a few years?

I like to think of any new purchases as "snakes for life" and I damn well make sure I want to look at that snake for the next 10-20 years before buying it.

I would love more snakes, but realistically I don't have the space. I love the work involved in snake keeping. I love cleaning poop, feeding, rehousing, decorating vivs and tubs etc. When the work becomes a chore, It will be time for me to leave the hobby. I doubt it ever will, I adore my snakes and try to do my upmost for them as they give me so much back in return.

I think I'm still under control. I got my first snake in July, 2005. Maizey. Then a couple, well four, more in the fall. (Choco, Addy, Inez, Zee). (Once you start buying on-line- you've lost control, even though you may not realize it yet!) Then a couple more in the spring- good deals too good to pass up- Jake and Lila. Then I was really, really good. I even made it through Daytona. The person I was with bought 13 snakes! Then Carol Huddleston had a sale, and I saw the most beautiful snake (Cherry) and I had to have her, plus there was a baby of the most beautiful bloodreds in the world, Jasmine, and I had to have her, and just to fill up the box I picked out Jasper, hypo blood (and he turned out to be a wonderful, wonderful baby and even if I never breed him he's still my best boy!!!) and then, since I'd bought a rack, I was weak when Rich Z put my most-wanted morph of all time on SALE (lavblood Lily). But then I was really, really good! But I had a nice tax return. And I blame Kim (Zoology Major) for making me look at VMS and me seeing Mr. Bacon, a normal with wonderful (triple) hets, and then Katie (ArpeggioAngel) for telling me about Joe Pierce's sale, where I found a lovely mate for Bacon (Calli) plus an incredible stripe pair that I can't really even believe I have! (Pepper and Ruby). But I'm DONE. No more snakes. Every flat surface in my house has snakes on it. I have two racks. I threw away my dining room table to make room for the racks. One is full- one is waiting for the current babies to fill it. I have the adults to feed every seven days. Nine of them. It's not so bad if I clean water bowls on Saturday and feed on Sunday. And the six babies eat every five days- they are fast and fun to feed. And I still have time to handle my favorites every night- two or three or even four of them. And the crabby snakes that just want to be left alone get to be left alone. And because I have so many adults that _like_ to come out, the less social babies can stay put away and use all their energy for growing. The ones that hang around out in the open can come out for short little visits. I think I could fit in more racks if I wanted to- but I feel like I'm at the limit of time right now where it would stop being fun and turn into work if I got very many more. I don't want to do that.

Lol well theres maybe some hope for me yet! I'm trying to promise myself I will wait until at least the new babies come out. (I'd love another adult possibly breedable if I don't fall in love with some 07er or something) And maybe when some breeders get moving their adults to make room for babies, I could catch a break? I'm definitely limited by the space in my room at my house since my roommates would NOT let the corns go in the living room. But I'm taking woodshop with the express purpose of making a beautiful wall display rack for holding at least 6 tanks. I think I could handle 4-6 corns tops but that would be after my rat and my mouse dies in a couple years (and I'm not in a hurry for that to happen!) As long as I keep repeating: Not until the next show... I think I'll make it. ;-)