Garrick DeMeyer Returns: Breeding Smarter, Not Bigger in Today’s Market

Hey, I got Garrick Deire on the show tonight. This is shaping up to be a pretty good early summer lineup that we got here at Proper Royals. Stick around. We will get right to it.

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Good evening, everybody. I hope that you are well. It's 8 o'clock on the East Coast. It's 7 o'clock here in, uh, believe it or not, it is smoky out there. We're getting all the smoke from the, uh, Canadian wildfires. And my apologies to my Canadian friends. I hope you guys are all right. I don't even know where they're at. Like, Canada's this massive, massive expanse. I have no idea where these wildfires are at. But, uh, the Twin Cities are smoky today. They're advising people to stay inside. Even signs on the interstate said, uh, I had to go up to FedEx to drop some packages. And, uh, even the signs on the interstate said, uh, you know, "Air quality warning, consider making fewer trips today." So, anyway, uh, I hope my Canadian friends are good. I hope those of you all in the Midwest being affected, uh, similarly are. I'm not trying to over-dramatize things, but it was hazy. It was an interesting, uh, view out there today. Anyhow, I hope you're well is my point.

Coming to you tonight ad-free. No more ads on Proper Royals live content, both, uh, Tuesday night and Thursday morning. Proper Cup of Joe. Bam. Brought to you by the good folks at Palm Street. If you're interested in applying to sell on Palm Street, the link is down below. It is a live interactive selling platform, uh, for reptiles. Um, they do have, uh, geckos, ball pythons. You can get all the details in the application down below and, uh, stay posted. Stay posted. I'll keep you posted if you stay tuned and I'll let you know when I do my next, uh, Palm Street Live, probably at the end of this month.

That leads right into my next announcement, which is this weekend, the Cold Blooded Expo show here in, uh, Minneapolis. I think it's technically in St. Paul, but it's at the Minnesota State Fairgrounds. Cold Blooded Expose, that's on Sunday. I will be there vending and it's a really great show. It's, it's this side of Tinley and probably north of the All-American, uh, reptile expo down in, uh, Kansas City. It's the best show in the region. So, I'm pretty excited for it and they do a great job and there's a lot of great vendors. Big, uh, metro area here. So, I always enjoy that show. Hope to see you come out. I think I'm bringing Lucy, the new, uh, the little, uh, rat shop dog. You know, the ASF monitor. She's, she's a little slow on, uh, I'm learning where the expression of "either that dog will hunt" or "that dog won't hunt" comes from. I'm not so sure that she's going to hunt. We'll see how it is.

Uh, thank you all for being here. Thanks for hanging out, uh, tonight. Quinton Ross. Oh, we got all the Motans in the house. The Mid, uh, the, uh, Midwesterners. Jen, good to see you. And, uh, there's Shane. You're not first. You thought you were a couple of Ians. Yeah, Chris in the house. Cool. Um, thank you all for being here.

As far as other, uh, announcements, please check out properroyals.com if you want to snag anything before the show this weekend that I take to the market. Uh, everything is up to date on there. I will be getting a shipment. I'm looking to my right because that's where I have them all hung up on my fridge. I don't know. I'll be sending about 20 shed tests over to Charlie at shedtesting.com this week. Uh, I don't think I'll have the results back. I, I know I won't. It's already, it's Tuesday night. I won't have the results back before the show, but, uh, I tell you all that because, uh, a lot of those are so that I know what to price those animals at. They're not going to be holdbacks. So, uh, they'll either be, eh, okay animals or they'll be, ah, pretty cool animals depending how those come back. So, stay tuned on that. Keep an eye on Instagram. I'll keep you posted on that stuff.

Um, also got some clutches starting to hatch in June. Um, I'm, one of them's on day 51 and then I've got about one a week for quite some time. Still looking at around 35 this year from my ultrasounding the other day. So, I'm feeling good about that. And, uh, otherwise, that's about all that's going on. In the summer, I go down to one, uh, live show or in-person show a month. So, I'll do at least one live and one, uh, Palm Street, uh, show during the summer, maybe more. We'll see how it goes. Um, so, like I say, Minnesota or Minneapolis, Minnesota this weekend. Next month, July, I will be in De Moines and I believe August is the Snake Discovery Show. I don't know if that's in Hastings or No Clair. Doesn't matter. Um, you guys can get in touch with me and I will, I will keep you posted and let you know.

Uh, Derek Deers back on the show. I looked back. I can't believe it. It's been two and a half years since Garrick was on the show and it's amazing to think that I've been at this that long and I'm actually coming up on four years of doing this show on Tuesday nights. But it's pretty cool that, um, that he's back. I've had a chance, uh, many times to meet and, uh, spend a little bit of time with Garrick. There's actually a show in Wisconsin that we both did for a little bit over a year. I've actually stopped doing that show just because of some of the logistics that, that we'll get into tonight. Um, but, uh, it's always been, uh, cool to get to talk to Garrick. He makes time for me, for, I, I guess everybody. I don't think I'm any, anything any more special than anybody else. And there's certainly people that spend more money with him than I have. So, um, anyhow, it's always been a, uh, a pleasure to get to talk to Garrick and, uh, he's always been, um, very generous with his time and knowledge and information. So, I think you should stick around and enjoy the show tonight with Garrick. So, please welcome back to the Proper Royal stage from Royal Constrictor Designs, Garrick Deire. Garrick, how you doing tonight?

I am doing great. Good. Just finished up a long day of work and, uh, happy to be done sitting in this chair talking to you right now. Um, speaking of that, I, I'm, I've got a cold right now. I don't know how I got a, Oh, no. In May, but I've been sick, I think, four times this year already. And I had the flu like in January, then I had something else in February. It's like every month something. And I got this cold, sore throat, and, you know, stuffy nose like about a week and a half ago and I'm still working through it. It's just driving me crazy because it impacts my day of work and it just impacts my life in general. And so, anyway, if I'm snippling at all, that's, that's the reason why. I'm just, I can't quite kick this cold.

Oh man, I'm so sorry to hear that. I didn't realize you were going through that.

We can, No, that's, that's completely fine. Um, you know, I'm just, got to work. I'm at the tail end of it, but I still got to work it out of my system. It's just, it's just weird for me because I normally, if I get a cold once a year, that's the most. And I normally have very minor symptoms and it goes, it goes along quick. And for some reason, this one just lingering on. It's kind of driving me a little nuts, but it is what it is.

Yeah. I hope that you kick it. I know what you mean. When, when all you want to do is go be productive and all you can do is just sit there and struggle through it. It's the worst.

And the thing is, I can't, I can't not be productive. Like, I have so much to do that I can't, like, I, I don't take days off if I'm sick. I, I can't, you know, like, otherwise, I just fall further and further behind. I've got customers and waiting on responses. Like, I can't just take a day to just sit and just stay at home on the couch. I did actually in January, I, I had the flu. I put in like a 13-hour day with 102-degree fever. And the next day I'm like, you know what? I, I have to just rest. And so I just took it easy. I took it easy part for part of the day, but I still managed to get shipments out that day. So, you know, it's, it's hard when you know, when you're doing so much of the work yourself, you just can't, you just can't miss stuff. You know, it would almost be more work. Like, if I would have had to cancel all those shipments or postpone all the shipments, first of all, it's in January and if you get it, you know, I mean, you're in Minnesota. If you get a good day in January, you ship. You get it out. That's right. You're in. So, yeah, that's kind of where I was at. And, um, but yeah, and this one hasn't been that bad. I haven't even felt like I needed to take any time off, but it's just, it's just really surprising that I came down with another cold. It's weird.

Yeah. Um, there's a guy in the audience named, um, Kai from Lucas Landon Royals. I remember he was on the show one time and he said, "Don't think about what you can handle when you're your best with live animals that, that you have to run. You have to think about what you can handle at your very worst." Yeah, absolutely. It sounds like what you're describing, you know.

Yeah. I've had some really, really rough days over, you know, over the past 25 plus years of doing this full-time where you can't call in sick. You just, you just got to do what you got to do.

Yeah. Yeah. Um, well, how are, outside of how you're currently feeling, how things been the past, uh, I mean, two and a half years is a long time. Um, obviously you're still going, you're still producing a lot of animals and, um, continuing along. Any major changes in that time for you?

