Reptile Chat with Justin Kobylka

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What's up, everybody? How are we doing? How are we doing, man? Another Wednesday, you know, here we are, coming around fast these days. Later on, the week's flying by, you know. Uh, there's been they uh, you know, there's been a lot of a lot of lives lately. The uh debate recently, we're we're here to tell you that hopefully we can be better than the debate. Um, we're free. We took a lot of Adderall earlier. Yeah, we'll fall asleep. We're ready to go. No. Yeah, thanks everybody for coming. We got Elite in the house. How we do it? Follow Morph 514. What's up? How are we doing? How are we doing? Another close race for first tonight, but somebody was like 76 minutes early, I think it was, so they win. Wow. Yeah, really, man. Nice. Nice.

Well, Joel, I think we should bring in our renowned guests tonight.

Yeah. Yes, we had a great guy tonight, right?

Yeah. Yeah. It's uh his time to shine, definitely.

Oh, I threw I screwed that up.

Uh, no, it's all good. My time described.

No, no, I got it. Okay. Yeah, it was it was my favorite shot. I apologize.

Justin, man, how we doing tonight?

Good. I'm gonna try to interrupt you at least as often as last night for the debates, 76 times, I think it was ridiculous.

Oh my gosh, that's wild.

Yeah. Yeah, I turned I stopped watching. It was tough. It was tough. So hopefully hopefully tonight won't be tough. Uh, I made a drinking game out of it, so yeah, it ended quickly for you then, I'm sure. Finish the bottle fast.

[Music]

Well, then lighter news, you know, call pythons, man. How's the season, man? How's everything going? You know, it's a weird weird time right now. Uh, what's what's business as usual uh, at Jake Falcon Reptiles?

Well, this is our first full season in this building. Um, we're loving it, and we're getting into the really fun part of the year now where just about every day is really cool clutches and uh, just a lot of excitement. It's a little bit of a big it's a really big high this time of year. We just come and run down every morning, check what's coming out of the incubator.

Yeah, right. Yeah, I bet. I bet. Yeah, this is going to be a great time of year.

Yeah, so you got your coffee, just opening up those tubs, you know, we're coming at some point.

Yeah, yeah. Here we go. That's what we live for. It's like we're farmers, and this is the harvest season, right?

They do. Right. We're getting put in all the work first. Hurricane didn't take us out. We survived the famine. Our crop.

Absolutely. Absolutely. Absolutely, man. That's that it's it's a it's a such a perfect analogy though, you know, it really is. You know, we it all year long, this is the time of year, you know, seasonally, you know, I know you know you probably get clutches year-round, but I bet a majority or this ish area, you know, like this time that's got to be, you know, similar to everybody else, so it's it's the reptile Christmas right now. I love it. And Instagram has changed that for us because now it's like every day there's like a new novel snake that somebody posts, and I'm just like, what? This is crazy. You know, I mean, how's that you know how how's doing that? How is consistently posting snakes that blows everybody's mind? How's how's that feel for you every year?

It's a lot of fun. It's a lot of pressure. I feel like that's right. I probably shouldn't I probably should not, but I feel like every year I've gotta be not only um I got I gotta meet the expectation of the internet, right? And then I also have to try to read it in some way because the problem is is if everybody's assumed I'm a way further ahead than what I am, and so I'm always showing stuff, and if you were like, but don't you already have those like three years ago? No, like this is really good right now, but people just, you know, they have this perception that it's hard to beat that.

Yeah, right. But um, anytime I see you post something, that's the immediate thought that I have is, well, wait a second, what isn't he showing?

Yeah, if he's showing us you and ruin it for me.

Right. Right now, thanks Troy from Best Dressed Balls is in the house. Uh, before we get into serious business, he does have a a semi-serious question, and he threw in a super chat, so thank you, Troy. Uh, Justin, if you were an attack team match, first Hulk Hogan and Macho Man, can only pick one teammate between Joel and Adam, who would it be?

You know, you gotta give it a try for asking a really serious question. I mean, I know who I would take.

[Laughter]

The shirt. Yeah, right. That I think gives me like plus five in uh my attack for uh yeah, it does. Yeah, yeah. You're a decorating tie. Yeah, some Dungeons and Dragons. Nah. Oh yeah. So yeah, thanks for that, Trey. Appreciate that. Appreciate that. We got I'm glad we got started off on uh how feeble I am again. So anyways, uh no, no, man, I appreciate you obviously coming in tonight. Chat obviously, thank you everybody for showing up. Um, been a lot of fun, and uh this is now your third time on uh I think on our channel now, so thank you again for continually coming back for us because I know this is uh it's kind of late for you. Uh, you're still at the shop. Looks awesome, by the way, backdrop.

Yeah, I'm always down here. So nice. Thank you.

Right. Okay. There you go. All right, you're not waking me up. We're giving you an excuse.

Yeah, there you go. But a full year now in the facility, is there anything that you've uh learned in this year that you would have done differently with the facility, like set up wise or anything?

Right. Honestly, not much. Um, it's third facility I've built now, um, and so I had a lot of opportunities to, you know, mix up the previous ones. The only thing I change about this one is I always think a little too small. I always do, and you can't you have to, you know, when I built this building, I thought like I was really making it way bigger than I could ever want and everything, but once you get into it, I'm always thinking like, well, I said we had an apartment up up above where I could, you know, put somebody if they came and visited for a weekend, you know, where I wish I built another, you know, 25 feet off the back so that if I ever wanted to breed some other species of towel and have room for doing it, monitoring. You're just trying to fix the problems that you had previously, so it's hard to think ahead like that, but rule of thumb is always make it way bigger than you think you need. Three times five things to do, and if it sits empty, no big deal. The cost to uh to add space at the beginning is far less than later.

Right. Right. Cool. Cool. But yeah, it's perfect for what I need. It's great. And as as far as like the heating and stuff like that goes, are you on like a fully smart system where you're tapped in with like your phone and you know?

Yeah, yeah. It's all it's all automated. We have um four four different units in this building, you know, one for snakes, one for lobby and and office areas, like work in the snake room temperatures, it's kind of right, then we have one for the rodents, and then we have one for like the big warehouse area and everything, so we have all these different systems going on, but yeah.

Yeah, that's pretty cool. Got a lot of uh automation too. That's awesome.

Yeah, for sure. Yeah, that's got to be a huge. Was your last facility this automated? Is this one?

No, not at all. No. Okay. Yeah, so this has to be a huge improvement then. For sure. This facility moving over. All right, a lot more people.

Oh yeah, they'll take my phone if anything's, you know, we have we have uh I can see your security cameras above my yeah over here. Okay, so I'm seeing my desk. I can see, you know, those at any time of the day and recording, you know, 60 days on the hard drive, and so it's just it's just nice, you know, a lot of security.

Yeah, definitely. Yeah, and that's got to be, you know, I feel like a top priority, especially with these animals.

Um, right. You know, especially with genetics, moving tubs, stuff like that, a lot of hidden recessives, it's nice to have some footage out there. That's for sure.

Yes. Yeah, we've used it. It's been good. So yeah, that's yeah, you know, the little those little things that uh make a huge difference in uh operation, you know, stuff like that that's I like I like learning uh nuts and bolts of that kind of stuff, you know.

Yeah, I like asking. Yeah, yeah, because I'm looking at all the automated piece thingies, you know, I just barely got in some temperature stuff that reports to the internet, like making little adjustments to make things easier, you know what I mean?

Yeah, efficient, you know. Yeah, yeah, cleans up your day, you know, that's that's what it's all about. I don't want to I don't want to hate my day, you know, when it's revolving around some snakes, you know, that's that would be a bummer. Little little mistakes, you know, everything's dependent on a few degrees, you know, and that's very right.

Right. There's a lot of a lot of ways it is. Even if even if you have a temperature spike of five degrees in the middle of your breeding season, you could could end up with 150 slugs, you know, or you know, the slugs or whatever.

Right. If if there was an incubator failure, god forbid, that's uh that would devastate that would devastate you if you you know, that's a big deal.

Yeah. [Laughter] You know, and you have extra layers if you if you can um get that as soon as you can.

Right. Yeah, definitely. Definitely. Incubator, that's a priority. That's uh often under under looked at, I feel like, you know, sensors and monitoring and fail-safes with the uh incubator, that's that's all your work all all the year.

Oh, that's the whole year. Right. You take the entirety of all your work, and it goes all into one little tiny room that has to be the right temperature where it doesn't work and like, right, you you cannot set this too much.

Yeah, right, man. Right, right. Yeah, something something to think about, ladies and gentlemen. That's something uh I feel like I under looked uh when I first got into this. I was freeing out of one of those like chicken hoova baiters or whatever that is, like the styrofoam, you know.

