The Snake Keeper Blog

You are probably asking what golfing has to do with snakes. Well here is the deal. I have got involved in a fund raiser for the kids school. You know how these usually go they bring home candy etc. and what ends up happening is you buy it all so the kid can win some little toy that is worth nothing. If you have kids I know you know what I am talking about. I refuse to get involved in all these as there is a new one every week it seems. I would rather just write the school a check and be done with it for the year. So one day I said to the principal why not just ask everyone for X amount of dollars and be done with it. It is a private school so ask the people to come together to get what is needed. Well I never heard anything back about it.

So now here we are a year later. I have to tell you I am excited about this. Here is the deal. The schools athletic department needs funding in a bad way. They really want to build a gym for the children as they do not have one and they meet outside year round. Well the coach came up with this new fundraiser. It is put on by Champion Golf Events and it is a great idea. I have helped the 4 of our kids send out 20 sponsor letters each. So I am walking around the campus yesterday and the coach sees me and says Mr. Sutherland ( I did not know he even knew who I was) can I talk to you. I said sure what’s up. He goes on to say how much I inspired him and rejuvenated him. He says that those stacks of letters were just awesome. I did not think much about it and I said you are welcome. He said a few more things and then I said well I have been thinking about golfing with you for the event. He says that would be great as we have lost about ten golfers. Well I said I have never golfed in my life. He says no problem but to golf you have to send out 25 more sponsor letters for yourself. WOW I said I just did 80 of them for the kids and gave them all my contacts. To make a long story short I took the 25 got them all done last night and sent them in today. Now though I am so excited about this event I want to do more. My goal as a golfer is to raise $2500.00 for them as stated on the sponsor agreement. Well I think it would be cool to double it. Why not it is for the kid’s sports department. Any child is worth the effort. So I figured I would go the extra mile and ask you our friends and business contacts for some support. I have already talked with a few of you and you have really come though for me. What I am asking is for you to sponsor me to golf (for the first time in my life) at this special event.

Here is how it works the children are walking around the golf course and the adults are golfing. Children of the school are trying to raise $1,000.00 ea. is their goal and the first one to it gets to shave the coaches head. I think he is going to be sporting a new look during the summer. The adult are asked to try to raise $2,500.00.

We actually do the event next Thursday the 20th. I have uploaded the sponsor forum right here Front & Back for you to look at and if you feel you can give me a hand at this to sponsor me I would really appreciate it. It is for a worthy cause and it is tax deductible. You can send the forum and your pledge to the school at the address given on the forum.

The Snake Keeper is sponsoring the kids walking around the park and I have personally sponsored myself as well. I will have to give you an update on how it goes. Should be a fun time and I would love to tell them that a bunch of snake enthusiast came though. You know how people are about snakes. It would be a laugh.If you do decide to help out send me an email as well so I know what they should be receiveing. Thanks again and I hope to tell you I survived next Thursday.

To all the Mothers out there Happy Mothers Day! What a great day it is to celebrate Mothers day. Colette is enjoying her day right now sleeping. Any ways on to the ball pythons. Things are moving along here now. We started off a bit slow due the move into the new building. But we are all settled in now and getting it all dialed in where we want it to be. So we still will have a good year by the time it is all done. But we have plans for a really great year next year. Seems that is the way it is in this business always waiting for the next year when you will have more females and males ready to go. Guess that is part of what keeps us all going is waiting for the following year to see what new things we will all hatch.

We have a few good things coming up in the next couple months. We will have some het ivories available in about 4 weeks. If you are interested in males on those you should contact us soon. That will be an early clutch and the others will be later. I will have to put up a new pic of them soon. They are shedding right now. Everyone who comes over just cannot believe what they look like.

We also just put some double het for snows in the incubator. These are from an albino possible het axanthic bred to an axanthic. So if all goes well we should have axanthics het albinos. That will cut the odds down to produce more snows. We also have a clutch or two from the chocolate fade male. We hope to prove that one out next season.