Um, a couple. I mean, you know, I, I, because snakes aren't selling as fast as they were, you know, three or four years ago, especially not as fast as they were, you know, even eight or nine years ago. They're just not selling the way they were. So, I, I've cut back on my production a bit. Um, from the height of COVID, I, I, like two years ago, I cut back by probably like 35%. Right now, this year, I probably will be less than half of what I was doing then. Um, I still have the breeder females here. I mean, if I wanted to, I could, I could produce a frightening number of ball pythons, but I'm not because I just don't, I don't have the space for them. And I'm still trying to work through all of my stuff that I produced over the past couple of years. You know, like I've got a bunch of stuff left from 2022 yet. And the reason for that is because in 2020 and 2021, things were selling so fast. I was, I remember in, um, in the spring of 2021, I had the lowest amount of inventory that I had had probably since in at least 10 years. I, I had like maybe 150 snakes left from 2020 in the spring of 2021. So, I decided, well, why not just produce more snakes? I can't, I can't handle the demand. I, I need to produce more. And back then, I was, I kind of had the mindset that I need to produce as much as I can because I don't want to ever have a customer ask me if I have something available and for me to tell them no. So, I, I try to produce more. So, in 2021, I had a gigantic year in production. And the problem with that is it took me so long. I'm just dealing with a volume of babies. Took me so long to get them up for sale that it was into 2022 before I got all my 2021s for sale. But then I had another big year in 2022 with production. And by the time I got all those up for sale, the market shifted and went down. So, all of a sudden, I have all these 2022s that I'm having a hard time selling. And I still have a bunch now to this day. And then 2023 is the first year that I decided, okay, I'm not going to just try to produce as many snakes as I can. I'm gonna try to produce, you know, a decent number because there's stuff that I, I, I need to produce a certain number of clutches every year just to propel some of my projects forward, right? And also for some of the stuff that I run out of, you know, I always run out of blue-eyed lucistics. I always run out of albinos and like cheaper albino combos, uh, bananas and and cheaper banana combos, like that kind of stuff. I always run out of that. So, I'm like, well, I have to make clutches of those, otherwise I'm not going to have what people want to buy. And so, it still ended up being, I think in 2023, I produced 258 clutches and in 2024, actually, weirdly enough, I produced 258 clutches again. This year my goal is probably more for like 150, which sounds like an, you know, it's an insane number, but in 2021, I produced 474, I think it was. So, it's, and you know, and obviously that, that's a really insane number and I, I guarantee that unless something massive changes in the industry, I will never do that again. Um, but even like the 150 clutches that my goal is for this year, that's still a lot and most people, I don't recommend producing that many. My situation is a little bit different because I do do this for a living and I need to, I need to have a certain level of income in order to keep doing this. So, I have to produce a certain number of snakes in order to pay the bills, basically. And a lot of the the clutches that I produce are produced specifically to pay the bills. Like, I don't have any intention of holding any babies back from that clutch. It's just snakes that I know people want and that I know will help me pay bills. And then I have a segment of my production where I'm trying to produce stuff to where I might want, I might get one baby out of like three clutches that I actually want to keep and raise up and get into my breeding project. And, you know, it's unfortunate that it takes that many byproduct babies to produce the one that I want. But, um, you know, that's, that's what you have to do. I mean, if you want that next triple recessive or quad recessive combo, whatever, you got to take a lot of shots and hopefully you hit on it early and then you don't have to keep trying it and then you can move on from those like triple hat females and hold back some double visual hat, right? Like things like that. And that, I'm trying to get to that point as quickly as I can so that I can cut my numbers down. Um, I, I don't want to have the number of breeders that I have. Um, it's just, it's too, the overhead is too much. Um, the workload is too much. I mean, it's, it's a lot, you know, and I have help. I'm not doing it all by myself, but I'm doing a lot of it by myself. So, the, to, to be able to, to do all that with the volume that I have, it's, it's just, it's hard. I mean, it's really hard to keep up with. So, I'm, I'm trying to get to a, a smaller collection where the clutches are like everything, the hatchlings and the clutches is more something of what I want or something that I know I can sell and not so much of like the, the byproducts that I, that I'm just have to find somewhere to go with them.

Yeah. What's your balance of, um, and you've touched a little bit on it, but what's your balance of breeding for your own projects that you're excited about and want to advance and for, uh, for revenue? Uh, and then I guess secondarily, what's the, what's sort of the sweet spot on those revenue numbers? Um, when you're looking at, I mean, and I know, I know you sell snakes from, from one end of the spectrum all the way to, you know, doubles and triple visuals with, with combos in them, but where's kind of that sweet spot that you can rely on and that you're seeing in the market these days?

Well, I mean, I think, um, you know, three to $400 snake is usually going to sell pretty well depending on what kind it is. You know, there's a big difference between two $400 snakes if one is something that everybody wants to buy and other another one might be genetically more interesting but just not physically appealing, right? So, you know, I mean, obviously I want my average dollar per snake to be as high as possible. Everybody does, but, um, you know, I try to, I'd say roughly half my collection or half of my production is is geared towards stuff that I want to produce that I like where I'm going to hit on, um, where I, I, I can kind of manipulate the odds. Like if breeding blue, I keep coming back to blue-eyed lucistics, but those are very popular and I can, I can sell out of them. I think I just sold my last one a couple days ago from last year. Um, they're, you know, I, I can, I know what I'm going to produce with those because I'm breeding blue-eyed lucistics to blue-eyed lucistics. I'm not correcting any other genes in there. So, I know if I get a clutch of seven eggs, I know what they're all going to be, and I don't need to keep any because I've already got a well-established breeding colony of males and females. So, um, you know, I can kind of gauge like what I'm going to make off of that clutch just from the number of babies that I hatch out. Um, but yeah, it's, it's, uh, I'd say a lot of my production is based on that. And then, you know, there is a lot of production also. Probably I probably should gear more of my production based on things that I know people want to buy and that maybe not quite as much it on on the stuff that I need to to get to progress projects. And I say that because the when I'm doing that kind of breeding, the byproducts are in some, some cases they're, they almost don't have a value. You know, if you hatch like a, if you hatch a, a pastel that's quad het for something, right? Especially if it's a male, but even, even the females don't sell that well. So, it's such a limited market on those and and trying to, I mean, you've been at the shows. I mean, in in Rothschild, if we have to explain what a het is to somebody like that, it's just glaze over. They're, they're, they're on to the next table, you know? Yeah. You have to have visually appealing snakes that aren't going to break their bank because they're buying stuff as pets. And you, I find that like the $300 to $400 range is typically the best range for pets because I know if I sell a snake for $300, I know it didn't cost me that much to produce it, right? Um, and you know, anything above that is going to be great. But, you know, when you're selling the byproduct stuff for $50, $75 a piece, like I know it cost me more than that to produce that snake. At least by the time you get done with all of the bills involved with having to produce it.

Yeah. When you do sell those, do you, do you even bother with all the hats or is it just marked as a normal and hey, here's a ball python pet for you kind of deal?

Yeah. If I'm selling them at a show, that's normally how it is. Yeah. If, depending and actually a lot of times if I wholesale them too, um, I'll sometimes I'll tell people what they are. Like maybe even a year ago when it was maybe a little bit more beneficial to have, uh, you know, to list those genes, I would tell them. Nowadays, if I had a normal that was triple hat like a normal male that was triple hat for something, I'd probably just sell it for whatever as just a normal male because anybody who's going to buy that is not going to really care or understand all those genetics. They just want a cool pet. So, um, yeah, I don't, I don't generally think I, like I'm actually kind of like, I'm changing my mindset on all that. Like all of the, the hat stuff. Like even if I produce like pides that are hat for desert ghost and things like that, like unless it's a cool combo with some codominants in there that I think would be, uh, highly sought after. I'm honestly, I'm, I'm actually at the point where I'm thinking I'm just going to sell them as pides on my website and put them up at $200, $250 a piece and just sell them because you can have, you know, like a pi het ultramale on your website and it could sit there for six months because you have a $50 higher price tag on it and I would rather take less for it and move it out to make room. And then also the overhead of, you know, and you figure it costs me probably a dollar a week per snake to feed. At least. Yeah. At least. Yeah. Um, you know, by the time you get done with all that, you start adding that up after a while. If you have that snake for six months versus selling it at two months of age, you know that you're not really, you're not making enough to justify the extra expense and the extra time and space that it takes up. So, yeah. I, I don't, I mean, people, people seem to want like if they want to get like an ultramale clown, they're not going to buy a clown het, ultramale and a double hat or something like that and make it make their own. They're just going to go out and buy an ultramale clown. And so like that kind of stuff I want to keep and and sell on my website, but all the byproduct stuff I really don't, I don't have the the time or the space for it. And I mean, like I'm still trying to get snakes up for sale that I produced in 2024. I probably have 300 snakes that I have not put up for sale yet because I haven't had the time. You know, I've been dealing with like we run, we've been running sales on a pretty regular basis. And but you know, between all that, like I mean, when we do a sale, um, it's all I can do just to keep up with all the emails and inquiries and and printing out shipping labels and packing shipments. I mean, yesterday I sent like, I sent out 11 shipments. Today I shipped out 21 or 22. Tomorrow I'm shipping out 15 or 16. It's, it's really hard to keep up with that and still get all of the other work done because I do so much of it myself that, you know, I still have to feed all those animals. Like, like tomorrow, I got to pack shipments all morning and then I have to spend all afternoon feeding my baby room, which probably has 800 animals in it. It's all got to get done, right? And like I said before, I do have help, but I, there's certain things that I do myself. Like I feed every animal in the collection myself. My employee, who's awesome, he, I, I just recently hired somebody new. My, I've had like employee situations has been the biggest problem that I've had in at least the last 10 or 12 years. Getting somebody reliable in there that's gonna, you know, that's going to put in the, the time and the effort has been really hard. And I've got somebody now, um, that is really good. Like he's, he's taken the reigns on the rodent room and he's really like really gung-ho on getting that room revving up and going really well. And, you know, taking racks outside and hosing them down and and, you know, um, using an air compressor blowing them off and just cleaning, disinfecting, cleaning everything up real good. New water lines, new sippers, everything to really maximize production for our rodents, which will in theory at least, if we could produce, if we could maximize our production, we could save a lot of money by producing a lot of our own rodents. We'll never be self-sufficient, at least not at nearly at the size of the collection that I have now, but it would definitely help if we could produce more of our own rodents. And he's really been good about like he's, as soon as he started, he's like taken that on as his project and and then he helps me with a lot of the watering and cleaning and stuff too. But nice, there still is a lot that I have to do. Like, I'm the only person that answers emails. I'm the only person that answers the phone. I'm the only person that that does all the shipments and everything. Like, I, I do all that stuff myself. So, um, I'm kind of, it's kind of a limiting factor as far as like how much production we can have and how much I can handle.

