About Time I Joined!

[Dianne]

That's awesome, sounds like quite the haul! I hadn't heard of the dragonfly till now, but they look awesome. I'm a sucker for the lighter colored morphs. When we picked up our lesser and butter pair, the seller talked us into taking home a queen bee too because of that.

With your BEL though, that makes sense. He looks like one of the cleaner pairings either way, don't see a stripe or such from what I can tell. I wasn't originally planning to breed, but when I keep seeing all the cool combos I could come up with I had a hard time saying no.

This summer could best be described as “unsupervised child in a candy store”. lol

The pied was planned, actually went to a show searching for her. I don’t know how many laps around the show I made before picking my girl. There were several there, but what I really wanted was about a 50/50 mix of color and clean white. I think I got the nicest at that show - her white is really clean and the color mix is perfect for what I wanted. There were a few others, including some high white, but I fell in love with her. She was hatched July 2018.

During my laps, I kept coming back to a vendor I’d purchased my corns from years ago who also breeds ball morphs. He had a pair of lemonblasts that were hatched earlier in July. I just kept coming back to them every lap. I really have a thing for the thin line pattern morphs, but the color on these were just great. He was right next to the vendor with the pied, and as I was making my purchase he was talking with a couple about the lemonblasts and another cinnamon-ish (his words) ball he’d produced this year. The couple was leaning toward the cinnamon-ish ball as they weren’t planning on a pair. I asked to see the brighter of the pair of lemonblasts...and ended up taking her home, too.

With the BEL, I’d actually gone to the next show to pick up live feeders as I couldn’t get the lemonblast to feed. I’d tried both live and f/t, but it was 8/25 and she hadn’t eaten once since her 7/21 purchase. Of course I had to look around. There was one vendor with BEL’s that had 2 nice ones, but both had a faint hint of dorsal stripe and weren’t as bright white as I really wanted. I decided to make another lap or two, while thinking on it, and saw that one of the vendors was still putting out snakes. He put out a pair of BEL that were pure white. I asked to handle the male, and that was the end of the story...he had to come home. He’s a May/June 2018 hatchling.

And last for the year, and for quite a while, was the dragonfly. I actually hadn’t heard of them before I saw her on Craigslist earlier in the summer. I had contacted the seller, but the ad came down so I assumed she was sold. He posted her again right before Labor Day weekend. As soon as I saw her again, I contacted him, got the price he wanted which was fair, and agreed to the sale. She was even prettier in person than in the ad. Great color and really sweet disposition...and again with that thin line pattern I like so much.

[FayeGrimm]

This summer could best be described as “unsupervised child in a candy store”. lol

The pied was planned, actually went to a show searching for her. I don’t know how many laps around the show I made before picking my girl. There were several there, but what I really wanted was about a 50/50 mix of color and clean white. I think I got the nicest at that show - her white is really clean and the color mix is perfect for what I wanted. There were a few others, including some high white, but I fell in love with her. She was hatched July 2018.

During my laps, I kept coming back to a vendor I’d purchased my corns from years ago who also breeds ball morphs. He had a pair of lemonblasts that were hatched earlier in July. I just kept coming back to them every lap. I really have a thing for the thin line pattern morphs, but the color on these were just great. He was right next to the vendor with the pied, and as I was making my purchase he was talking with a couple about the lemonblasts and another cinnamon-ish (his words) ball he’d produced this year. The couple was leaning toward the cinnamon-ish ball as they weren’t planning on a pair. I asked to see the brighter of the pair of lemonblasts...and ended up taking her home, too.

With the BEL, I’d actually gone to the next show to pick up live feeders as I couldn’t get the lemonblast to feed. I’d tried both live and f/t, but it was 8/25 and she hadn’t eaten once since her 7/21 purchase. Of course I had to look around. There was one vendor with BEL’s that had 2 nice ones, but both had a faint hint of dorsal stripe and weren’t as bright white as I really wanted. I decided to make another lap or two, while thinking on it, and saw that one of the vendors was still putting out snakes. He put out a pair of BEL that were pure white. I asked to handle the male, and that was the end of the story...he had to come home. He’s a May/June 2018 hatchling.

And last for the year, and for quite a while, was the dragonfly. I actually hadn’t heard of them before I saw her on Craigslist earlier in the summer. I had contacted the seller, but the ad came down so I assumed she was sold. He posted her again right before Labor Day weekend. As soon as I saw her again, I contacted him, got the price he wanted which was fair, and agreed to the sale. She was even prettier in person than in the ad. Great color and really sweet disposition...and again with that thin line pattern I like so much.