Yeah. Oh yeah, yeah. And I was like, this is crazy, you know, this is how this works, and then you know, progression obviously, but yeah, I did a pair of leopard gecko eggs like that that were a surprise. My wife and I got them, and all of a sudden we're like, what do we do? We need an incubator. Ran to like the store, of course, the chicken one's the only one they've got, so it's like, here we go, like, you know.

Yeah. There it is. And I learned in that experience never to use one of those for any eggs that I actually care about, so right. Yeah, scary, man. That's a scary device. This is a scary device, but you know, uh kind of kind of I guess, you know, everybody's here. We're getting a little warmed up. The uh I feel like the nuts and bolts are kind of what we were going to kind of dive into here in the beginning was about since we were talking about breeding is breeding weight on some of these females, and we were kind of joking about uh before the start of the show uh breeding consent. What is what is the ball python breeding consent? The age of attack.

Yeah, yeah. Can you can you shed some light into that's an often it's important that we talk about this in the age of me too. For sure. Right. That's important. Yeah, let's get this right. So, you know, I've always been kind of nonchalant to bad. I would say a lot of people, you know, put a lot of emphasis on size or wage, and I look at it as, you know, what's first of all, what's going on in the wild, which in the wild whenever a pair gets together, the male's probably going to try to breed her.

Yeah, right. Right. She's of any size at all. Doesn't he is not he's not putting her on a scale first or asking her age, so.

Right. You got to start with that in mind is that you know that in a while they're going to breed at weird times. Um, so the question would be is um, you know, is there is there an age that somehow hurts them, right? Because we're right or not, we're obviously trying to engineer this correctly, um, and based on my experience, I've not seen um if you breed a girl before already, it will right it'll happen. That's just what it comes down to. Nothing will happen, but she's not ready.

Okay. Okay. Right. Yeah, right. If her if her body's not mature, um, she won't burst and what have you, you know, you've not caused any you've not caused me trouble. Um, in fact, right, it's actually pretty amazing because you can get lots of girls to actually eat by just breeding them once before they're even ready. It's got nothing to do with actually getting a clutch. It's just right, hey, I'll put a male in there so they don't forget that biology exists and that they've got they've got to let vigilante eggs say there's something going on here. Right. As soon as you put a male right there, whether he breeds her or not, next thing she knows is slamming food again because she, you know, she wants to lay exactly, you know, and so I know a lot of people are gonna ask, so you're talking about the thousand-gram wall when you're talking about that kind of like because it's very common thousand to twelve hundred dollars. I don't care that early, but I will pair in the twelve hundred thirteen hundred twelve hundred, and like I said, the male 1 even a lot of times won't even breed her. A lot of times I'll throw a young male in there. I'm just trying to kind of get him going a little bit, and it's just the fact that they were together a lot took her back into feeding mode, and then when she gets a couple more hundred grams, she'll actually lay that season.

Right. Um, right. Yeah, shut there. She'll start putting down more food, right, which is the right rules about this. The reality is if she's eating hard and you breed her at 300 grams, she'll be 16 1700 grams by the time she lays.

Yeah, right. Because they put on so many meals between that first breeding and ovulation that they just haven't weighed, so it's like, right, I guess the question is, do you breathe 1500 grams or you give the clutch at 1500 grams? You know what's the rule? And my rule is there is no rules.

Right. Right. Right. Yeah. You kind of know your females.

Right. Exactly. And like you said, nature's got its own way of working it out, and your um the vlog or the blog that you put out, I like how you worded it basically of like the this is a thousand years of evolution, right, to protect the snake, so it's not going to break any rule that's going to purposefully kill it.

Right. Uh, harm it anyway or harm it or do anything like that.

Right. Yeah, if they if they died when they got bred too soon, there'd be no animals left alive in the wild.

Right. Right. Right. Right. Yeah, if that was one of their their uh situations or strategies that they used, it wouldn't be very functional. The thing is, yeah, the concern is that they're getting egg bound if they're too small, but in my experience, with the exception with only one exception, every egg-bound girl I've ever had has been a proven breeder.

Okay. Never a first-time breeder. Yeah, only once. Only once. She was on the small side, but for the most part, like every other small girl on her bridge, and I don't even know that was the reason for the one, but for the most part, egg binding happens in in very well-established proven breeders, and I don't know the reason necessarily, but it may have something to do with the clutches, and maybe they're stretched their overnights are stretched out a little bit. They get a little folding going on.

Right. That's my theory. I don't think it has anything to do with their size or the size of the clutch necessarily. Maybe the level of production.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. The consistency of the production. Have you seen a correlation to females that breed young and then later on go to egg to, you know, have uh egg binding or anything like that?

No. No. Yeah, I haven't seen that. Yeah, so I think it's an interesting topic and something that I think as you're new in the hobby, it's easy to get caught up on because you're looking yeah, you're 300-gram female, and you're like, right, every time I feed you like, what's this magic number?

Right. Right. Right. I can see that actually. Yeah, yeah, you know, right. So I think that's why it's often talked about and debated and you know, and it is a topic that unfortunately allows the keyboard warriors to be very strong in their opinions.

Yeah, I would say convictions on on specific weights. Yeah, and rather than, you know, I feel like the general rule is uh take care of your animal, you know, and it'll be all right. You know, it'll be all right. Feed them when they want to eat. They get up to, you know, pretty big. Put a male in theirs. Let nature take its course. If nature doesn't take this course and you probably should be too young, you know.

Right. It's hard. You're right, though. When people are first started, it is they're just watching this girl grow up, and they're just thinking when when can I make this happen? When can I make this happen?

Right. Right. Right. You know, I get that. I guess. Yeah, it's hard to look at that that way now because know you have some bunch of girls getting up to size, counting their weights on any of them. I don't even weigh them. I just don't ever weigh my girls. I just like what she looked pretty big, you know.

Yeah, yeah, right. Yeah, yeah. So she's off food right now. Maybe she wants to breed. Pair her up.

Right. Right. Then breathe and then feed. Yeah, and I I believe that there's a a significant role that feeding then plays too obviously in breeding, and I think that's maybe something a little overlooked too. Is there anything advice you have kind of on feeding scheduling or I mean, is there something that you'd consider?

I don't know if I had the answer to that, and something I've played around with a lot, so I thought the idea of just feeding them um once a week, one appropriate size meal through the season, um right, and I've had good success with that. I've also tried to just tell them like if they want if they're just crazy eating, I'm just gonna keep feeding them twice a week and give an extra meal here and there, whatever, just a lot more than they would.

Right. Right. Um, and I found mixed results honestly because I think generally speaking, they respond well to being fed hard during the breathing, right? But if you feed them too hard and you're not in the breeding season, you can just kick them off feed, and you can, you know, sacrifice all year.

Right. So I think it's like a weird balance.

Right. Balance. And I think you can also overfeed them to some females. If you overfeed them, they get so fat that they don't produce bottles.

Uh, yeah, they're over it. Right. Right. They're so healthy. Well, it's like an overweight human.

Right. Right. Right. Yeah. Anything unhealthy is not going to do as well right production-wise or whatever. Um, so my strategy more or less is just to feed them well throughout the year, but then when I start to breed them, if they've had a lock or two and they certainly want to eat hard, I'll start feeding them a little bit more, just those right, and uh but not not a ton, just, you know, a few extra meals here and there, so.

Their biology is like, hey, I can put weight on, I can fall, yes, I'm not going to be stuck without meals, and like sacrificing my health in order to lay. I think that's kind of the psychology of it. I mean, it's all right, but that's what their body is thinking; it's like, can I make this work? It's like, yeah, their body's like, yeah, I can make this work; we can do this; we have the reserves. Um, if you don't give those extra meals, they don't feed them, so right.

Yeah, interesting. Yeah, because I, I was listening to um, some older podcasts, and one of the biologists was really talking about stretching out the feeding; like, basically saying that even the once-a-week feeding schedule was too much. Right, he—they like to push out 10 days or even more sometimes, right? And they found out, like through the studies that they were doing with the sampling size, that those females produced a healthier—not necessarily larger—clutches, but at least the clutches they didn't produce those babies were turned on and going. And I don't know if your size was—yeah, maybe large enough, because that was another thing they followed up, basically saying like they needed more and more data to see what that kind of lines up to be. So I'd really like to know what that's like in the wild for them, you know, as far as what their feeding schedule is likely like.

Yeah, it'd be amazing to put like a tracker on one, right, and track it for a couple of years and know, you know, the real life cycle, right? Because I have to assume—yeah, go ahead. I wonder if, like, in the breeding season, is that it corresponds with the rainy season there, um, right in Africa? I spent a year—I spent a year in Benin, where they're from, when I was 19 years old. Um, it gets chilly; it's rainy for a whole season during the breeding season. I wonder if if the rain doesn't drive rodents into their holes even more and give them more feeding opportunities during that breeding season.