How do you think you'll, um, or I mean, maybe you'll, we were talking backstage, uh, to start with, like finding those efficiencies, whether it's making your own rodents or figuring out when you need an employee or when you need to do stuff on your own, or, uh, various things like that. How has that changed for you? And, and I think the last time we talked, uh, you mentioned briefly, but I had in my notes from the last show, you were producing, you were looking to, to, to, to lower production down to around 400 clutches, and now you're aiming for like 150. Um, do you think that you'll, I think you just said you wouldn't, but how close can you get to producing for everything that you need, uh, as far as rodents and that sort of thing goes, but, but then also like, what are some other, like efficiencies that you find? What about feeding the rodents, like rodent food or hacks? And, um, are you feeding all live these days? I know in the past you had, you've done a lot of frozen thaw too. Do you still do any frozen thaw?

I do some frozen thaw yet. Yeah. I mean, the fact is, a lot of customers want their snakes to be eating frozen thaw. So, almost all of the stuff that I have for sale, I get on to frozen thaw and then once they're eating frozen thaw, I'll switch them back and forth. If I have a big surplus of rodents, I'll feed everything live because it saves me a ton of time, right? And, um, but on weeks that I'm short on live stuff, I'll feed them frozen thaws. So, I like my snakes to be versatile. Uh, I like it if my hatchlings will eat rats and mice and ASFs and they'll eat live and thaw. That way, as long as they're set up properly by the customer, they should adapt and take whatever they're offering them. So, that's kind of my my thought about that. As far as the, the production levels, um, probably last time we talked, that's probably right around when I was still producing 400. I didn't, I know at the time I was thinking, okay, I'm not going to do ever do that again. I'm going to produce less. Um, it, the, the problem is, I still have an insane number of breeders. Yeah. So, I'm working on on reducing the number of breeders that I have. Ideally, I would like to have probably around 400 breeder females. And if I, uh, I'd say over the last, you know, 15 years or so, my success rate per female has been about 66%. So, sure, like two-thirds of every female that I try breeding produces for me. Um, so, you know, I, that could be a little over 300 clutches a year, which is really more than what I want. So, there's probably some females that just wouldn't breed in a given year. The biggest problem is if I want to produce the variety that I'm producing and I want to produce, uh, certain projects and advance certain projects, I'm, I'm trying to think of a way I can do it without having at least 400 females. You know, it's really hard. I mean, I might have to cut out complete projects that I'm working on because I, if I don't want that many females, right?

Right. That's, that's a real, a real challenge, especially for me because I'm kind of a collector first and I want to have a little bit of everything. Yeah. Right. Um, yeah.

Have you, I mean, have you stared down that yet where you're like, all right, you know, I thought this was going to be a great holdback, but I just don't want to dedicate a whole other, you know, vector of that pie of your own time to, I mean, have you, have you had to do that yet or, I mean, obviously you're thinking some about it, but

Yeah, I haven't like completely like just decided against some projects, I would say, but I do look at my holdbacks. Like, I, I generally, like if I'm on the fence about something, I typically will hold it back. Like, my biggest problem is I see babies hatching and I'm like, "Oh, I know what I could do with that." I, Right. And and then, eventually, I'll put them all in the holdback racks and eventually I'll go through and I'll be like, "Yeah, you know what? The, the year after I produce that one, I produce something a lot better that'll get me to where I want to go quicker. I really don't need that one." Or I held back too many of these and I don't need them all. I do that a lot now. Um, you know, I just, I'm really trying to be more selective as for as far as how many babies I hold back. Every year I tell myself, okay, I only need to hold back like 15 males, maybe 20 males this year and maybe 50 females. And every year it's like, well, I held back 60 males and 75 females and and I can't help it because I mean, you know, but the thing is in order to to stay, not so much with the stuff that's for sale, like, like I've got like banana combo females that I'm breeding to really cool like multi-codominant males. I don't necessarily need to upgrade or change those that much because they're already producing what I want. Maybe I, I throw a, a new male in every once in a while just to produce something different or or produce some maybe get a little bit higher ratio of like good animals to sell versus byproducts. But, um, with, uh, I lost my train of thought completely. Oh, well, with the, um, with the, the, I guess the higher-end type of projects, I do have to rotate through my males and my females very quickly. Like, um, just like desert ghost pides, for example. Um, you know, two years ago, I only had double hat females and I bred a desert ghost pi double hat females that had some codominants in there and produced my desert ghost pides that way. Well, I held back some of my female desert ghost pides and then now I really don't need those double hats. I'm breeding them this year again and then hopefully it'll give me a couple more cool combo females that I can hold back and then they're gone because I won't need them. And that same thing with like the ultramale clown, all the double recessive stuff, I'd say I'm really trying to hit hard, uh, this year. I want to hold back as many female visual double recessives as I can because then I could always, um, hold back like one really incredible double recessive, like maybe plus codominants male to breed with those or I can, I can go out and purchase a male that's got something in it that I don't have that that looks really good with that, like a dreamsicle. You know, I probably have, um, like 23 or 24 adult dreamsicle females and probably half of those have codominant genes in them as well, but a lot of them are just straight dreamsicles. But, you know, those animals, I mean, if I'm breeding a dream combo to a dream, the worst thing I'm going to produce is a regular dream, right? Even if that's only a few hundred dollars, it's still an animal that's going to sell quick because everybody loves them. So, that that's kind of, I, I want my, my, uh, my collection of like nicer higher-end stuff I bought basically to consist of like double visual recessive females or triple recessive females and then breed, you know, some specific codominants into them. But I, I just want like, I want the worst thing, like with an ultramale pi project, I want the worst thing I can produce in that clutch to be a visual, just normal ultra pi, that's going to be a good animal. It's going to sell pretty easily. Um, I just, I, I want to try to get out of the double hat stuff. I want to get out of having like pi hat clowns and clown hat pies and things like that. I just want to have all of the double, the visual double recessives and triple recessives that I can get my hands on or that mostly just by producing them myself. I'll just hold them all back. Right. Right.

What, uh, I love asking this question to everybody, but but particularly to people that I really look up to. What's the last animal that you bought or acquired? How, whether it be in a trade or whatever, but that you were like, "Man, I got to go get that animal." What was the last one that you've acquired?

It's been a while. I honestly haven't bought a new animal in probably two years, I'd say. Um, you know, part of it is because, well, there's stuff that I want, but the problem is my tastes are super, super expensive, right? So, and I just haven't, you know, with the way the market's been, I just don't have the surplus money to go out and buy a 20 or $30,000 animal.

Well, that's a good point, too. Yeah. Yeah. You know, so I mean, it's, it's been hard over the past couple years. I'm not going to lie. It's been, This has been the hardest couple of years that I've ever had in 25 years of breeding ball pythons. It's, I, This has been tough for me and, um, I, you know, I'm trying to make adjustments and, like I said, trimming the collection back a bit. Um, you know, doing some things to be more efficient. Um, so I really haven't gone out and boughten anything new lately. Most of what I, most of the best stuff that I have right now, I produce myself. Yeah. So, um, that's kind of where, you know, I've been more into, um, I, I can't even think of the last ma, the last, uh, snake that I bought. I, We might have to come back to that. I, I got to thinking, but, uh, I, I mean, it, it honestly might have, I know I in 2022, I bought a Desert Ghost Pi male and, uh, and that was, I, I remember that was $10,000 at the time. Um, I bought him, I think it was the summer, where was the summer 2023? Let me think for a second. I think it was the summer 2022. Um, I, I, so I bought a Desert Ghost Pi male about 100 grams and I raised that him up. I got him in, I got him at the first, no, second NBC in Schaumburg. Okay. And, um, I got him and I raised him up real quick. He was actually breeding females by the first week of January. And, Oh, wow. Okay. I think he bred six or, I got six or seven clutches from him that year at, and he was only like maybe seven months old when he started breeding, right? And I, I'm not generally one for pushing my snakes either, but he, he just ate all the time. And I'm like, well, you know, if you want to keep eating, I'll keep feeding you. And he got big fast. And I still have him now. He's still a breeder of mine and he's awesome. Hardly ever misses a meal. Uh, but I, you know, I got him. I, I just figured that instead of breeding double hat to double hat. If I go out and spend this $10,000, I can get the double visual and I'm going to produce so many more double visuals by breeding him to those double hat females. Otherwise, you know, you, you take the chance at, you know, you're going to produce your own double visual. And I'm doing that with some projects right now with Monarch Clown and Monarch Pi and things like that. But, um, you know, by buying that double visual, I, I was able to, um, just increase my production of valuable animals out of out of him versus what the double hat male would have produced. You know, if I bred that double hat male to five or six females, maybe I get one, uh, double male. And so, and then you, you got a chance that you hit on a male and then you got a chance that it's going to grow up and and be ready to breed quickly. So, you know, there are some cases like that where it's just better to spend the money and buy, buy what you want for your, your collection instead of trying to produce it. But I mean, I, like I said, even though I, I say that and I, I believe that, I'm still trying to, I'm doing like double hat Monarch Clown, Monarch Pi and double, I've got some other double hat projects that are a little bit rare as well. But, um, you know, I'm trying the, the, the old-fashioned route of doing it, basically.

