Happy Holidays

From all at Miss L Reptile, we hope all your reptile wishes come true this year! Thank you to everyone who reads this blog, hope you enjoyed the experience and come back in the new year. All the positive comments makes all the hard work and research worth while.

Bumblebee Ball Python

Bumblebee Royal Python

Blaze the Bumblebee

Penny Pinstripe Royal Python

Penny Pinstripe Ball Python

Early Christmas Present

You guessed right, I finally got another addition! I think at this rate it will never end! I am now on snake number six and reptile number eight. After all, one does not simply buy one reptile!

We have named the new snake Flora as she is a butter royal python that we hope will be a future breeder for our bumblebee. She is settling in well and even accepted a feed the day after we collected her.The cutie was bred by Mike Wilbanks and purchased in Hamm, Germany by Eddie at Reptile Hunter. 

Flora

Flora

In other news: I have also took reptile keeping even further by getting my first reptile ink. Due to having type one diabetes, my new tattoo is of a leopard gecko holding a type one diabetes ribbon.

New Ink

Male Royal Python Ready to Breed Before Female?

At the moment I have a male ball python that is ready to breed although, my female is still too young and nowhere near the correct breeding weight of 1500g. After conducting much research online and talking to various breeders I have discovered that it's important not to let males get overweight, especially if one is looking to produce good fertile eggs.

At present moment in time, my male is sitting at 700g. This means that he is ready to breed and putting on weight rapidly. This is a bit of a problem as my female needs to wait at least another two years before I could consider breeding. This poses a problem as males can become more lazy and not produce good quality sperm when over 1200g.

Large Ball Python

This means that I will have to either purchase a female that is breeding weight or change the feeding routine of the male. Due to lack of space I have decided to opt for a different feeding routine. When the male reaches 1000g I will switch to a smaller size feeding item every second week whilst keeping the normal size prey. By doing so, I hope to achieve a balanced weight of around 1100g without it declining or increasing majorly. Furthermore, if he does fast there is plenty of fat reserves to sustain him for a good few months as we all know royal pythons can be picky!