Right, right, which is part of the reason why they cold-seek, you know, in our tubs and everything, because they're trying to—you—but no, I'd love to know how they do in the wild. I think for me, practically, it has to be—I have to feed around a weekly schedule, because yeah, employees, we got schedules, we got stuff to do. If you make it every five days or every eight days, then I can't do it on a wheel, you know; I just screws everything up. Right, I gotta do it one day of the week, just for—just to make it practical.

Practical, right? Right, for the management of that. Yeah, interesting. Yeah, yeah, it's it's a fascinating topic of feeding, you know; you never understand how many different factors really go into uh, your breeding program and what you're really putting into your animals and stuff like that. Um, yeah, so it's it's always nice to hear from somebody who's uh, dealt with a lot of rats in his time uh, with what that's like, you know. You, you've dealt with more rats than snakes, really. So I'm a Hitler of rats.

Yeah, oh yeah, yeah, yeah. You, you're not loved; I'll tell you that [Laughter]. I had some other political joke I was gonna follow that up with, but we shall go back to more relevant questions. Uh, Brian Hamstra, uh, he had a great question, um, you know, with talking about feeding, getting females ready, uh, everything like that. So first to start this off, do you use an ultrasound on all of your females, and at what size would you throw in a male? Then so he does—that's like a chicken for the egg, and this is a question that's kind of plagued me since the moment I got into the industry, is understanding the correlation between breeding and follicles. Um, there's lots of breeders I talked to that have—they don't prepare anything until they get follicles, until they see it on the ultrasound. Okay, I've kind of tried that, and I was like, just appalled at my results. I felt it was very, very bad for me. Right, to me, I feel like almost all the girls grow follicles in response to being bred.

Yeah, that's just my experience. Yeah, and and I think so many people tell me otherwise; I just can't seem to replicate it in my own collection where I see follicles growing without breeding girls. Interesting. Yeah, I mean, sometimes a little bit, but I don't read them; I don't get a—I don't—if I—if I wait an extra month or two before I would breed, just let them go follow, because I don't get a clutch; that's just kind of how it works on my side. Right, right, a few exceptions. Um, so for me is—I, I pick when I want to breed my girls, and I go off their schedule. If they're laid before then, I have a schedule, boom; it's it's nice and easy. It's the ones that have never laid that I don't know, you know, what cycle they're on. I typically will just, you know, start them when they're at the weight and eating well or whatever and just put a pairing on it and see how their body responds. If they start eating extra hard, you know, they start really—I'm like, okay, well, you know, she's telling—pay attention.

Right, right, right. I'll wait, I'll wait a month, you know, 45 days, put the ultrasound on her, see what's going on. Oh, she's going a little follicles again. If I wait a month and she did nothing—like, there's nothing followed away—I was like, oh, wait another month to try, you know, I'm saying. I'll just—I'm just kind of letting them tell me, but I always start with what's going on. Right. Okay, you don't wait on a follicle. Right, never. Right. Yeah. Now then to kind of dive a little deeper into that question with a follow-up, at what point—like, follicles get up to what size for you before you either abandon it or go real hard with the male? Right, at what—what's that cut off of where you're like, all right, here's the real questions here; this is good stuff.

Yeah, yeah, this is where like the gut—gut of it really is, because you don't know what happened, right? How do you describe yourself? Right, right. They're just experiencing, trying; they're just trying things. Yeah, and you know, sometimes I try something; I'm like, man, I shouldn't have done that, and sometimes, you know, it works, but you don't—but you don't know if that's the reason why it worked. Right, right. Yeah, I'm always trying stuff; it's just—it's kind of the nature of my success, probably is—I'm always trying stuff and trying to understand if I do this a little different, what's the result? So um, usually I think you can stop breeding around two and a half. If I get one good ring at two and a half, probably stop until I ovulate, which is a long time; you know, that could probably be 45 to 60 days on average between the last pair and the two and a half to ovulation. Um, but sometimes stall out there; they'll stall. Right, right; maybe they need a—and a half, and they'll just sit there and sit there and sit there, and I try to monitor that and hit them again if they need it, you know. If I see them kind of just like—boys, they should be pushing on, but they're not—I'll try to put another pairing on them. Um, I found that if you just stop breeding at two and a half, there's probably a fifteen percent of your females will absorb—will not—not go right. Um, I don't even know what the percentage is; it depends on—it turns a lot of other factors, too: weather, temperature, stuff. Um, but if they stall out for very long, I think their body basically has like a little abort kind of signal it sends.

Yeah, and a couple—a couple different triggers; too much time can trigger it, and they think—you remember—remember in the wild, if they get caught off-season, it really messes them up, right? They can't be laying in the middle of, you know, hot season, you know what I'm saying? They can't be, you know, they need to see—they need to stay in season, and so if you're in your room and you've got a bunch of growth, big follicles, and your room—like I said, temperature spikes, even if it's just five degrees—they [Laughter]—far long—they'll ovulate and slug them out; that's—there's two kinds on board: absorption, are stuck out; slug is almost—when people get slugs, it's almost always because for some reason the female ovulated too quickly, and typically it's temperature. Gotcha. Right, it's a temperature; not usually—a lot of people think it's male-related; I don't—it's very, very rarely male-related. Um, so yeah, and just to clarify, yeah, 2.5 you were talking, you know, centimeters and not—not millimeters, right? That would be like 25 millimeters.

Yeah, just in centimeters. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, no, no. Yeah, just to make sure people can follow. So yeah, yeah, that was good. Yeah, thank you for that. Yeah, that was actually good. Yeah, I had no idea what we were talking about. I don't have the answers; it's just—it's just—I've just experienced a lot of different stuff, and my gut says you kind of—you kind of try to get around two and a half; you do—I try to get pairing it like before they—before they have follicles, usually around one and a half, usually around two and a half, approximately three pairings if everything goes great, and then it gets the perfect pair. If I ultrasound after a month after they're two and a half, if they've got to three—three and a half, they're probably pretty good, but they're stalling and like not seeing a lot of growth, I'm gonna try to hit then temperatures low in the room, try to coax them over the finish line, but yeah, yeah, see what you can do.

Right, right. Yeah, that's—that's some—that's—that's valuable information that can save a lot of people a lot of time, actually, like knowing that, you know, to be paying attention to that and then find your own like intuition about how it kind of works, too. Yeah, and I think the important message though, too, that we are hearing in a lot of what you're uh, explaining, Justin, is there's no hard set fast rule; learn, pay attention, listen to people, right, and experiences, especially somebody like you, Justin, who's had—I don't know—what, ten thousand clutches under your belt? I, I have no idea.

Yeah, at least—at least—right—to ten thousand babies. Yeah, or ten thousand babies, sorry. Yeah, thank you. Ten thousand clutches would be huge. Um, you know, so you're getting your hands literally on ten thousand babies; you have a lot of experience to provide us. Uh, yeah, there's some statistical—relevant statistics involved there. Yeah, but it's not a list of people who say they don't have all the answers; those people you want to listen to; they don't have the answers; those are than most knowledge. Yeah, 100. Anybody that tells you they've got all of the answers, you might wanna—you know—that back. Yeah, see how this one plays out over here. Yeah, this isn't right; this isn't right. But I think that kind of leads us into the next part of what we wanted to talk about if you guys want to shift gears a little bit, and yeah, I mean, we've talked about—now—now—now you've—we've talked about some uh, pairings, you know, so now we've—now we've gotten our eggs; we're starting to get to uh, the identification phase. Um, and right now, like the level of projects that are available, identification is starting to be, I feel like, really good estimates. I mean, how does—how do you—how do you handle, you know, making novel combos first of all, and then just dealing with, you know, seven or eight genes mixed in there? I mean, how—how does this go, you know, like where—where are we at with that? What's—what's our best methods?

It's definitely a hard time, you know, to be in, and the answers are—are not as forthcoming as it used to be. I actually don't even make that complicated combos compared to some people, because I—I mean, seven or eight genes in the combo—I, I don't typically do that. The problem is when you do seven or eight codes in a combo and they end up turning almost white and then—right—someone has to be a uh, a fortune teller or an ID on it, right? Yeah, mine typically aren't that bad because usually I'm going for more—I'm going for more difficult combos versus necessarily the number of beans. Right, so typically, you know, recessive—they're usually pretty easy to ID. Uh, yeah, but yeah, but the products are in—it can be a challenge, especially if you're working with pies that are high white or yeah, other stuff, right? Um, the answer to that, you know, it's really hard, and that from this point of view, there's two ways to look at it: there's there's the uh, the hobbyist point of view and there's the business point of view: like what is in it versus what are you—can you guarantee is in it?