Well, there's always the challenge and, and you hit on it, but I mean, the reality of cash flow, I mean, there's only so many for just about anybody. There's only so many times you can throw around $10 grand at a pop. And like you say, on the one hand, you're buying yourself time and odds. On the other hand, it's $10 grand. And that's, we got bills to pay and animals to feed and all of that kind of thing. Uh, let me see. Uh, bullish. If you check out the beginning of the episode, we went really deep on production levels. I don't want to go back there again. Um, so what, uh, in that case, what, what genes, and you, you mentioned monarch a little bit, but what genes, um, have you excited these days as you do look forward and as you are creating, um, uh, working forward and looking at at even working with double or triple hats?

Yeah. I mean, a lot of the stuff, I mean, I, I don't have any like brand new recessive or even codominant like, I don't have Cosmos in my collection. I don't have Tornado or anything like that. Um, I actually don't even have a Monsoon in my collection yet. Um, but, you know, I've got a lot of stuff. I'm working on some really cool triple hats right now. Like, I've got an orange dream, um, sunset male that I'm breeding to some, uh, uh, ultramale pi hat hypos. So, I'm hoping to get some nice triple hats and potentially quad hats out of that. Um, also breeding that same snake into a toffee pi. So, I'm trying to, trying to, uh, increase my sunset production a bit. And I know like doing the, the triple recessive thing using triple hats. It's going to be a long road, but, um, I've got some strategies that I'm going to use partly with, uh, Charlie from shedtesting.com.

I see. There you go. Thank you. Yeah. Yeah. Charlie's awesome. Uh, he's awesome. I, I sent him a boatload of sheds about a couple of weeks ago and, you know, he's, he's texting me or or messaging me at like 10:30 on a Sunday night like, "Oh, dude, I, I, you know, here's some, some of the results." I'm like, "Charlie, stop working. It's 10:30 on Sunday night. You don't need to be doing this. Like, just chill out. I, I told you I had, I'm not in any hurry for these. Just whenever you get the chance." And, uh, but yeah, he's, he's, uh, he's really good and he's, he's pretty quick about getting results back, too. That's exactly why like I sought him out to, to, to when that spot came open on the banner, I was like, Charlie's the guy. And it's exactly what you just mentioned, like he's an entrepreneur. He figured it out, but he's, it's that, I don't know when he's, I'm with you. I don't know when he sleeps. I get, I get results at 2 in the morning. Sometimes I'll get a message of, uh, hey, can we catch up on this business part or can we talk about these details? Get back to me when you can. I'm like, what are you doing up? What am I doing up? What are we doing here? Exactly. But he's, he's the guy doing it. And, uh, I, anyway, and, and it's, it's, it's killer service. Like you say, he's fast about getting them back. I mean, the urgency he treats customers with is is really commendable and fantastic. Yeah.

So, uh, so that will, that was going to be one of my questions this evening was, uh, it's crazy. It's what a quantum leap. Two and a half years ago, we didn't have shed testing. So, like, what, uh, I, I see that you're using it. Is it, uh, something that you enjoy? Is it something that you think has, uh, handicapped you as somebody with all of your knowledge now, the rest of us are just able to catch up right away like that? What are your thoughts on all of that?

I would say to some extent, it, it, kind of levels the playing field a little bit. Somebody that's got a little bit of ambition and wants to collect those sheds and send them in, you know, it could really, it's just going to, it's going to propel everything forward so fast and it's going to be hard to keep up with. Like, I already feel like I can't keep up with some of the other guys in this industry that's producing the cutting-edge stuff and it's, it's just going to make it all the harder to do. And, um, but I think, I think it is good. I mean, it's, it's definitely efficient. You know, you can go through and, like, I, I haven't even gone through any of the results of the test. I probably sent him 40 sheds and I haven't gone through any of those yet. Um, I actually asked him if he could just make a spreadsheet so I, I can get them all in one place so that I can actually go through the list and find the snake and mark them with what they actually are. But it'll definitely make things a lot more efficient as far as production. But I've been, I'm kind of one more for, uh, gearing my breedings towards doing things where I'm going to know what the results are and not have to, like, hope that I hit on a double recessive that's for another gene. Um, I'm do, I will be doing that, some of that, and I'll be, of course, testing all that. Um, you know, back in the old days, you had to just, te, you had to just do breeding trials to see what, what was in some of these things. And, um, that, you know, that just doesn't happen anymore. It doesn't need to happen anymore.

Yeah. It saves the amount of holdbacks you have to keep, right? I mean, by the time, once you do compare it, because I guess, take us back, uh, I mean, you, because to make new stuff, you, you can't just go out and buy it if it doesn't exist. So, if you want to make the new stuff, you got to make the hats. And what you would just, you just hold back whole clutches or, I guess, a certain number of, you know, uh, primo males, but then all of the females and hope that they, uh, hit on them after two, three years.

Well, I'll tell you. I, I'll go back. I'm, I've told the story lots of times, but, um, when I first started breeding ball pythons, I, so back, you know, 25 years ago, I was a pretty well-known gecko breeder. I, I, you know, my web, my original website was crestedgecko.com, right? I've been producing crested geckos since the late '90s, producing leopard geckos since the mid-'90s, and I was up, I was producing thousands of them and, uh, pretty well known for them. And, uh, I was offered, somebody offered me 10 adult breeder female ball pythons for a hundred

A lot of normal baby leopard geckos. And at the time, you know, I didn't have any ball pythons. I I had had them over the years and every once in a while, like I'd buy a group of like the farm-raised baby females and I'd start raising them up and then I'm like, I'm never going to do anything with these. I'd sell them. Like I probably did that, uh, you know, three or four times in the 90s, back before I ever thought I could afford or ever get a pied or an albino or anything like that, right?

Um, but then eventually by the year 2000, I decided, okay, I want to start breeding ball pythons. So I did this trade. I got these 10 normal females. Um, I might actually still have one of them now. I think I think I do.

No way. Really?

Yeah. Yeah. Not that I need a normal female, right?

Right. Right. Um, but anyway, so I I could only afford because I was just a lowly gecko and bearded dragon breeder. I didn't have, you know, thousands of dollars to put into these ball pythons. But I bought a het albino male. I bought a het caramel male, a het jollipanthic male, and a het piebald male. I bought all those, and they average price, the average price was I think $1,000 a piece. So just for a normal looking het out of all those. And I bred those to these normal females and I I kept every single female that I produced and raised them all up and either bred them back to the original het males or in some cases, like the albino, I actually bought a visual albino male a couple years later in the meantime and I bred those and and I ended up producing some of them out.

Well, one of the the 50% possible het albino females that I had, she was being really stubborn. It took me 10 years before I got her to breed. I was breeding her to an albino male every year. 10 years. And that damn thing proved out to be a normal.

Oh my god.

But I mean, I was stubborn. I mean, I'm I can be a pretty stubborn person. And I'm

You're not leaving my collection until I prove you out.

Either het albino or you're a normal. There was no way to tell obviously. So I bred her year after year after year and she just would not go. And then finally she went and at this point albinos were probably, uh, six or $700 a piece or something like that. Yeah. And I'm like, "Okay, cool. I finally got eggs. She better prove out because I put a lot of time and money and anguish into her and every baby is a normal. Like, okay, you're out the door. I'm I'm done with you."

So, uh, yeah, but back then, you know, I I couldn't afford to buy, you know, $10,000 snakes like that. Like, I had to buy the het males and I had to take the slow route to get to the point where I was, you know, producing some of these morphs. And then eventually I started being able to buy some of the more expensive morphs. But, um, but yeah, I mean, it was it was it was hard to first get started without the shed testing issue, right? But holding back, you know, holding back a bunch of possible hets and saying, "Oh, this could either be a het pied or it could be a normal, a normal thing there." And, you know, obviously now we know how to tell a het pied, not with 100% assure being assured, but you know, for the most part, if you look at a a you know, which one to keep.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Right. So, right. Um, yeah, things have really changed with all with breeding and breeding strategies and stuff. It's just so different now than it used to be.

