Groan......

Rich Z said:

Let's see, 500 times an average of 16 babies, is uh.... :crazy01:

Click to expand...

Well, over 7500 and you have been producing 3000-4000 the last few years and think you have been busy with that...:eek1::eek1:

You won't get ANY sleep this year....oke:

Walter,
:crazy02: BOUT' CORNS !!

Yeah man...... :awcrap:

I think this year I'm going to have to raise the level to where I make the cut as to what gets bulked out right out of the egg.

Rich Z said:

Yeah man...... :awcrap:

I think this year I'm going to have to raise the level to where I make the cut as to what gets bulked out right out of the egg.

Click to expand...

I know you didn't run it last year Rich, but do you plan on running the 50% off out of the egg sale this year??

Walter,
:crazy02: BOUT' CORNS !!

Walter Smith said:

I know you didn't run it last year Rich, but do you plan on running the 50% off out of the egg sale this year??

Walter,
:crazy02: BOUT' CORNS !!

Click to expand...

Yeah, probably. Depends on whether or not I can find the time to set it up before the babies actually start hatching out. I have a new shopping cart program that Drew has been working on for me that I was supposed to take time this past Winter to get set up, but never found the time to do that. And that was supposed to be my down time. This year I put off getting started on my taxes a bit too long and breeding season kicked in a little earlier than usual, so BOTH of them are ganging up on me right now. AND I decided to sell off most of my gun collection right now as well. :crazy01: Plus other assorted and sundry headaches going on around here.

I'm ready when you are Rich!! I think we can get it going pretty quickly!

Sounds like fun over at serpenco!!!

I am hoping to come over to America at some stage spring/summer one year in the next couple of years Hopefully to work with some of the big snakes breeders (corns/pythons/boas, whichever i get the chance to do) and was wondering if i could help you out for a few months or something like that?

torsten said:

Sounds like fun over at serpenco!!!

I am hoping to come over to America at some stage spring/summer one year in the next couple of years Hopefully to work with some of the big snakes breeders (corns/pythons/boas, whichever i get the chance to do) and was wondering if i could help you out for a few months or something like that?

Click to expand...

I'm not sure how that would work out. We don't have the facilities to put someone up for the duration here. Heck, for that matter, I may not even be around in a couple of years. I don't make as many long term plans as I used to do.....

Well, this is really wearing me down. Got most of the females in the larger cages already bred with three males right now, so hopefully they will take and fertility will be good. Started breeding the snakes in smaller cages (things didn't go the way I had planned this Winter for moving out a bunch of older animals to make room for the newer ones) by setting up "snake motels". It's a pain in the butt to do, but there are a lot of really neat projects coming due this year that I would like to see the results of.

I doubt I'll get them all done, however. Once the eggs begin dropping, the breeding stuff then takes a back seat. It doesn't take too long before I get tired of seeing eggs. You know, this is really a lot of work for an old guy like me. I even have to put on reading glasses so I can pop the babies anymore and see what the heck I am doing.

Got a few females in the "red dot" stage, meaning they have had their pre-egg laying shed. Got to run out and get some peat moss tomorrow to set up egg laying containers. The timing this year appears to be the same as last year. Last year the first clutch was dropped on April 2nd. Last clutch (not counting those blasted second clutches) was on May 20th. Babies began hatching on June 6th, so there really wasn't much of a break between egg laying and egg hatching. By July 26th, all of the eggs except the second clutches had hatched.

Looks like things are going to be real tight this year for egg-laying containers. Seems like I have too many snakes living in those shoe boxes that I normally use to hold the eggs this time of year.

Things are certainly going to get interesting this year..... :crying:

Well, it looks like egg laying has begun... I peeked in on a female I set up with an egg laying box the other day, and sure enough, she was pushing them out. Looked all fertile from what I could see through the top.

And I've still got a bunch of females to throw males in with yet.

Rats... It's almost 3:30am. So much for working on taxes tonight....

Rich Z said:

but there are a lot of really neat projects coming due this year that I would like to see the results of.

Click to expand...

Me too. Is it too early to start bugging you for a price list yet? (or at least a list of expected new/rare/unusual morphs for sale ...)

You don't really know me Rich, I got one of my first Corns from you in 95', you were doing amazing things then and you still are now. I don't know a fraction of the things you have going on, but I do get a sense of what you are saying in this thread.

Take this for what it's worth; You can't take any of it with you, and you don't have anything with out your health! What works for me is to look at the situation from a third person's perspective, it helps me see if the situation I find myself in is a good idea, or not.

I hope you get what you need Rich!

toyah said:

Me too. Is it too early to start bugging you for a price list yet? (or at least a list of expected new/rare/unusual morphs for sale ...)

Click to expand...

:laugh01: That is all.

toyah said:

Me too. Is it too early to start bugging you for a price list yet? (or at least a list of expected new/rare/unusual morphs for sale ...)

Click to expand...