I will have to go look and write down what we have coming up and what we hope to have available soon. I will post a new update soon with some new pics of some of the cool balls.

Oh and we should produce some more HYPO MOJAVES. It is looking like the EXTREME HYPO is going to produce again this year and she was bred by the Mojave het hypo. Wouldn’t be nice if we got the same odds again? Actually I really want to see a hypo male produced. Hypo Mojave’s will be for sale this year so if you are looking for one let us know. There are also several people looking for het Extreme Hypos we will have to see what we end up with before we can offer any of them. I have had some people on the list for about 3-4 years now waiting for those. Any ways that is all for now.
Have a great day!

Check out the ballcam right now and see eggs being laid. She is a little upset about it but she is still laying them.

Well it has been almost a month since I have updated this page. Believe me it is not because nothing is going on here. We have been working hard. Actually we played a bit too. We took a week off to enjoy the beach.

Hypo Mojave, it does not get much better than this!

One of those trips where you get away from the work and think about what you should do with all the different projects. It is nice to get away from it all and just enjoy the beach. Yea it was a little cold but not too bad. People have been asking about seeing some pics so I have started to take some pictures. I need to learn the camera more but these are some okay shots.

SnakeKeeper snow with an albino

Breeding is going well here although I wish some of the male were a little more aggressive but hey I can not complain. Getting out of winter and into spring is my favorite time of the year. Nothing better than going into daylight saving time. I love the sun up till 9PM. You just seem to get so much more done during the day. Well I know you are all waiting to hear about the Super Mojave. I hope to have more news soon. We are checking all the females this week and seeing where were are on them. I believe we should have the chance to produce one this season but no eggs in the incubator yet. The good news is if you are in the market for het ivories we should a few available. So if that is something you want it would be best to email or call me and get on the list. I will get some more pics of the ivories soon so you can see how nice they are now. I could go on all day how awesome they are but like they say a picture is worth a 1000 words. I shot an inside pic of our new building. This shows one row in the room. You can see the skylight on the ceiling next to the light and the ceiling fan as well.

One of the rows or balls.

The yellow outlet on the wall is the central vacuum system. We just plug in the hose on each isle. The vacuum is kept outside and you never hear it running. That is so nice to have the vacuum on and still be able to answer the phone. Well I do not want to share too much right now I have to save more for next time. Enjoy these pics and I will get some more up in the next week.

Check out the ball cam right now we have eggs hatching.

Have you checked out the new Ball Cam? The Ball CamIt is so cool. We were without it for a year waiting for the right technology to do what we wanted. But it is here now for the 2004 hatching season. I know you are all waiting for pics of the new room and we will have those soon as well. Setting everything up has been a chore. Actually we have been doing a lot of breeding now that we are in the new room. Maybe we should phrase that differently. Since getting into the new room we have been pairing up many of the snakes for breeding. So the season is looking good. Enjoy the new Ball Cam and look forward to more.

WOW……what a day yesterday was for us here at The Snake Keeper. The computer almost shut down it was so busy. There has just been an outpouring of support for the capture & conviction of those responsible for the theft of Jeff Houston’s snakes.

A little background here for you that really do not know what is going on. Let me tell you about Jeff. I really can not remember when I met Jeff for the first time, sorry Jeff, but my first recollection was when he drove up to our place with his wife. They came here several years ago and bought a few possible het piebald ball python females from us. This was their beginning in the Ball Python world. Previously he was into large lizards.

We have always kept in contact over the years. This past year he would call me telling me what his long term plans were and all. He was turning into a family guy. He was talking about it was time for he and his wife to have children and enjoy the benefits of family life. Then the talk started of moving out of California. He was looking at going to Washington. He even went there looking at land and all that. Came home made a plan and by now the first child was already on the way. I think he had a place picked out up in Washington and was getting some leads on a good job and even had an offer.

He decided he was going to jump in the ball pythons with both feet and was out to spend some money. So he did and he bought a spider, Mojave, ghosts, pastels and a few normals I am sure. Now some of you must be thinking this is why we are putting together this reward because he spent allot of money here. Well you could not be further from the truth. He bought all those snakes from other breeders. So it is not that he spent the money here.