I can remember so I had a couple normal ball pythons, not to breed, just just as pets and in my college time. Uh, and I can remember the store in Gainesville, Florida, and it it might have, I don't I know I I remember seeing him in there because he's a recognizable guy. I don't know if it was his store or if he was just in there. Maybe he was the supplier, but Ben Cole was in there. And I this is this would have been 97, 98ish somewhere in there. Um, but I remember that they had a a pied in there and it blew my mind. But I also remember thinking to myself, I could buy like a Mercedes or I could buy that snake. Like, and I don't I don't I don't remember if it was 30 grand or 100 grand or whatever it was, but as my broke college 1997, 98 self, I just remember being like, what? Like, it blew my mind on so many levels. Both from looking at it, but then just considering it. And then in, you know, COVID time, I go to a Repticon with my son and there's pieds everywhere. I'm like, anybody can buy these or have these? I was like, I'm in. That's what's going to happen. I'm going for it.

Yep. Yeah. It's It's insane. Like, when I think back and you know, the the first really expensive snake that uh we ever bought was our first spider ball python. We bought it from Kevin McCurley. Yeah. Paid 175 for him. They're just a normal spider.

Wow. And thousand or 100?

What's that?

17,000.

Yeah. 1700.

Um, so at the very first uh NBC in Tinley in October of 2001, uh Kevin's booth was right across the aisle from mine. You know, I had a a table along the perimeter full of geckos. And I might had a few snakes, but I I wasn't known for producing snakes back then. I really didn't produce much back then, but I had a lot of geckos. And anyway, Kevin's table was right across the aisle from mine. And he had the first two bumblebees that I'd ever seen in my life there. And I just remember just being in awe about them because I mean I, you know, I'd seen pictures of albinos. I I'd seen a couple in person, uh, you know, pies, a couple other things, but nothing ever like a bumblebee. And that was like a double, you know, it was a double visual basically uh dominant and Kodon, but um, you know, to look at it and I just I was amazed by them and I'm like, they had a $60,000 price tag on them and I just remember thinking to myself, you know, someday I'm going to see if I can produce those. I don't know what it's going to take. I don't know how long. It might be 20 years from now. I don't know, but I'm going to try to produce those.

So, a couple years later, I bought a spider male and I bought a pastel female. I think she was a yearling at the time. And a couple years after that, I bred them and I hatched out two bumblebees. So, luckily, I produced two because like I was saying before, I'm a collector be probably before I'm a keeper. So, I I feel compelled to keep the first of everything new that I produce. Right. Uh, so I kept that first bumblebee and I sold her sibling and I remember selling, I sold her for 15,000. So she she almost single-handedly recouped the entire investment on the spider and the rest of the clutch I would say probably got us to break even on the project overall and we were also producing other clutches with spiders in them and stuff.

But, you know, I didn't know what I knew. Like, if I would have known 25 years ago, what I know now, but how just just how to breed ball pythons, not necessarily like the genes that I have to get into or anything like that, but just the the mechanics of breeding a ball python. If I would and of raising a baby up to maturity, if I if I would have known that back then, I probably could have made 10 times the amount of money that I did. You know, I had Mojave very early on. I had pinstripes pretty early on. I had spider, I had albino pretty early on. Like if I would have known how to maximize production on those, I I can't even like it kind of almost makes me sick looking back on like what I could have done if I would have just known that hey, you know what? You can actually get a male ball python to breed by the time they're seven months old instead of waiting for two years by feeding them once a week. You know, maybe maybe feed them twice a week or even a little bit more and I can get them to breed quicker. Um, you know, little things like that that, you know, had I known I I could have done some different things.

How um I just want to go back to that bumblebee female, but female I still have her.

Oh, dude, that's cool. She she's going to turn 20 years old this summer. And um Yep, I still have her. And she's uh she's a pet, you know. I obviously don't need to breed a bumblebee anymore. So, I you know, I haven't bred her probably in over 10 years, but um yeah, she's just one of those snakes that I just I can't I can't get rid of. I've got not too many, but I've got a couple that way that are just like I've got an orange dream het pied boy that he was just he was one of the one of the best hatchlings that I got at the very beginning. I don't need him anymore, but he's just a calm, docile, and his I don't know. I know there's all sorts of uh uh uh mysticism around lines of Orange Dream and all that, but he's a beautiful example even as an adult. And I'm like, you know what? If I ever really need him and or if I really need some quality OD injected anywhere, I can use him, you know, but I haven't brought him in years now.

Um, uh, let's see. Two, um I had two topics in mind. I don't know. I just go randomly on one of them. One, I guess one of them's kind of quick. How uh you talked about um feeding and logistics and that stuff. How long do you or when do you when do you see some females going? I know the typical answers, you know, between two and three years and I think we all fit into that, but do you lean more towards one or the other or or like you say right now you have so you have so many breeding females that it's not a rush or where do you find yourself on that?

I'm basically I have so many breeding females and most of them aren't too much of a rush. Um, I'll I'll normally wait until they're close to 1500 grams or around two and a half years. Like I I don't have a hard I I don't look at us they can say, "Well, you're not 1500 grams. I'm not even going to try to breed you." If I have a female that's been a picky feeder her whole life and she's maybe like 1300, 1350 grams, but she's three years old already, she's getting bred for sure. She could give me, you know, four eggs. She might give me six or seven. I had a first time. I had a pied actually just hatched this clutch out. I had a pied triple het hypo ultramal clown female that I bred to a pied triple het hypoultramal clown male. Uh, and she was she's probably only a little bit maybe slightly over two years old right now, but she gave me I think it was eight eggs.

Wow.

And so she's fairly small. I mean she I think she's about 1500 grams, but she's fairly small. And I actually just hatched her her babies out. Uh, about they're just about well they're starting to shed right now. So there's going to be some shed testing involved with that. Speaking of that, I've got a um I've got one of the babies actually died in the egg. It like poked its head out, stuck its neck out, and then it was dead the next day. But I got a um a hypo ultramal pied, two ultramal pieds, three hypopieds, and a normal pied. and they're all, you know, het for or possible het for clown and all the other. So, I'm going to get all those tested and I'm actually doing a a YouTube video where I'm going to I'm splicing together like I did a um I cut the eggs. I did like egg cutting video segment and then I did a reveal segment showing what babies actually hatched. And then I'm going to do a post uh shed and shed testing result segment just to kind of help promote Charlie a little bit too and say well you know I had all these tested through shedtesting.com and this is the results. So this is this was the pairing these are the visual uh babies that hatched and this is what they're all all the genes that they're carrying.

So, um, but anyway, yeah, she was a, you know, a she wasn't a big female, but I've had some pretty small females give me decent clutches already. So, as far as like the the ages and sizes and everything, I don't I don't really have a set Yeah. And it kind of a part of it kind of depends on how badly I want to breed that female, too. if if it's something that I really am excited about producing, usually I'll feed that snake a little bit more often, too, and to get a little bit more size on on her quicker. Um, so, you know, I very well may end up breeding her at around two two years old. I've had females like back in back in the old days with the het albinos, I had a het albino female that uh I think she bred before she was 18 months old. And this is back when I wasn't, you know, when I I mean, I I still don't feed real heavily, but, you know, back before I even knew you could really even do that. Um, and she gave me I think it was like nine eggs on our first clutch.

Oh, man. I've had others give me three. So, you know, it's exactly, you just don't know. But, um, yeah.

Do you get do you get uh superstitious or do you have a preference on uh what rodent you feed those those breeding females or like if you have like a really special female where you're like come on you got to go for me this year. What's the rodent that you're uh what's the preferred rodent you're going to give to that one?

Whatever they eat. I I'm a complete believer that give the ball pythons whatever they want to eat. And um, you know, some of mine will eat rats for part of the year and then they will only take mice or they'll take ASF. Um, some of them go back and forth and like a lot of my females once they they lay a clutch and I take the eggs away and clean them up and everything, the next time I offer them a meal, they'll take a rat. But previous to when they were breeding, they would only take ASF or mice. So, and a lot of times it just depends on what I have available, too. Like if I've got a surplus of pretty good sized ASFs, I guess you're getting an ASF this week. Otherwise, if I have a lot of rats and and some of my even some of my breeder females, like if I get real tight on rodents and I've got some jumbo breeder, like retired mice, I'll give them a mouse just to give them something. I'm not worried at all about a snake sticking on a certain food type. I think a ball python that wants to eat will eat pretty much anything you put in front of them. a ball python that is is kind of on the fence, like she's kind of looking and she's like, "Well, I'm kind of hungry, but not really. Maybe she would turn her nose at a rat, but she'd take a mouse or an ASF." And then I do have a few that are picky and they only eat ASFs or only eat mice, but not very many. I'd say 90% of my my adult female ball pythons will take whatever I give them at any time.