Right, right, right, right, right. Because one of them's gonna cost you money. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Right, that's—that's the relevancy of it, you know, is that is a lot of times with—when these, you know, very complicated recessive with codom mixed in combos with—with, you know, some subtle genes—like the difference between vanilla and fire and, you know, yellow belly is obviously elusive—it's, you know, it's—it's a tough place, I feel like, for a lot of people just coming into the hobby, especially when you see that list on MorphMarket, you know. This is a wild time. Yeah, this is a while, and the reality is—is on MorphMarket, a lot of things are misidentified, and that's not an accusation because I know some of mine are misidentified; I just say that as a matter of fact; I don't even know which ones they are, right? But I know there's some.

Um, yeah, right, right. It's just how it is. So it's a tough time, I think, and the only way you can really—from a buyer's point of view—is just try to work with somebody who's reputable best you can, you know, somebody who—right—actually has enough experience to give a more educated guess than maybe some people. Um, right, but if I could probably—if I could bestow one thing upon this hobby right now, it would be for everyone just to come to the idea that I've had to come to a long time ago, which is—we just don't know on a lot of stuff, even if you think you know—even sure—we just gotta breed and find out. Um, right, and and I, you know, I get a lot of people asking me every day to identify their clutches, and I consider a little bit—it's a blessing to curse; I'm thankful that people trust me that much.

Right, right. I understand that it's hard if you—they don't have the experience; it's hard to hatch something and not know what they're looking at, and you don't have these babies, and they potentially want to sell them, but they don't even know what they are. Like, I can sympathize with that. Right, but some of the pairings are pretty boneheaded, you know, like they're making blue eyelashes with four genes, and they want me to identify it; like, yeah, sorry, the answers are not there; no one has the answers. Um, and I work so hard—my parents—to try to produce combos that are relatively straightforward to identify; I try not to make anything white and, you know, but I am in a combo; I tried to make things that are like mixed jeans that, you know, they all have their unique look, not overlapped too much, whatever, but then I'm cursed with it identifying everyone else's—anything with yellow belly in it; I'm like, I have no idea; you should probably talk to Justin. Like, yeah, right. The yellow pretty good, but it's hard; it's really hard, especially with all these other combos that are whitening up the sides so much; we don't even see belly—belly pattern.

Yeah, um, right. So you're looking for a little clues, you know, but—but the idea that—that we just don't know what's in stuff, and if you buy something—if you're gonna buy cutting edge, you're gonna likely buy something that is so cutting edge that you might have to—you might find there's no gene in there; you might find those missing a gene in there because the person who made it isn't necessarily—no, I've never seen it before. Right, that's the thing; sometimes you jump ahead; you hatch a baby that's well ahead of the—the missing link parts. Right, that's right; you haven't seen the ones in between; they think they have. Yeah, clusters—the fact that everybody wants to believe that they hit the combo they are wanting to hit. Right, absolutely. That has all the genes, and I—I do it all the time. Yeah, everybody tries really hard not to do it. Right, you see a baby come out, and you're like, oh, I hit it; I get—oh, it's got all jeans. Yeah, it certainly—it most probably doesn't—so much so. Right, so there's just a lot of different speculation going on, and I try to tell people like, look, most of my collection, I think I know what it all is, but I could be wrong, and it's all an experimentation; I'm single—came out looking for, right, you know. I never take it for granted that I know something. Um, right, and so when I get an unexpected result—the problem is if you start with a premise that's incorrect, you could build for years down the wrong path thinking that you have all this effort that you don't, and it's not easy to happen sometimes. Right, yeah, difficult. So you're—I think that has kind of gone out the window, too, like—so—so then I guess from—again—like, I like to reflect back on kind of the newer people coming into the hobby because I think this is a topic again that they—they dwell on a lot. So is it appropriate for somebody to ask for a 100% guarantee?

Right. Yeah, or how do you—like, as a seller, how do you talk about that with somebody? I think it's appropriate to ask; I, I don't think that many people would be—I don't know—again, the—the more willing they are to give the guarantee, the more I suspect their ID. Right, right. No, and that's important advice, right? You know what I mean? Like, I—like, actually almost most—almost the most straightforward thing, and I still say, look, I don't know; I don't know for a fact; I just think so. Um, and I know better than most people; you can't find people who know more than me about it, but still—for sure. Right. Um, hey, that doesn't mean—like—so—so I have—I have on my website now, basically, and I was actually following Aussie's lead on this a little bit. Um, basically, we just can't guarantee code anymore; right, it's gotten too complicated, it's—and it's the price of being so cutting edge that—right—if I was making regulars like everyone else, might be a lot easier, but it's just not that easy. So yeah, I guarantee hats, of course, because heads I can control.

Right, what's that? We know that—what's being passed on is there. Right. Yeah, yeah. With codoms, I just can't guarantee it, and it's not that I'm not willing to make something right, though, you know what I'm saying? Because I kind of am. Yeah, if I feel like someone really got burned by a mistake I made, then yeah, I'm going to do something about it; that doesn't mean I can guarantee like exactly what I'll do about it necessarily. Um, and my business point of view, you have to know what your liability is, you know what your exposure is, and uh, and so that's kind of the business side of it is trying to figure out that balance between taking care of customers, being right, making sure they're taking care—much you can—at the same time, not being held hostage so you can't even do business because you don't have the answers. That's right. Yeah, exactly. Right, there is—there's a decent—there's decent chance that the customer might get an extra gene or two that they didn't pay for, and no one ever tried to give me money back in that house. Right, everybody wants the money back though when they don't do it; it's the other way. So it's just—to me it's like—I try to be conservative in my ideas; I try—and I think that long term, the karma of being conservative pays off when people gain a trust factor. Yeah, so right. Yeah, definitely. Yeah, extra gene is way more valuable to a relationship down the road than saying it's there, not having it. Yeah, yeah, right. From a customer standpoint, being undersold on what I'm getting and winding up with more, I'm always going to be happier. Right, so yeah, like, you know, as the seller, taking that approach, but at the same time, right, you don't want—

To always be giving away stuff for free or undercutting, so approaching it from, "Hey, this is my best guess, and because what we're working with is going to command a higher price, you have to be willing to take that gamble with me," right type of thing, right? You know what I mean, right? And that's that wouldn't be an unacceptable answer for a breeder to give a seller if they were asking, "Kind of what's going on here," you know, right, right? So we're in a different age now, right?

Yeah, things are wild, man. Things are wild. It's crazy. Crazy what's out there right now.

Yeah, I love it.

Yeah, I love it. Joel and I were kind of talking about this topic a couple days ago, and and I and that's what I pointed out is that's part of the fun of what we're doing, actually.

Yeah, this is cool, you know.

Yeah, there is some money, some monetary uh exchanges taking place to get some stuff, but if you're dealing with people that are reputable, have been around for a while, um, you know, go along, it's fun, right? Try and experience the whole yeah, if good time. No, you know.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And keep it, keep it, and then you can breed it and uh ideate yourself, you know.

Yep. So having kind of dove into that little uh daunting morph market page, uh, there's a topic that I think is a cool, cool topic to talk about. It's actually kind of maybe even two topics; it is the Trick Hurricane and then the uh Mahogany Stranger, man.

Right. So we got we got some uh we got fight night here. Uh, maybe maybe you could uh I don't know, let's let's talk, let's talk uh Hurricane. You know what, what do you got? What do you got for us on that?

They're very similar. They're very similar. It's funny because I have a Trick and Hurricane, and would you be able to show us two examples right now when we talk about this, or would it take a while to get them? And if it would take a while because I don't even know if I have a regular again or a regular Trick, you know, they're mixed up into other genes, right?

Right, right. Okay, sorry, I just had that job.

Yeah, yeah. But across the board though, I would say they're highly similar. Okay, and I've seen a lot of variability out of Hurricane and a lot of variability out of Trick where you'll hatch amazing examples, and sometimes they're not great. Right? I look at it from a weird perspective. I think, I don't know, I'm very analytical in how I view these things, and so I look at myself, I look at it as, okay, what can we prove and what can we not prove?

That's right. Look at it, right, right. So it's impossible to prove the same. All you gotta do is you can prove their allelic. Could do that, um, could I mean, again, don't have to put a lot of work in to do so, and it'd be viable financially or otherwise to put that work in. You'd be six-year-old guys, I proved they're the same. I know everybody thought they were anyways, you know, look for what purpose with somebody, right, right? I look at it like that, like almost from a lawyer's perspective, like what can we prove? What we need, um, so we could prove that they're allelic. We could never prove they're the same. We could prove that they're so similar, there's a difference maybe, like right, butter and butter, and lesser. And again, it's all theoretical. Um, we could we could prove they're different easier because if we prove that you're not allelic, we'd know right there, right?