Jeff & Rachel are just normal people who had the dream. He runs his own business and they are just trying like everyone else to get by every month. He had the dream that the snakes would be the vehicle to reach their goals. So Rachel supported him and they were on their way. He had emailed me just a week ago saying the Mojave was tail wrapping the female. The spider was not showing interest yet but was big enough and it was just a matter of time. The pastels were getting to work and the het pied was breeding the possible het females. So things were coming together just as they had hopped. It was looking like the goal was in sight.

Then Rachel had a miscarriage a week ago and now the snakes were stolen. If you have ever lost a child or your snake you know this is not a good feeling. So here we are with a guy who lost it all. He did not call and ask for help. He called and said he had been robbed but that was all. As I said he was a great guy, he makes you laugh and he is fun to be around. So here we are now. Jeff has given us a reason to come together as a community and show support. This was not his idea; it was ours The Snake Keeper. He did not ask for it. I think he was surprised.

I have been really moved by the donations that have been sent in from everyone, the kind words and everything. People who do not even have snakes are donating to the cause. Some can only afford $10 and all of it is appreciated at this time. Can you believe we raised 40K in one day? Today we will hit 50K! What an accomplishment to those who have come forward to show their support. I am grateful for you all. Thank you!
It just goes to show that we are there to support those who are in the business/ hobby. These snakes are not cheap and many put their life savings into it in the hope that they can be like the big guys and sell a snake of their own for 5K or more some day. It is not just a dream it is a reality. We did it, we are proof of it. I want everyone who gets in this business to succeed. Again thanks to those that have supported this great cause. Lets see if it works and we catch the people.

Thank you,

Dan & Colette Sutherland

Okay now is moving in day. Yes we are excited!!!!! Colette and I rolled in all the racks today. We still need to get the incubator all hooked up but that will have to wait a few days. We did get a nice clutch of eggs today. That is the second clutch of the season.

Nine nice good looking eggs!

Nine nice good eggs. So I better get this new incubator hooked up soon as I really want the eggs in the new building as soon as possible. I will have to get new pics of that as I get it completed as well. Just a few more things need to be finished. Like we need some cement walk ways installed. But I hate pouring cement in freezing weather. So maybe we will wait for it to warm up just a bit. The rain gutters were installed so if it does rain it will not stain the side of my nice new building. That is all for now.

Well I am a few days behind on updating the news around here. This is the building as of 1/21/2004 the day before we moved in the snakes. It was actually ready on the 16th with a complete inspection.

almost ready for snakes!

It is sure nice to have all that behind us now. As you can see from the picture we had to put some space heaters in the room to warm it up before moving in the snakes. It took about 4-5 days to get the slab to warm up enough we felt we could move the snakes in the building. Being only in the 20’s at night here it just sucks the heat right out. So while we were heating the place up it gave a little time to finish a few things.

inside the building.

The alarm system was completed which is really slick along with a fire alert system. That is about all that was happening at this stage.

The building is almost complete. Today being Friday should be the last day of the major work. Inspector is coming today to sign the place off. If all goes well we will be moving in on Saturday. We can not wait to get it all going. Everything is here except the new cages I need. Seems to be a little hold up on them. But no matter we will move with out them and add them in later. Not much more going on than that right now. All our energies have gone into getting the building done. Next week will be busy dialing it all in to where we want it. Should be a lot of fun. With any luck the next time you stop by we will have a place to sit down and talk in the room rather than standing the whole time. I just get too hot out there to stand and talk for too long.

Ready for color.

These are about the final pics. The picture of the insulation going in is happening right as I type. This other picture of the Mojave breeding is from the person that just bought the Mojave male adult I just sold. You can bet he is a happy camper!

One happy Mojave!

For those that were thinking about buying him I do have one more I am going to part with so if you are interested let me know. Soon as he sheds I will get you pics if you would like them. That is all for now. Next report will be building complete.

Insulation being blown in the attic.