I was going to say I really regret I regret how blown out of proportion because it's not a myth. I know that there's some out there that do get kind of stuck or really stubborn, but man, I hear it all the time and I love feeding ASS because of how much they they love them and how dependable they are. I don't I don't necessarily know if I buy into that that's their natural food or that they're any more healthy or anything than that, but they're they're consistent and um and they work for me to raise up. I I'm horribly allergic to well rodents in general, but particularly rats, but ASFs I can if I have a ventilator, I can handle pretty well. Okay. So, for all those reasons, I like um live ASFs, but I feed frozen uh rats and while we're shouting out people from Cold Blooded Cafe is where I get my frozen ones. So, um, but yeah, at shows it's I I you mentioned it earlier. I think it's worth repeating. Um, anything that I'm trying to sell, I try and get on frozen thod just so I can avoid the, "Oh, well, it's on this, it's going to be hooked on that." I'm like, "No, like you say, I think if they're set up right and conditioned right and um put in the right enclosures, they're going to eat when they're ready to eat."

Yeah. my baby, the stuff that I'm selling, you know, a lot of them I'll feed mice to just because I can produce them in bigger numbers and they're if I have to buy them, they're much cheaper. Like a same size as a rat, it's going to cost half the price. And when you're already spending $1,000 a week to feed your baby room to up that to $2,000 a week just to give everything a little like a a rat pup instead of a like a wean or a small adult mouse is really hard to do. But I would say 90% of the snakes that I'm typically feeding mice to will take a rat without any problem. And occasionally I'll give some of them I have too many to give them all rats at some point. But um I'll give some of them rats. Sometimes I'll sometimes if we have surplus uh like hopper sized ASFs, I'll feed them those. And I'm not worried at all. Like I I kind of go back and forth between different things based on what I have. And like I mean almost all of mine will take a frozen thod mouse or rat anytime I offer it to them. So I'm not you know I don't really think they typically do get stuck. If they're hungry they're hungry and they'll eat whatever you put in front of them.

If you're feeding them all the time like you know some some breeders and some uh some hobbyists think that oh you have to just stuff your ball python silly. They got to always be full. I I first of all I don't think that's healthy for them. Uh, ball pythons do uh live through that a lot better than most snakes, but no snake should have a continuous uh chain of food in their stomachs going into their intestines and continuously having poop in their intestines. They need to clean out sometimes like if you feed if you're feeding them all the time, they always are in some state of digestion and that's not healthy for them to do that. So to feed like for people they're buying a snake for me and it's like well why is a snake this age and it's only this big when it could be this big like well I first of all I don't have the time to feed the snakes that heavily but also it's not really the best thing for them. you know, you can do it and a lot of breeders do do it to get their production high and to and to get um to get them to breed quickly, but if you're actually looking at what's best for the snake, it it's not necessarily feeding them three times a week to get you like it's not really my job to get a six-month old snake up to 400 grams or 500 gram.

Right. Right. Especially if it's something like, you know, if I'm selling if I just like a normal pied that I'm gonna sell to somebody as a pet, they don't need that thing to be 400 grams at six months old. No. So, um, but yeah, I really think ball pythons, most of them, I think the the pickiness factor there, you know, obviously there are some individuals, but I think the majority of them, in at least in my experience, most of mine will eat anything I put in front of them at any time.

I think like by and large, I think the reach of social media, at least for for sales and marketing and building our communities, is fantastic. I think sometimes we just stand in a circle and shoot each other in the feet though because like I can remember like probably the last time that we were on the show the big thing was people were anti-power feeding and then like now it's oh you're not feeding enough you're maintenance feeding and they're too small like you alluded to. Like if we look at their actual caloric needs in the wild or even probably less in our enclosures, like it's it's really hard to underfeed a ball python if you're feeding them at all.

Really?

Yeah. I mean, find me a thousand gram yearling ball python in the wild, right? you know, unless that thing found the the jackpot of all rodent burrows or something and it and it's just got unlimited food, you know, a yearling ball python in the wild is probably going to be 300 grams, right? you know, and and that's only if it found bigger food items. I mean, they they just they're not made to grow that fast or get that big. Look at most other species. You do that with a with like a boa constrictor, you're going to kill it. You do that with a green tree python, you're going to kill it for sure. Um, there's so many other species that if if you try to feed them the way people feed ball pythons, you will kill them. And and even ball pythons, I mean, you can you can overdo it and just line their intestines up with with poop or whatever and or get them so fat that they can't function their, you know, their their kidneys and their liver, you know, just their all their intestines and stuff and organs are they're going to have problems. Heart issues and stuff. I mean, it's just not it's just not good for I mean, it's not good for us. not good for anything to really just be in a continuous state of digestion.

Yeah. I I don't know the medical and the scientific ins and outs of it, but I do know like I know that we put a lot a lot of pressure on getting them to breed faster. And I think that that's probably an indication that it's not the best thing for them kind of deal. You know, ball pythons do seem to tolerate it a lot better than most species though. I mean, you know, you can get ball pythons up pretty big pretty fast if you want to, but I mean, my goal isn't nec like even my holdbacks, my best holdbacks are usually fed, I would say on the average are probably almost twice a week, but u a lot of my my snakes um you know, I I feed them once a week and even like my my breeders or my snakes that I'm growing up to breed, you know, but usually for like the first maybe five or six months, I'll generally if I have leftover rodents after feed feeding like I'll feed I feed all my holdbacks on Monday and then on Wednesdays I feed all the babies that are for sale and if I have leftovers at that point I'll usually run through the holdbacks again and give them a second meal. Um, but other than that like once they get bigger like once they hit probably like six or 700 grams they very rarely ever get a second meal. It's like whatever you can grow on one meal a week is what you're going to do. And I know I'm not pushing you too hard but I know you're going to grow. And I just I mean like I said I mean it kind of helps that I have so many snakes that if any one particular snake doesn't make it up to breeding it generally doesn't matter that much for me but right um I think it's just better for the snake overall.

Um, how much do you find yourself I don't know I don't know you well enough. Part of me sees you as a guy that you do your own thing and you have your own path and you've done very very well at it. How much do you try and keep up with what the new stuff is? And I know you said you hadn't bought anything in in two years. How much do you even follow that though? Do you go I mean do you make time to see what the trends are or do you just stay kind of focused on on what you have in front of you or is it both? Where where's your interest in that?

It's both. I mean I have my own ideas of what I want to produce. So, I try not to let other what other people are doing influence me too much, but I can't ignore what other people are doing and what the trends are. Um, you know, I I'm always listening. I mean, I listen to my share of podcasts and I I watch my share of YouTube videos. I don't get to watch as many as I would like because most of the time when I'm working, I can't watch them. And when I'm at home, I most of the time when I get home from work at night, like last thing I want to do is think.

Oh, yeah. Go see any more ball pythons.

Yeah. I kind of need to have that mental break. But I I do I do watch some videos and see what other people are producing and you know, depending on the video like some of them I'm just like how the hell are you producing that already? Like I you know I'm blown away by some of the stuff that some other breeders are producing and I would love to be producing stuff like that too. But um, but you know, I have my own projects that I'm working on. Um, yeah, I do I do like to see what other people are producing and and uh, you know, it gives me ideas for things that I can do with my own collection. Maybe a certain gene I want to bring in or um, or a certain combination or like maybe I can I can make something similar to that with a different combination of genes.

Yeah. Yeah. Uh, so, you know, that that kind of stuff I I do quite a bit.

Yeah. That's always the thing to me is like I I'm I feel like I'm pretty good at saying I can't control what other people are doing and I can't the old comparison is the thief of joy or whatever that mindset where like you'll go nuts if you just compare yourself all the time. But I do like seeing like all right, how do I get there? But then what what would I like that to look like and what would what like how do I get inspired by that piece rather or that animal rather than just like oh I want that. So now I got to buy the things to make that right away. Like I I can't I can't afford to live that way, but b it'll just it'll drive me bonkers if I if I live that way, too.

The problem with trends, like if you're trying to chase somebody else's project, you're never going to catch up. And by the time you get caught up where you can produce that animal, they've already moved on. There's several steps ahead already or working on a different project completely. And you just you can't you can't always be trying to play the catch-up game. And I'm guilty of it to some extent, too. Like I look at what some other people are producing and I'm like, "Okay, I really really want to produce that because I like the look of that hand, right?"

Yeah. You love it though.

Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, I'll sometimes do that, but but I always try to remind myself like, "Okay, I'm not going to be able to catch up." And all I'm going to be doing is trying to chase. So, by the time I produce that, they're going to be going for like a tenth of what they are right now because they'll they'll have already moved on to the next big thing. and and you can't predict what the next big thing is going to be necessarily. So, it's almost impossible like if if you if you could go forward five years in time and see what the hot things are, then you start working on them right now and that'd be very very handy to be able to do. But unfortunately, you can't.

So, we got to get Charlie on that. That's his next endeavor is get time machine.

Would be nice. That would be really cool. You and I could be the test pilots on it.