Yeah. Again, we're talking about a lot of work though. Someone's gonna have to go get a Trick, someone's gonna have to go get a Hurry, they're gonna have to bring together, okay.

Right. The combo is going to look like something, right? We don't know what, right? They're going to have to that combo through it to a normal, right? And see if they can all these breeds we're talking about is completely outside of the realm that people actually want to do with their time involved pythons, my opinion.

Right, right. I'm not interested, I'm interested in doing any of those pairings, um, yeah.

Okay. And so so those are kind of the two options, finding out, right, right? Um, and then yourself. Okay, if it's not worth it, then what are we arguing about? It's not worth it to find out necessarily, um, maybe we just enjoy them both and uh, right. And if you like, if you think Trick and Hurricane do the same thing, then work with the cheaper one, you know, right? If you, you know, the same thing with Mojave, if you think that Mahogany Stranger are going to be the same, then buy a Mahogany for crying out loud and be happy.

Right, right. Why does it matter? Why are you trying to kill her?

I love it. That's the answer I wanted to hear. Go get the snake you like, you know. If they're so similar that you can't tell the difference, then don't spend 10,000 bucks on one or whatever.

That's right now, um, right there, you know, that's another good piece of advice to do.

Yeah, that's just practice. That's just completely practical.

Right, um, so a Trick Hurricane, I think I love her. I love the Hurricane project. If I'm in it more deep, I'm deeper into it, um, I'm not going to bring them together because I want clarity in my pairing because I want to know that if they are allelic or they're not allelic, I don't know what line I'm working with, you know what I got.

Okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I like them both. They might end up having some very, very, very similar combos down the road where in the end I feel like it doesn't matter, but right now I'm just enjoying them.

Right. And I think that's the best you can do. I don't like the idea of people trying to co-opt a name for marketing reasons because that's where kind of that's where the rubber kind of meets the road on all this. If somebody says, well, I think they're the same based on what I see, basically his parents, whatever, so I'm just going to start calling mine by the other name. Right? To me, that's not ethically correct. Right? Just because somebody put a lot of work into it, they put a lot of work into specifically the Hurricane. The Trick never really had anybody who went to bat for it like Hans did Hurricane. The Trick maybe it would be right there with the Hurricane as far as everything goes if somebody had made it their sole purpose in life to to develop a project to make it amazing. Right? So Hans did that with the Hurricane, and he has reaped the rewards of that and has and as a result of people now they want to change their name to Hurricane for a reason, right? They want change for a reason. They're not changing their Hurricanes to Tricks, right? Hard work. And so to me, there's an ethical part of that where, listen, if you have Tricks, call them Tricks, and if people can do the same then they're going to buy your animals because they're so much cheaper, but don't co-opt the name that somebody put, you know, blood, sweat, and tears onto, correct, in order to sell your animals under their hard work. Is that that's yeah, about it.

Yeah, yeah. Same thing for Stranger, exactly the same for Mahogany. I want the information that'll be much easier to find out because the super on the uh Zuma on the Mahogany is so iconic and easy to tell that theoretically, I think that if you could prove a super Stranger had a black super or bring them together and got a black super, it'd be really easy to know it's at least allelic, right? But there's a lot of people out there who want to make it into a conspiracy like that, you know.

Right. Ires has been withholding this information. I've had some talks with him about it. He seems like an up guy. I also can't explain why it's taking this long to find a super. It makes no sense to me unless there isn't one.

Right. It could be a similar practical point of view like Leopard, like a Leopard super, right? If that if that is the case, then we know it's not all, then we know it's not, um, it's not, um, but my point is they wouldn't make it to a conspiracy. Well, all these people are getting ripped off, and they're all they are Hogan's. That's pure speculation, complete regulation, and I like to look at it as what would what would be wrong say we didn't find out what the um see we didn't find out if they're the same or not on the Mahogany and Stranger. Okay, what would happen? Well, the Stranger would slowly decrease in value just the same as it has been, right? And more people will get it really discreet, you're gonna go down until eventually it's around the same as the Mahogany, right?

Yep. No one just like any other work. No one was injured in that process, right? You know.

Right. Nobody was taking advantage of, right? Um, and if we find out they're the same, if we prove it, like prove it, not just speculate it, can prove it's the same, then Stranger will likely cost, correct, a lot down to uh Mahogany levels approximately.

You don't think you would? That's okay. Maybe a meeting in the middle, right? Where you would see a slight increase of Mahogany and a fall of Stranger a little, maybe, maybe, maybe a little bit.

Yeah, do you think that's gonna I don't like playing with people's money by making speculatory stuff like, especially on that, so you find out. Let's just find out and then and not take people, let's not take money out of people's pockets by by saying that you somehow have insight into whether or not they're the same when you don't.

Yeah, we need it.

Right, right. And again, if you like, you like Mahogany as much as Stranger, then yeah, stop trying to make the rest of us miserable.

Right. Yeah, you know, I think that's part of it is a lot of times, right? That the the person in that online conversation that's like, well, they're the same, they're not the same person, you know, five posts before that's like, I just bought a Stranger for x amount, right? And then you know, saying they're the same, right? Because that you're not promoting the the purchase into a project that you just went into, even if it's the line, right? That you paid more for at the end of the day, then you're rocking that, and you're you're going to market that animal for what you think it's worth and the hard work that went in to make it like that.

Right. Yeah, right. Yeah, I love it, you know. Yeah, I I I think the the thought too is there's a lot of times individuals that are, you know, on the internet saying this or that, whether it's, you know, Trick Hurricanes, Leopard, or Stranger Mahogany, a lot of times they're not even in the project themselves, any of them, you know? And so it's like, you know, just uh buy the projects you like and work the work the snakes you like, you know, that's that's kind of how them together.

Very much, in fact, I will try my best to breed a Mahogany to a Stranger this year, um, just to do my part, you know.

Yeah, just right. Absolutely. Tell the results, but in the meantime, you're not going to hear me spreading any any opinion about it other than, let's find out.

Right, right, right. Yeah. And that's another thing, too, is people weighing in on projects that they have no stake in. It almost seems like they're trying to light the firecracker in the crowded room and then close the door behind him, right? And yeah, see who's everybody jumped at everybody right now. People always people people lives, you know, people's investments at stake, and so I don't want to I don't get people in there.

Yes, right. It's all speculation, good people.

Yeah, yeah. Absolutely. Yep. Yeah, exactly. I have maybe a question since since you are working uh both lines, Hurricane and Trick, have you seen maybe a consistency in better Hurricanes more often pretty much or better Tricks more often? Like, is the gene prominently stronger in any line? Do you see any of that?

Maybe though there are other similarities in order to say, I don't know if I have made enough to be able to make that claim either way. Probably five or six clutches of Hurricanes, but they've been dominated by clowns, so you know, you're right, a lot of regular hats, you know? And I probably made four or five Tricks, um, and they've all had lots of the codons in there, so it's really that's hard to speculate on. I will say that that I have seen some Tricks that are very, very subtle. I've seen some Hurricanes that are very, very subtle, and I've seen excellent examples from both, so I can't say which one's more often than necessarily.

Okay. Right there you go. Yeah, that's it now. You know, I forgot to mention this, right? When we first started talking, what about Blitz? Is that the redheaded stepchild between between the two? Like looked at one really closely to see how how much it has the same kind of hallmarks or not?

Yeah, yeah. I see Vivid just put it in there. This all goes for Blitz.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, I think his word for it.

Yeah, well, yeah, I mean, Blitz was a little more West Coast before, yeah, Major. Well, it was Susan Hardy and then Major League right behind her, um, you know, and that's yeah, and again, it was just one of those projects that didn't get kind of the right marketing at the beginning and nobody like you were saying, fighting for it and, um, and I think that matters. All these genes need that, they need that, especially the subtle ones, because these subtle ones can turn out to be really good, but they need someone who's willing to put in the work long term and show how good they are, you know.

Right. Things like Squat Nose and and respect that, you know, I've been credited for bringing them back or whatever, but the reality is they've been around a long time. It's just they kind of fell to the second tier before the good combos were made, right? You know, before the title was shown and the price comes down. It comes to price comes out to a certain point. People are like, well, it's not just an animal anymore. I'm not going to overlook it. I know it doesn't make anything crazy, but then someone shows it does make something crazy, and the whole cycle beats, and all all morphs need that, they all do.

