Record Keeping

So for those of you who have a decent sized collection, how do you go about keeping records on when everyone eats/poops/sheds/weights etc?
I have ID stickers on their tubs as well as a couple other stickers with dates of feeding/sheds, but they keep rolling up and it's driving me MENTAL!
What do you all do?

I think you have to decide what's important to you and keep records on that. This is my personal take on these things:


Eating: I have set feeding days for my particular groups of snakes and offer everyone food on their designated day. I only record the refusals, which are much fewer than the ones that eat of course. Way easier that way!

Poops: I don't record these at all, because in all the years I have been keeping snakes there have never really been any poop issues. If one of mine had a strange-looking one, though, I would probably record it with a description or photo.

Sheds: I only care about sheds on females that are breeding or going to be breeding, because it can help with knowing when they are ready to breed and / or when to expect them to lay eggs. On such females, I do record their shed dates, but the sheds from the rest of my snakes are pretty irrelevent in my opinion.

Weights: Another statistic that is not terribly important to me personally. I don't ever weigh myself, so I can't see doing it to my snakes without a good reason. As long as they are eating regularly and don't look too skinny, I don't fuss with weighing them regularly. It might be a good idea if you have one that doesn't seem to be thriving or if you are not sure whether a female is big enough to breed yet. Inquiring prospective buyers always seem to want to know what snakes weigh for some reason, so I will weigh them if someone asks me to.


So, basically what I am saying is that recording these things BY EXCEPTION is what keeps me from going crazy with all the details! Also I record my stuff that seems important on a Google Drive document, so I don't have to fuss with individual cards or have to worry about losing them. I know a lot of people record this kind of stuff on their iherp profiles, and that probably works fine if you have a smaller collection.......

Ralph Davis has a breeding card on his website and I think he explains how he uses it in a video as well. I had a bunch made up at a FedEx and I love them. They're easy, simple, and quick. They're setup to allow you to keep whatever info is important to you. I use it for everyone of my snakes.

http://www.ralphdavisreptiles.com/ma.../feed_card.asp

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I use http://reptilescan.com/ for my collection and a simple 4 x 6 index card http://stewartreptiles.com/Articles/Feeding_Card.xls for animals I have available.

For my collection I track food refusal when they occur, weight (once a year), ovy, pre-lay shed, and egg laying and for animal I have available I track food.

I keep a log for each snake with just three columns - date, event code, and notes. Codes are 'A'te, 'S'hed, 'V'et, 'W'eight, 'B'red, and 'O'ther. In the notes I'll write more information, such as what was eaten, the snake's weight on that date, why the snake went to the vet and what was prescribed, etc. If the snake is sold or has to go to the vet, I can provide the history easily.

I use reptilescan and think its the best thing out there to keep track of your animals no pen or paper needed just an ipad or iPhone in my case and you have all the info whenever you want and we're ever you are.


Spider 1.0 Pastel 0.1
Albino 0.1 Pinstripe Het Albino 1.0
Desert Lesser 0.1
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5x7 index cards. Across the top is the snake's name, their sex, morph, then hatch date, with the number of the card in the upper right hand corner.

http://i.imgur.com/jCOnOIr.jpg

Left column is the date, middle column is the weight, right is the weight of the prey offered and a checkmark indicates success while an x indicates refusal. I also write down sheds and have started tracking bowel movements.

I like http://www.iherp.com/Welcome.aspx free and easy to use. You can choose what to track and if u want to share or not. When my collection gets a bit bigger then I can write them down and input them after feedings with the batch feed option.

http://ball-pythons.net/forums/showthread.php?t=188359

These are mine


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Quote:

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Originally Posted by Deborah

I use http://reptilescan.com/ for my collection and a simple 4 x 6 index card http://stewartreptiles.com/Articles/Feeding_Card.xls for animals I have available.

For my collection I track food refusal when they occur, weight (once a year), ovy, pre-lay shed, and egg laying and for animal I have available I track food.

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so you feel the $25 price tag on reptile scan is worth it? i've been considering this. i'm not the most organized person when it comes to papers or index cards lol and this seems nice.