Oh, yeah. I'm I'm all up for it. I would love to see what's going to be cool in five years because I'd start stockpiling it now and and uh see what I can do. But um, but no, I mean it's just, you know, there's uh there's so many different projects and I really think that people should kind of um get their own ideas of what's cool and not necessarily follow follow the everybody else that towards a certain trend like you know figure out your own spin on things and do something do something that nobody else has tried before or that at least not that you know of you know it's not necessarily like oh okay I got to make this gene because this person's making it or these people are already are producing these do something different you know everybody you know do do your own thing I think and that would really help with diversity in the ball python community if everybody started working on more unique projects than everybody tra chasing like the next you know Pompeii or whatever like yeah it's a cool animal but you know by the time if you're starting off from scratch right now by the time you produce them they're going to be 500 bucks a piece and and you know so I really think it's better to say and some of it comes with experience. I mean like I can generally look at different single genes and say like okay I can envision what that's going to look like in a clown or or in you know in whatever project you know you're not always right. I mean I've swung at a lot of different projects and some of them I'm like really that's all it is? And then I hit other ones I'm like wow that is the coolest thing I've ever seen. Right. And there's a there's a lot of variances within that. And then, you know, if you produce something like that, then you have to hope that other people think it's cool, too. And that's the that's the real thing is like when I produce something, I'm like, I really really like this. I wonder how other people are going to think about it. And I I produce some things like I just hatched out uh this last fall, I hatched out a a banana hurricane spot-nose calico yellowbelly clown.

Did you just post that recently?

I posted her a few times. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Wild looking and probably 300 grams now. Just amazing looking. And it's like, okay. And then based on the reaction that I've seen from posting it, and I've had people share it, too. The reaction has been huge. So, I'm like, okay, well, that was a hit. Like, I I need to be able to produce more of those. The problem is that snake is more complex than a Pompeii. So, the chances of hitting on it again. And in that and that one is a female, too. So technically she's for sale, but I have her up at a really high price tag and actually just marked her up a little bit because I don't want color. So you know, but I I have the the ability to produce her again, but it's just a matter of am I really going to hit on uh I believe it's what was what I say five banana, hurricane, calico, spotnose, yellowbelly. the five codons plus clown to hit on all that into one animal again is gonna take something, right? So, but like that was an example of something where I I went off in a completely different direction than what a lot of people would do and put, you know, calico and yellowbelly together. I think is an awesome combo and clowns and then if you put those other genes in there, you really get something wild out of it. Um, so, yeah, I mean that was a hit, but I've had tons and tons of misses over the years, too, where I produced stuff that I was really disappointed in.

That was an interesting detail you said about um thinking something's cool, but then you found a way to quantify it as well because it's really hard to quantify cool. Like we know this, like whether it's rock and roll or whether it's snakes, it's hard to quantify cool. That's a really good way that you said that. I was going to bring up um I I would say he's a friend, but I I know certainly an acquaintance of yours, but uh Doug [ __ ] Doug is one he's one he's one of the best at like he'll tell me about something I'm like this has got to be cool and I'm like it's it's pretty good, but his enthusiasm is really f and I don't necessarily have that in me. He's an excellent uh uh promoter that way.

I've known Doug for many many years. He actually got his first ball pythons from me probably oh it's probably 15 years ago now. Uh he he only you know he lives in my town so I I see Doug pretty regularly.

Yeah. No, he's he's he's a great guy and I've I've interacted with him a whole lot and he's been very kind to me. So I know no issues with that. But and and I think that that's what's needed though. I think when you when you when you talk to him about projects he's just like then there's this and I'm like yeah it's true. I'm just not I'm not as good at that as as he is. But that was interesting. You talked about uh how you quantified his during the hashing season. Um he'll he'll come to my shop uh every couple of weeks and uh during the hatching season I always love showing him all the cool stuff that's hatching to get his reaction to it. Yeah. See what he thinks about it. And we we collaborated on the sunset project a couple of years ago. when um that uh that he had a like a pastel orange dream entie het male and I had a couple of uh normal possible het female sunsets and we bred them together and split the babies and that's where my I've got a pair of sunsets here that with some other genes in them that I'm the I'm breeding the male right now and the female I'm growing up but um yeah so that's how I got my sunsets is from his male breed oh very nice yeah so and he's uh hissy fit right hyit reptiles. Yeah. Okay, cool. Yeah, I'd be remiss not to mention his uh his his brand as well. Yeah. And I know you guys uh I don't know if you've been together or right next to each other at that Rothschild show, but I know that like you guys are close there.

Yeah. I didn't vend at the last one. He actually killed it at the last Rothschild show. He told me he messaged me. He's like, he was like, "Where were you? I crushed it." Like, "Thanks." Well, I started thinking like, "Okay, it's on Mother's Day. It's a beautiful day in May." you know, up in the northern Midwest, you don't get that many great weekends. So, I'm like, nobody's gonna come to the show. I'm I'm not, you know, like I can't give up. I don't want to, you know, get in the dog house with my wife and stuff. And plus, my mom had just had knee surgery recently. So, I wanted to go down and visit her and stuff. And I'm like, I'm not going to spend half the day on Saturday packing for the show and then going to the show on Sunday. Like, I'm just going to bow out of this one. And I honestly didn't think it'd be that well. And I texted dog later. I'm like, "Hey, Doug, how'd the show go?" He's like, "I killed it. I sold like like 16 snakes at the show." I'm like, "Yeah." He was like, "It was my best show." He's like, "It's my best show ever." And it was just a little old Rothschild. He's like, "There's hardly anybody with ball pythons here." I'm like, "Yeah, you're welcome, dog." Exactly. I would have been sitting right next to you with all kinds of stuff.

Yeah. I didn't make that trip either, but anyhow, such is life. Um, Garrick, how about a uh how about a couple just uh quickfire questions on logistics as we wrap up the last segment here. And uh uh audience, if you would do me a favor, I don't want to interrupt time with Garrick and he's busy. Check out the sponsors. They literally keep the lights on. They're people within our industry that support us and they make this program come to you adree. No more interruptions while you're cleaning, your hands are wet in the sink, you can't skip an ad, and you're stuck through an ad. It's all gone. And it's all because of those sponsors. So check them out. Please take uh take good care of those folks. They're good to me and they're good to this industry. So, um Garrick uh on I love logistics and maybe some other people find it boring, but uh I and you have a massive operation, so things at scale always uh interest me very very much. So, like I say, just some quickfire stuff.

What uh substrate do you use?

I use cocoa chips.

You do use cocoa chips. And then what's like your your cleaning routine? I'm guessing obviously it must be spot cleaning. How often on full tubs? How often spot clean? What's that look like for you?

I I do full tub cleanings as needed. You know, sometimes they make some snakes are messier than others. Sometimes they can make a mess more than others. You know, uh so it's kind of based on the individual. You know, every time you pull a drawer out on cleaning day, you just don't know. And depending on what you see, that'll tell you what you need to do. Typically, in a typical week, um, you know, I'll spot clean. I'll um I'll add substrate as needed. um, you know, mist it down and then change waters and stuff. I do that once a week at least. You know, if I'm going through and showing up some of these snakes and I see a chunk of cocoa chips in the water or or poop in the cage or something like that, I'm compelled I obviously have to clean it. Yeah. But you know, with the number of snakes that I have, I can't check all of them multiple times a week. So, we we generally um I like to feed one day and then go through and water and clean the next day. So yeah, that way the all the snakes that poop an hour after they ate, you you go through the next day and you're cleaning that up so they're not sitting in it, you know, for the next few days before you get to that again. So yeah, it's it's more we have to in order to maintain a collection of this size, we're very structured on what we do in each day. Uh, you know, just for a real quick rundown on Mondays, um, I go to the shop in the morning. am watering and or I um I answer emails and get shipments together if I need to do that and then it's feeding the whole backs and then watering and cleaning the holdbacks. I do that the same day. Tuesdays um I go to the shop, I'm getting emails and all stuff done in the morning. In the afternoon, I'm feeding all the breeders. Wednesdays, all the breeders get watered and cleaned. And then on Wednesdays, all the babies, the the for sale babies all get fed. And then on Thursdays and Fridays, all the for sale babies get watered and clean. So that by the end of the by the end of the day Friday, everything is done for the week and I can feel good about not having to spend like all weekend in there doing that kind of stuff. I really try to keep my my my free time actual free time and not oh, I've got to, you know, do more work or whatever. So, you know, we just try to make we try to get it all done between Monday and Friday. Somebody has to be at the shop every day of the weekend to make sure that, you know, check the incubator to see if anything's hatching or um check females to see who's if anybody laid. You just just general uh you know, observations. Go through the rodent room, make sure there aren't any floods or anything like that. Make sure that there aren't any thermostat alarms going off or anything. Um, so we have somebody at the shop seven days a week, but usually on the weekends, um, I'm only like me or my employee Chris will only be there for like, you know, at at most like an hour on the weekends typically, unless you walk into the road room and there's water all over the floor, then you're going to be there for a while.

All day.

Yeah. But that never happens. So good.