Right, right. Yeah, so that that question kind of arises in right now a little bit is would you, coming into the hobby, focus more of your time on finding a gene that maybe not a lot of people you think are working with and really, really work it or find a gene that you like and really, really work it, though it may be worked a lot, like Clown for instance. Obviously, there are a lot of plants out there and a lot of different ways you can go, um, you know, but it doesn't necessarily have to be a recessive. Let's just go maybe a codom, something like that. What do you what what do you think you would spend more your energy on?

I guess it depends on your budget, you know. If you're trying to come in and just break your way in on a really limited budget, then yeah, finding something that you feel like is is good but not um it's, you know, undervalued is probably the way to go. If you want to just really rock, you're going to need to send the money and get into where the game is happening and kind of thing, um, right? Because it's a little bit of a long shot to pick a morph like an underdog morph and hope and you know it does great.

Right. You're gonna probably be the one who has to make it that way. Yeah, or right, unless you can stumble onto something really great, um, that's tough because there's a lot of morphs. I think that maybe they're morphing but not a lot of dinkers. People put a lot of stock in dinkers when they're getting started, and they think that they're going to make some big progress, but right, an amount of development that you have to put into a new codon, especially to to make the market want it, is really significant. I think a great prime example of it would be Josh Jensen with the Acid. Yeah, um, because Josh had a snake with the athlete that looked a lot in everybody's opinion, including mine, looked a lot like a Leopard, um, so Josh Josh first, um, offered one to me years ago, um, I told him like, hey, I like it, I think it's great, but I could buy a Leopard for ten thousand, so why would I pay twenty-five thousand for an asset that looks like a Leopard? This that wasn't I made the wrong choice. I should I should have chosen, um, but the point is is that he in obscurity almost spent the next four years developing the Acid project into something that people did want when it was overlooked, um, right? And the amount of snakes that you have to hold back because you don't want the project out that you don't have the cat out of the bag before there's any value to it, right? Like you have to literally put animals on the shelf for years after years after years because you know that once you put the value in all the time with a lot of money, and if you start letting that creep, you know, flipping them out out the door for cheap when nobody cares, then when you do make it big, you're just competing with a hundred other people, and there's nothing to it already, right? It's a difficult, really difficult path, and it requires a level of um fortitude and longevity and stuff that few people have. I'm not even sure I could have done necessarily what he did.

Right, right. It's it's a hard path, right? Yeah, dedication, like you were saying. Very few dinkers ever really make it big, um, because people can walk that path for that many years, um, correctly.

Yeah, absolutely. Right, right. And that's, you know, when you were speaking earlier about the differences between lines, I feel like you kind of we're really talking about, you know, you're also buying these people's time when you're when you're investing in these projects, you know, um, and that maybe is why the value of the line is better though there are similarities to other snakes. The project is stronger, uh, buying the name, you're buying marketing, you're buying the reveal of the snake, the combos have been made, you're buying the hole into the hole.

Yeah, when you buy into a project in the name, it's not just right.

Right. The name's very important. Right? In the end, I guess you kind of know in the end because it'll end up happening when all when all prices are the same. Eventually, one will win out, one name will win, and you'll know, right? Which one the owner fought the hardest for. So which one won, Banana or Coral Glow?

I think Coral Glue. Banana very much. I still have Bananas because I refuse to rename something, right? I'm not hold out my name whatever is sold to me as I call it that, but um, yeah.

Yeah. So real quick, too. Acid, Acid Confusion, uh, similar, similar, same seems to be the same. Okay? And I would say there's some evidence to that more than just looks, um, there's evidence that there doesn't seem to be a super form of each that's visual. That would be a pretty big coincidence if they weren't the same.

Acid Confusion, no super, right? That is so weird.

Yeah, and yet not really.

Yeah, not a Leopard, right? I was confident that Leopard and Confusion was going to be allelic.

Me too. Yeah, I thought there I thought you put them together, you made me tell a super, but it's gonna be allelic. Like boom and uh the first pairing I ever did, um, where I proved it wasn't, and I was like, mind blown, you know, all about the table, right? Acid and Confusion are not even genetically similar.

All right. Yeah, yeah. Crazy. That's crazy to learn. That's what I'm saying, like people start going off at this Confusion Mahogany. I'm like, you know nothing. Let's find out.

Yeah, do the work. Yeah, that's the fun part. That's gotta be like a meme somewhere. We gotta clip that. You know nothing. That's gonna be like that's gonna go all over the place. [Laughter]

You're right, man. This is complicated, and it takes so much time, you know. There's a ton of time involved with this between breeding and eggs and, you know, the whole thing.

Yeah, right. It's crazy, but it is tough. It's well, like I kind of like it this like uh bonsai tree growing kind of, I mean, obviously these are living animals. I mean, I know trees are living and all of that, so there's a difference, but the amount of time it kind of takes a bonsai artist to develop

A good tree is about the time that we're looking at to get our projects started. And in a decade, you have a really nice tree, and then a decade you've got a really nice project. There's kind of, yeah, yeah, you do 10 years or something; you can make some crazy stuff. You know, I don't, you know, I don't care what you're working with. So this is a patient's thing, right? Like, as much as fast as we want it to be, you know, this is a patient's thing. So yeah, right. Um, it's it's cool. We did, we'd have a question come in uh earlier; I think it was the difference um between Arroyo and Rio. I believe it was not the difference but the thoughts on that project.

Yeah, yeah. We had a super chat come in from Tom West. Thank you, Tom. So, you know, I'm not in a project at all. Um, oh, I was wondering, I was going to ask you, you have nothing? Oh, interesting. Wow, okay. Wow. Only because I have a hard time, I have a hard time like I see the real combos, which yeah, it's it's almost a recessive; it's not easy in my opinion. Been debate, right, on both sides.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. There's a lot of, there's a lot of really subtle code ons, you know, for sure. Um, but no, I just I think they're cool. I think Dan Wolf made the first Rio. I think everybody lost their mind about it, but then yeah, see there's an example of a guy who developed a project but then kind of left it, you know, and true, it kind of got thrown out to the wind and to a bunch of people. And it's not in his defense; I think he was retiring at the pinnacle of that project; he was just kind of like, "I'm done, guys. I'm buying the motor home; I'm out. I'm not gonna, I don't" won't bash him too hard, but but it didn't do the projecting services, so it kind of it kind of got left and you got left to a bunch of to a bunch of different people who are picking up the piece, you know, right, trying to reinvent it but with no clear um, you know, that's just no direction for it.

Yeah, yeah, right, right. Because a bunch of key animals went out to a bunch of people, which didn't leave one person a clear direction on how to take it, you know, right. And then too many cooks in a kitchen always ruins the meal at the end of the night, you know what I mean? And that was kind of, yeah, yeah. I mean, there's lots of potential; it's just going to need somebody to, you know, pick it up. And unfortunately, a lot of required audience um, you have to have to be able to show people what you've made or somehow figure that out, and that's the marketing for you, you know.

Yeah, it takes a lot of work; it's more people have to see it, a lot of work. Right, you get it out there to people. Yeah, but usually all these things really require is one crazy combo, one really crazy combo. Like for me, the Pompeii made the Red Stripe project.

Right, right, right. Oh yeah, and I absolutely, I made people, you know, I don't know if I've said this before, but I made probably 10 clown Redshirt Crown combos before the Pompeii, but I didn't want to show any; I didn't feel like I felt like it would be it would stumble out of the gate if I showed those, right? I made the pump, right? Like, all right, this is the one that that makes that makes everybody want it.

Um, yeah, you get, and you kind of have to work, we work for develop that one thing, whether it be the Rio clown or the, you know, or the whatever, you know, but whatever, right? Whatever it may be.

Yeah, right, right. You should show that animal like, "What we gotta have this; we can make it the other way; we gotta have that; this is crazy; to get it now." So that kind of goes into your facility statement earlier of where you end up underestimating, right, a little because you're working with Red Stripe; you're not producing anything yet that you're like, "Okay, this is it." Like, how many holdbacks did you have from the Red Stripe project before you hit the Pompeii? Did you have a bunch, or I had a whole—well, it wasn't just Red Stripes in general; it's a Redshirt clown specifically because a lot of people have that, that's what I mean. Yeah, that year I made probably 10 Redstone clown clutches before the Pompeii one, and all of them—it's interesting, this is interesting; I was kind of excited about them, but but it wasn't to the Pompeii; I hit it, and you know, I could just as easily have missed on that animal and spent a whole another year doing it, you know.

Um, right. Would you have kept going? I don't know; I probably would have; I think I probably would have just gone ahead and revealed what I had if I missed it. Yeah, just revealed what I had, and you know, it wouldn't have it wouldn't have been as big a deal as it ended up being.