Yeah, it's too early.... I guess it's a fear of the "counting your chickens before they hatch" sort of thing. I'm doing some different things this year, so I need to see what pans out and what doesn't before making a decision on what I am selling and how I will be selling them. As I mentioned before, there will be NO keepers this year, which introduces a complication all in itself. Some of the stuff hatching out will be pretty much unidentifiable, so putting a label on them will be pretty tough to do. I've already tried putting just questions marks on some snakes I took to the Daytona Beach show a few years ago, but that didn't work very well. So perhaps just making up a new name on the fly is the best course. People LIKE names, apparently.

But we'll see.... As soon as I know definitely which way is best for me to bounce, then I'll let everyone know. I sure would hate to take deposits from people then be unable to deliver because things went differently then I thought they would.

Unidentifiable?? Could be very intersting to get and see what happens I will just have to keep looking at your site then and checking here too because I am interested in getting some new stuff this year. More high end things

Well, I checked on that first clutch laid yesterday (Wednesday). 16 eggs, all fertile and looking good.... So we're off to a good start, anyway. Trying to get all the breeding done before the real crunch hits with the egg laying. But it is wearing me down. Of course, I spent several hours yesterday on the phone with tech support trying to fix a problem with the new computer I just got to replace the other computer from Velocity Micro that is now dead in the water with a RAID ACCESS Failure. I thought the top of my head was going to pop off for a minute there.. The bozos at Velocity Micro are trying to tell me their supplier doesn't have the hard drive I need, yet I can get one locally at Best Buy, and Newegg has them available. That computer has been back to the shop four times now, and once this hard drive replaces those two RAIDed hard drives, every blasted thing in that computer except for the video cards will have been replaced at least once.... :headbang: I get so angry over this that I have to check often to see if I am bleeding from my ears because of burst blood vessels in my head........ :blowhead:

Rich Z said:

Well, I checked on that first clutch laid yesterday (Wednesday). 16 eggs, all fertile and looking good.... So we're off to a good start, anyway. Trying to get all the breeding done before the real crunch hits with the egg laying. But it is wearing me down. Of course, I spent several hours yesterday on the phone with tech support trying to fix a problem with the new computer I just got to replace the other computer from Velocity Micro that is now dead in the water with a RAID ACCESS Failure. I thought the top of my head was going to pop off for a minute there.. The bozos at Velocity Micro are trying to tell me their supplier doesn't have the hard drive I need, yet I can get one locally at Best Buy, and Newegg has them available. That computer has been back to the shop four times now, and once this hard drive replaces those two RAIDed hard drives, every blasted thing in that computer except for the video cards will have been replaced at least once.... :headbang: I get so angry over this that I have to check often to see if I am bleeding from my ears because of burst blood vessels in my head........ :blowhead:

Click to expand...

If it ain't one thing, it's another! Good luck Rich, hopefully it's of some value for you to know so many of us are pullin' for ya!

Formatting the replacement hard drive on that system right now. Hope the cloning goes well. Kind of odd that I needed to go into Windows FIRST to be able to partition and format that drive before being able to clone it. If Windows was zapped, what then? I'm holding my breath hoping I don't get those RAID ACCESS Failures I've been getting on that system and it hoses everything up.

I'm actually typing this on my new VISTA based system. Man, everything is running quick as all get out on this system. Probably that SSD drive is making a big difference, I guess....

I remember the "?" snakes and what prevented me from getting any (besides the price and hubby being with me that year) was that you didn't even give us any hint what genes might be involved. You may have better luck selling them if you listed at least some partial genetics. You wouldn't have to give alot of detail, but saying hatchling "A" is from ashy, Sunkissed and/or stripe lineage might be enough. You wouldn't have to say it might also be het bloodred, lavender, hypo, amel and caramel.

Susan said:

I remember the "?" snakes and what prevented me from getting any (besides the price and hubby being with me that year) was that you didn't even give us any hint what genes might be involved. You may have better luck selling them if you listed at least some partial genetics. You wouldn't have to give alot of detail, but saying hatchling "A" is from ashy, Sunkissed and/or stripe lineage might be enough. You wouldn't have to say it might also be het bloodred, lavender, hypo, amel and caramel.

Click to expand...

That might be reasonable if such things were combinations of known genes, but when talking about a possible NEW gene, does it really matter what lines it came from?

Even with combo genes, I suspect in the very near future that information just won't be forthcoming from those who "engineer" such combinations, simply because so many other people would simply want to roll their own and not pay for the efforts of the person who create that mixture being sold. Heck, it wasn't that long ago when I would have people wanting to know the formula for "Lavender", saying they wanted to create their own rather than pay the price for them.

Of course, not all that long ago, it would have been a rather simply matter for someone to reverse engineer a new looking corn suspected to be from a combination of existing genes. That is not the case any longer at all. So I believe that "trade secrets" will become the norm, rather than the exception.

Sounds about right.