Uh, I think people should like really think about that because we it's so easy as like trying to like the the grind culture and and this entrepreneur mindset which is important and it's something I embrace but finding time to be using systems and processes to guarantee that you have time for yourself I think is so important. And I've told people and even my wife, I don't want to I want to do this, but I don't want to be owned by it. If I'm going to be owned by something, I can make a whole lot more money and frankly, I can do it easier and I'm better at it. I could go run resorts and private golf clubs and make a ton more money if I'm going to be owned by something. So, that really rang true what you were saying and I'm glad you pointed that out. I'm glad that came up.

Um, okay. I've been waiting I think two and a half years to ask this question and I hope that you still use it but maybe you'll tell me if you why you don't use it. Uh I haven't checked your your videos recently, but I always remember as many colors of Post-it notes as you have in your logo being on all the tubs. Yeah. What do they mean? And how do you get them to not blow off with good air circulation in your facility?

I'll answer that first. Um I uh I use tape.

I was like, "Drive for air in the winter. I know you got to have something more than just postits on."

No, they'd be all over the floor. Yeah. No, I I use Post-its because, you know, back 25 years ago when I first started this, there weren't really any fancy labels or anything like it was it wasn't as easy to come up with stuff like that. Right. So, I just use Post-its and I just write the snake down, the ID number, the hatch date, the sex, and everything that I need on that Post-it and I'll tape that to the tub. And then based on where that Post-it is located on the tub, that'll tell me what the snake is eating. If it's on the left hand side up on the rim, then I know that snake is a new hatchling and it hasn't eaten yet. Once it's eaten, it goes to the center along the rim like the handle. And then once it's on frozen thod, it goes to the other side. And then once it's on the website, it goes down on the the the surf on the the main surface of the tub. So like I I've got a a system and it might not make sense to a lot of people and there's probably other ways to do it, but it allows me to look in my look at a hatchling rack and I know exactly what the status of every single snake is in there instantly. Yep. Um, you know, Post-its, they they do, you know, they can get wet when you're spraying, you know, spraying out tubs or whatever, you can, you know, so it's not the it's

Not the I would say I I could probably improve upon what I'm doing right now for the numbers that I have when you're, you know, when you walk into a into my hatching room and there's like 1,200 tubs in there. Um, not necessarily. Well, luckily right now they're not all full that you know haven't been hatching much lately. But um but there's it to me it was the it was the quickest and easiest way to do a labeling system for everything. But yeah, just I mean if you just put a post-it note on the top, it would it'd be gone. It would be gone, right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

So, no. And I I I had fun with the question, but I certainly wasn't making fun. I think it's something to be made fun of. Actually, it's it's ridiculous that I that I do it that way, but um but yeah, it's uh it it's easy for me and you know, everything's on the website anyway. So, like yeah, it's not not like I give out the post-it notes when I sell the snakes. Maybe somebody comes to the shop and buys something. Here's the post-it notes. No, I mean, we used them. We used color codes in kitchens. I mean each day of the week had its own like the it we called them day dots that it would say the day on it but they were the color. We didn't look at what the day was. We knew which order to go on that.

Um yeah I actually uh in leadership I one of my simplest like leadership lectures was keep it simple. We run 10,000 pound hunks of metal b blowing internal combustion and we put ourselves in the middle of them and we run on red, yellow, green and striped and dotted lines on roads like like colors and and symbols and signals are very very effective. So I wish postits actually came in more colors than they do. So the the different colors that I use is because I when I hatch babies out I try to keep the colors consistent with the base morph. Like all of my pides are light blue. All my albinos are bright yellow. I I keep it like that so that because ideally every rack in my hatching room would have all of the same base gene in that rack. Okay. But during the hatching season when I'm really filling up fast and there's a rack that's got a few open spots but not in this not the rack that I need it to be in, I'll put them wherever I can find. Right. Where Yeah. Where you got space. You got to use it. So then if I'm looking like say somebody say somebody buys a I don't know an albino leopard yellow belly I know right away okay start looking for the bright yellow postits and I can figure out like that all automatically reduces the number of tubs that I have to look at by like 75%.

Yeah. And then and then also because I'm the one feeding everything in that room every week I get to know where the snakes are. Nobody's messing with me and starts moving them around. I usually remember like, oh, that particular clown combo male is in rack number 12 because I just remember because I just I remember from watching it eat or, you know, seeing it feed or whatever. So, um, but the colors are that's mostly to help me to figure out like, you know, all the all the lavenders have a purple posted. All of the, you know, like I've got them all kind of figured out to where I can find them much easier. Otherwise, you walk into that room and you're looking for one particular snake. Yeah. Find it. I mean, I I And even with the color coding, sometimes I can gloss over a snake. Like, I've looked for like 15 minutes for uh like, you know, I shipped out a bunch of snakes today and I'm looking through and I'm like, where is this snake? Like, I know I put it in I have a reservation rack uh a couple racks actually where I put all the snakes that are sold when they sell. So, I know like when it's time to ship them, I know those are the only two racks that I need to look through. And sometimes even just with two racks, like I'm looking through like 80 or 90 babies and I still cannot find this particular snake. I know it's in there. So, um, yeah, I did anything to help me save time like that is what I do.

Man, thanks for humoring me on it and the insight. Um I did not I did not think it did it would be tied to the genes. That's an interesting angle on that. H I like it. Um Garrick, I promised to keep it under 90 minutes and we're knocking on that door right now. Thanks for uh I mean by fast. I know, man. We And that's a that's always a good sign. No dead air, all just uh content straight ahead. Um thanks for being here tonight. Where if people don't know where they can find you, what's your website? Where's the best place to find what you got available? How do they get in touch with you? All that good stuff.

Uh well, royalconstricdesigns.com is my website. Um everything that's on my website is also on Morph Market and vice versa. Um I'm actually able to with a couple clicks of uh my mouse, I'm able to upload everything from my website directly onto Morph Market. So um the the two sites are pretty much the same. When a snake sells off my website, it's automatically deleted those and I have to manually remove them from morph market unless I do like a bulk update. So my website is the best place to see the exact availability. Although mo I update my my more market page several times a week, so it's it's usually pretty accurate. Um otherwise on Instagram and Facebook, I'm royal constrictordesigns.com. I've got my own YouTube channel. I've been I've had a YouTube channel for probably I don't know close to 15 years now. Um and that's the Royal Constrictor. Um, so I've got lots of cool videos and you know just over if you go back and look at some of those older videos like wow, you know, like oh showing off these awesome new regular bananas that I got. But uh, no, it's it's uh, you know, pretty it's been very fun for me to have that channel. Um, so yeah, basically the Royal Constrictor on YouTube, royal constrictordesigns.com for website, Facebook and Instagram. Um, and I'm on Morph Market as well. Pretty easy to find if you're looking.

Yep. Yep. No, you're definitely easy to find. And uh Garrick, thank you so much. Like I said at the beginning of the show, you've always been uh generous with your insight and conversation and time. Uh I'd love to have you back. I hope that we don't wait two and a half years to do it again. Um sooner. I appreciate it so much. I will see you um I'll definitely see you at at Timley, I'm assuming. I don't know. I might make it out to Shamberg. We'll see. Uh if I go, I'll just be spectating. Um but uh I'll see you I'll see you around. And um thank you so much for being here tonight, G.

Yeah. Yeah, I haven't I haven't signed up for Shamburgg yet. I'm not sure about it. I do want to try to make it out to another cold blooded expo, though, too. And I used to do them all the time, and I just haven't haven't been. I think I've only been back once since we reopened after CO. Um, so yeah, I definitely would like to come out and uh see everybody out there. I do miss doing that show. Um, but yeah, hopefully I'll see you at a show before Tinley, but if not, I'll definitely see you there.

Yeah, I just from time and logistics, I've I haven't done much of the uh Wisconsin shows this year. Um yeah, some of the same stuff you were talking about once you start looking at what's selling where and where I can focus my energy and attention that's going to get the biggest um results and where I've built the brand and y where I'm not vending against Garrick De Meer across the room, you know, all of those things. And uh and I mean that and with all appreciation. Yeah. um you know so uh that Rothschild show um I either have to get a hotel especially for the winter ones it's such a long it's about four hours home and you know four and I don't remember exactly what months but January, February, March driving home um it can that could be pretty dangerous. Yeah. Um up here and people don't know what we're talking about. talking about sub-zero temperatures and icy dark roads with deer deer flying across the road. So, um, you know, things like that, I start going, maybe I got to look at other options. So, I haven't done those, but I might get back out there. Who knows?

Well, I mean, if you've got the Cold Blooded Expo and you've got some others in that area, too. I mean, that's that's pretty good. I mean, I'm in the same boat about going over to shows over there. Yeah, it's the same to come to come to the Cold Blooded. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Y Well, I'll see you soon either way. and Garrick as always. I appreciate it very very much. Thank you so much, man.

No problem. Thanks for having me on, Adam. All right, if you don't mind, stick around for just one second. And otherwise, audience, see you same time, same place uh next week. See you soon.

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