Um, yeah, right. Interesting reflection, I guess. Yeah, you can't really write that script again, you know. Um, yeah, but but I probably had, you know, a couple dozen Red Stripe clown combos on the shelf, you know, at that point, but once I made the palm paint, then I could sell them; they sold themselves, you know, it's super easy.

Right, right. So I think a lot of this is a lot of showmanship and marketing; it kind of goes into all this and just and some some people that comes more naturally than others. Um, but you have to think about it from the outside perspective: is how can I put the best spin on this project? How can I? Because when you put value into projects, you're not just doing it for yourself; you're doing it for all the people who already are working on that project, which usually there's others who are already like halfway there; they're already going to get a big benefit from you doing that; there's all the customers who buy into the project; the higher you can spend it at the beginning, the more everybody's going to do coming down as it becomes more common again.

Right, right. And so I I I believe in like giving the animals every bit of what they do as much as you can be creative, um, you know, we all benefit all, you know, right. So right, yeah, yeah. And I think that goes to even establishing new projects, I suppose, right? Like, don't come out of the gate too soon; you may end up jeopardizing the whole project, you know, or should have been something back incredible.

Yeah, right, right, right. Exactly. You get what, one first impression; that's it; that's how they call it a first impression; that's it. Yeah, yeah. And that can be pivotal for an entire project, you know, stuff like that. So speaking of, I'll scoop you guys here; we uh we're doing the redhead project.

Oh yeah, surveilling the redheaded clown in October. Okay, the next Red Stripe clown. So nice, right? It's really good. Yeah, are you doing a premiere? Uh, one second. Yeah, that was a lot ahead of Tim, but Tinley of course is not happening, so now it's like gotta pick a random day; it feels kind of wrong.

Yeah, um, right, but I'm going to um I'm kind of waiting on one more clutch to come out, and um but it's a really neat project; I'm excited about it.

Awesome. Yeah, there's been a lot of chatter uh about Red Head; there's been a lot of people ahead, I mean, yeah, yeah. Is there any anything else you want to want to tell us other than just buy them now? Um, you know, it's just I mean, it's just it's it's a gene that that it's pretty subtle; it's really cool; it's pretty subtle; there's no known super yet. Um, I've had two full egg collectors and not managed to get one, but very small sample size. Um, right, I managed to get a super yet, but I think it's out there; it's it's kind of subtle, but when you put it the right stuff and there's one gene that I found this year that's really common that just unlocks it like, "Oh man, the combination is like," you know, crazy.

Yeah, I've never ever seen. Okay, so cool. So it took a while, but you know, I've had the gene for five years now or so; took a while. We found we found the gene this year; we found a great and clown; fantastic and clown; and then now I'm waiting on the clutch to find out if I can get clown plus that gene that makes it go boom in in one animal; I'm hoping to get that before the reveal.

Sweet. Little more obscure projects and things uh we did have a question coming from Elegant and wanting to know some more details about the Mario gene. I know I've watched your price list and seen some animals come in come out. What do you think it works well with? What are you doing with it? So Mario is a very unique project in the sense that it was misunderstood from the beginning. The gentleman who had it, and I cannot I can't think of his name on top of my head right now, so sorry in advance for that, but he originated the project; he received an animal he lied that was, you know, proved to be code. Um, he lined bread and made these crazy late Mario; he called Super Marios. Okay, so they look like Mario's, but they look like desert ghosts; they're incredible. Right, and he ended up selling me that project; he got into a situation where he needed to sell his collection; he had some project news really good to deal with; great, great guy. Um, and I ended up with the original pair of Marios that made those supers, and I got the three supers that came out of it.

Oh wow, okay. And so I thought, "Man, this is this could be the next big thing because we have a code on here," which the super form looks like a desert ghost; if we can have a coat on desert ghosts, how do your life be, you know?

Right, right. And it looked, in a way, they looked better than a desert ghost; they looked incredible. Um, they were looking like adult desert ghosts as babies, more or less. Right, much much faster. Um, and so I reproduced them next year, but then last year I'm like, "Well, this is a little TV to be true," and I ended up breeding one of the supers to a desert ghost to prove that they are desert ghosts. The soup, they weren't superb after all; coincidence that the code that he worked with, if you remember back way back in the day, remember the Josie ball? Yeah, and and Joe Ellis, I think he made the super joke—no, he made the uh the Ultra Josie, remember that?

Yes. Yep. The Ultra Josie. Yeah, yes. That almost almost almost for sure was identical project.

Interesting. Okay, yeah. Um, because the Josie was doing the same thing, kind of like a very nice enhancer.

Right, right. Very nice enhancer. Yeah, it looked basically identical to Mario; the OG looks like a Mario with the jungle Walmart looks like basically to the Mario; the only difference is the jungle Walmart seems to have a different super.

Oh, okay. Is it more pattern influencing the—no, I would say no; I would say they are equally in a Mario look identical; I couldn't tell you the difference between them.

Okay, right. And I have a lot of jungle Walmas from previous; I've been really careful to keep the Marios and them separate because you'd never be able to unsub with them, I don't think. But the super of the jungle Walmart is the puzzle back, and it's almost a tri-strike looking animal; it's really unique.

Right. And it's really pretty, but the Mario does not have a super like that; the Mario has a super that is mostly just a very reduced pattern version of the same thing that now the stripe the striping and everything, so it's like a different gene, but you would never tell them apart side by side in a single gene form. Um, anyhow, that's that's that's super interesting story, but it's a very interesting project. I love that the Mario desert ghosts, hands down; they blow away any desert combo I have in here, even if it's multi gene for the most part, because they look like xanthe desert ghosts and adults besides; they look like examples, and they got a crazy pattern and crazy white flames on the side, and they're just amazing. So yeah, right. I undervalued that project for a little bit when I found out it was the same a desert ghost; I'm like, "Oh well, they're just just a ghost with one coat on." No, they're they're pretty significant though for the future making cool stuff, I think, for that. Very cool. So maybe we'll finally get that in the, you know, the kodam like the desert like not desert ghost but desert was meant to be kind of like, you know, yeah, cause we've all been chasing that that coat on that it was such a gift back in the day, and we've never been able to find another one that does that.

Yeah, that was a big bubble that was burst. Uh, [Laughter] it's cool though. Yep, we did get out of the wild. What's that? I said that is a wild story about the Mario; that's crazy; I mean, that's that's that's wild, man; would have never known that; that's that's cool to know.

Yeah, for sure. It wasn't like desert goes [Laughter] but yeah, Adam, you're gonna say uh Ryan? Yeah, yeah. Brian Boyd uh Bode sent in a super chat, so thank you, Brian. Um, what percent of babies do you keep as holdbacks per year? Do you do you have something set? It's not it's not there's no rule, but I would say the average has been I'm about 10, okay. I'd like to get lower. Okay, that's a lot of babies because I probably hatch about I would say a little less than ten percent; catch about twelve hundred babies a year on average, um, and uh ten percent she just has a I'd like to keep it, you know, maybe 80 to 100 babies hold backs if possible, but it's hard, right? It's hard to use; don't worry about what you're putting out again like you're talking about before like what you're putting out into the wild before before you really developed a project; you got to hold a lot of stuff back for that reason alone.

Yeah, right. It's hard. Yeah, so that's a crazy crazy thing to think about, you know, to consider when you're doing this because I know a lot of guys that try and keep smaller numbers will kind of turn and burn it, you know what I mean? They have a female drop eggs, and they go, "Okay, this clutch is going to go for me; I know at least mom will be in there if not more females being sold right now, like gone, right? Yeah, adult female, right? Like a lot like I know quite a few guys that'll run their whole collection kind of like that depending on what the female is, but like that's fine if you're doing codoms, but if you're doing recessives, there's there's no strategy that works on that really, right? Because that mom is a foundation and can help even build further, right? So you wouldn't write all your running is is math problems essentially; it's all you're doing is solving math problems, and um a double head girl again; I think well, I have a visual to uh replace it with. Yeah, it just you need you need the chances; you need the chances; the odds are too long uh right, and the numbers are two are too narrow, so so why I do sell the double I do sell I do sell double heads, but it's a hard choice; it's not it's not like, "Oh, I'm gonna make another one; just get rid of this." Not like that at all.

Right, right. I have to know that I have a certain number of visual heads on the shelf that are producing to where I won't even really miss this girl anymore; my numbers are being are being fixed by another female, not just, "Oh, I got I got another one," you know.