Oh man, I'm so excited to go to our first show in January, that sounds like a ton of fun! We were coming home from a vacation last month and nearly stopped at a show on the way home, but there was only about 30 minutes left and I wanted to actually be able to walk around and see everyone rather than rushing around so we ended up passing. Part of me is sad we did, but I think at the end of the day it will be better getting that full experience like you're talking about and making sure we find the perfect snakes to add to the family. I am kinda curious what a cinnamon-ish ball is now though haha!

Ooh yeah, that's always worrying. We had to do our first live feed with one of ours this last month. Hopefully you your lemonblast nice and settled in now. I agree on the stripes for BELs, it's neat that some have it, but I prefer the cleaner versions so I'm glad we got a lesser/butter pair. I am really excited to maybe make some mystic potions in a few years when our Mojave grows up, the white/grey/purple patterns are really interesting to me.

That's awesome that you managed to pick up such a beautiful snake locally! I think the most exotic I've seen locally so far has been our queen bee, and that was still a 5 hour drive. I can see why you fell in love from your pictures. I'm a little bit scared of going to our show to be honest though, my wife has a habit of love at first sight with most animals, and my willpower hasn't been the best with resisting BPs... as long we bring home a nice rack too I'll be happy though. Our current shelfing set up is about at it's limit, so I'd love a nice consolidated rack.

[Dianne]

Oh man, I'm so excited to go to our first show in January, that sounds like a ton of fun! We were coming home from a vacation last month and nearly stopped at a show on the way home, but there was only about 30 minutes left and I wanted to actually be able to walk around and see everyone rather than rushing around so we ended up passing. Part of me is sad we did, but I think at the end of the day it will be better getting that full experience like you're talking about and making sure we find the perfect snakes to add to the family. I am kinda curious what a cinnamon-ish ball is now though haha!

Ooh yeah, that's always worrying. We had to do our first live feed with one of ours this last month. Hopefully you your lemonblast nice and settled in now. I agree on the stripes for BELs, it's neat that some have it, but I prefer the cleaner versions so I'm glad we got a lesser/butter pair. I am really excited to maybe make some mystic potions in a few years when our Mojave grows up, the white/grey/purple patterns are really interesting to me.

That's awesome that you managed to pick up such a beautiful snake locally! I think the most exotic I've seen locally so far has been our queen bee, and that was still a 5 hour drive. I can see why you fell in love from your pictures. I'm a little bit scared of going to our show to be honest though, my wife has a habit of love at first sight with most animals, and my willpower hasn't been the best with resisting BPs... as long we bring home a nice rack too I'll be happy though. Our current shelfing set up is about at it's limit, so I'd love a nice consolidated rack.

Whenever I go to a show, I try to get there pretty early...at open if possible. You’ll see The best selection early on before sales start to pick up as most folks want to go at least one lap before making a purchase. Some of the vendors will be buying and trading amongst each other before the show even opens if someone has a species or morph they’re looking for. When I was breeding my boas, there were a few that were sold before the public ever came in. Back then there was an incredibly diverse selection of species, lots of different carpet python varieties, a fair number of unusual boa species (really regret selling my Cuban boas), and a fair number of different python species. These last couple of shows were less diverse species-wise, but had a lot of morphs for the species that were there, ball pythons in particular. This could just be the trend for these two recurring shows, both of which are sponsored by the same promoter.

There are several ball morphs I’m interested in, though I’m by no means particularly knowledgable about the different ones out there these days. Mostly I’m going by what I find visually appealing, I really like the morphs with the light grey, silver and purplish hues, or faded patterns, in addition to the thin lines I seem to have a fixation for. There was a crystal ball there that almost came home, very pale patterned sub-adult female in a cream and very light tan, like you’d dipped a normal in bleach too long leaving a faint pattern. The cinnamon-ish ball was mostly normal looking to my untrained eye, but the vendor and buyer seemed to agree on the “look”...in fact the buyer had zeroed in on him before the lemonblasts. As for willpower with such a selection, I’m also obviously lacking. lol

My lemonblast finally ate last Wednesday...live hopper from the local pet store...bigger than I had been offering and much more mobile. She was starting to stress me out because she is so young and was still refusing food...and really had me doubting she had fed like the vendor said. I’m guessing she just needed longer to settle in and needed more visual stimulation...hoping that I’ll be able to switch to f/t in a few weeks. My pied took about 2 weeks before she ate and is now a little chow hound, live or f/t. The BEL didn’t hesitate at all for his first feeding, grabbed the f/t mouse I offered on the first try the week after I bought him. The dragonfly refused last week when I fed the others, which was only a day after I brought her home, so I wasn’t too surprised. She will be offered again this coming weekend. She’s the only one I haven’t named yet, because I want to see what her personality is like first. Other than cleaning her cage once and changing out her water bowl, she’s been left to settle in, which I try to do with all the new ones. That’s the hardest part, not handling them.