Right, yeah, yeah, yeah. Makes sense. Yeah, that's that's that's, you know, that's a that's a good way to look at it though uh just on the chance, you know, you you see it as well; this is a double head; well, no, it's still another chance; it's a whole clutch of chances uh that you're really actually getting out of that double hat uh over the visual a visual I guess, you know, trading one if you go triple head or quad head, you're on to a whole nother realm of difficulty chances and long term. Yeah, we're keeping our females a lot longer in the future than we have in the past in the past. Right. I don't think it'll be as such a turn and burn.

Yeah, yeah, right, right. And and so looking at the recessives out there, especially the ones that have a strong foundation in the market; clown obviously, pied, hypo, exantic, um, do you think the market's in a place where we can as breeders no longer choose, "Well, I have a pied project; I have a clown project; no, I need a clown pied project or I need clown hypo project," right? Like, yeah, you know.

Yeah, I love I love this interview so far; this has been like my favorite; you get something really fun. I'll be honest with you; this is my favorite interview; everything we're done; all right, I'm addressing the right questions that this is a question that I wrestle with constantly in my egg, you know.

Yeah, right, right. How to look at this for the future, right, and not be caught up and things have been in the past to where you lose sight of where things are headed, you know. Um, right, I agree with you completely; it's just it's just gotten exponentially more complicated and managing a cutting-edge project now and five years from now; it's getting exponentially more difficult than it is was five years ago.

Right, right. Exponentially, and it's gonna be it's no laughing matters to me a big difference. Um, and so every day I'm thinking, "Man, do I have what it takes? Do I, you know, my necessary changes? Am I thinking of these in the right way?"

Um, right. Because you're right; it's all these projects now; we used to think about, "Yeah, I got clowns; I got I got 12 clown coaches this year; five questions." Everything is a jumble, and I'm looking at I'm going through my racks; I'm like, "Okay, I got 10 quad heads here, but there are quads for all different quads; like none of them are compatible with each other; you get to match; really they're really forward," and so there's some overlap between certain ones; you're like, "Well, maybe I could sacrifice making this genius those those two together," and then you're getting past heads, and it's just running, and then the numbers you need again; the numbers you need to run a project well is significantly higher than it used to be; so to stay at the cutting edge, it's gonna it starts to become more difficult for the smaller keeper.

Right. Put this way: see a cutting edge in multiple projects; his guns are more difficult, right? Right. Because I'm looking at like the numbers I have pulled back in order to stay relevant in a lot of different areas is going to become higher every year than it is now; yeah, then it is a little bit scary, you know, I mean, something about the sacrifice would be like, "I'm just gonna these are my signatures, and I'm just gonna—" but I like yeah, you're gonna have everything, you know; I wanna I always wanna keep leading the charge wherever I can, right? So because you also never know; I mean, you never know when a gene pops where that right combo comes out and there's like, "Oh wow, okay, perfect." I think it finds it, so right.

Yeah, or even be just geared enough to quickly shift if you need to, right? It's a about that pivot; it's extremely um financially good to be second place on a lot of stuff sometimes because you find out what works and you just hit the mature position; you gotta be in position; right; person who's in first place and wastes a lot of time looking at a lot of dead ends first before they finally yeah, taking place just right there right there.

Right, right. Yeah, yeah. The the innovator; you make the most money uh I think like statistically and stuff like that; finding the product and then improving the product uh sure. Yeah, you know. Yeah, that's why clown does so well because uh we have a similar characteristic that does great in a lot of things; it kind of brings us back to the original uh morph that we like, but it improves, you know, and like well, it's it's like having a new species on hard mode really.

Right, right. Thank you; we'll notice these because it's completely different than all python; there's really no similarities in a clown or even python; it's compatible with great ways so much stuff and to put all.

Our, our Python combos. Into it. It is doing it on hard mode because you're putting two recessives on top of that. Yeah, yeah. And I think so. There's different waves of clowns. This is a very interesting topic. I feel like different. We start with clown, right? Then pastel clown became the thing that was like, I consider that first wave, pastel killer clown. Everybody's like, passed out killer players, right? Yeah. Then it died off. No one cared about clowns for about two years, right? Right. Um, then, then I made the fire clown and the pa in the firefly clown that started bringing me back a little bit, right? And we kind of went that realm of we're more neon, more pretty. Right? Right. Then spot nose is what, like just stratosphere, you know? Right. Yeah. You got spotty Batman, and suddenly, you know, we were in that another level. Clowns were the hottest thing ever. So that was phase two, in my opinion. That's phase two. We're in Facebook right now, which is we're, we're making clowns with spot nose and yellow baby jeans. They're blowing up on the sides. We're making, we're going the opposite of reduction. We're going crazy clowns. Much better as you can get. Blowing up red sides. Much, much color. Just, just that's where we're at, right? That's. And I feel like we're, we're pretty far down that road. We might start to feel like we're getting into dimension returns.

Um, yeah. Clean feeling clouds are coming back next. Yeah. Okay. Of course, all of our current combos, we can make them even harder. Put them with desert ghosts. Make them all better. Right. So that's right. Right. Endless, endless fruitless exploration that we can, we're never going to get to the end of that. Really, we might get to that point where we feel like we've done enough, or we're never going to get to the end of it. Um, but the next thing is, in my opinion, is the G-strike strike clown. Right? That, to me, is a whole nother realm of potential pattern that is different than every previous generation of clown we've made so far. Yeah, it's insane. So, and we haven't even scratched the surface. Ozzy made a couple killer animals from that party this year, right? Um, and uh, so is Garrick De Meyer. Um, I'm working that project really hard to also leave my mark on it in the near future. Right there. It's gonna take many years to develop that to where it couldn't be as well. So there you guys go. You got an exclusive into the future. Wait for it. Maybe it's coming right next stage clown. You know, this is something Adam and I, we had talked about on the phone, like, okay, we need to talk about like, we, we get where clowns at, but where, where is clown gonna be? You know, where, where is it gonna be? So this is, this is crazy to hear. You know, there's, it does do well. It does well. I haven't seen a gene it doesn't do well in, you know. So it's give Shane some credit. He's been saying G-stripe clowns are the future before anybody else. He's first tonight. All right, we'll give him first today. Desert ghostly striped clowns. Put it all together. Oh man, I'm sorry Shane, you've been trumped already. [Laughter] No, I like it. Well, Jesse, you know, it's been an hour and a half, uh, you know, we try to, try to be a little cognitive of everybody's time. I know it's getting late there, and you're a busy guy, obviously hatching out, uh, what is it? 200 plus clutches this year, uh, on on your deck? Yeah, we're at 2010, I think, and we're winding down pretty hard, so it won't be too much. Right. But yeah, yeah. 209, man, that's, that's a couple, that's a couple. Yeah, yeah. You know, so we saw, so looking forward to it. Yeah, that's right. Yeah, right. We, you know, we really do appreciate you coming on here. Um, we do have some random different lightning round questions that we're gonna, we're gonna walk you through really quick. Um, so kicking this off, what is, uh, what do you think your spirit animal would be? You're asking an extremely analytical person. You're going to sit back, you're going to meditate. Okay, a human being is okay. Yeah, you're right where you need to be, man. You're right. I'm living my best life, man. You are, you are right. Yeah. Okay, we nailed that down.

Um, okay, so then as a human being, what, what's a, what's a pet peeve that annoys you the most? Oh boy, on a daily basis. Have to be something to do with ball pythons and sometimes the interactions I have. Um, maybe assertive in Thailand. Some people have, um, oh, I thought the ball pythons had an entitlement. I'm like, yeah, yeah. [Laughter] There you go. That's a good one. Okay, I like that. No entitlement people. They feel like you're, you're entitled. They're entitled to your time because they know you off the internet, right? Right. You know, and I, it's not that I, I've always been kind of known as the guy who responds to every message and everything. That's a tough position to be in because I kind of having to give that up a little bit just in order to survive. Right, right. You know, and again, keep some semblance of sanity. But uh, yeah, that's, I mean, a lot of people are really, really, really nice. There's just a few that aren't. So, yeah, yeah, yeah. I like that. That's, that's the reason. And the caverns of the world. That's the whole purpose of the Karen and Kevin. They don't even know. Right. Okay, so if you, uh, travel back in time, when, when do you think you'd go? Um, 1776. Sometime like the revolutionary, like the founding of the country. I think it'd be really interesting. It's very rare. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Well, right afterwards, you know, 1779. I don't know. Just, it's just a time of, you know, obviously a lot, a lot wrong with that age too, but you could say about any age you go back, a lot wrong ones. Well, including, but uh, but no, I look back at that, I think, well, you know, the, the amount of potential that just flowing through the air, yeah, for what's, what's coming, and it's trying to, uh, architect something that's not been done, you know? Right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Crazy, crazy. Yeah. 1796. Alex is in the house tonight, so right. Yeah. 76 Exotics. It's like Outlander. Have you guys watched that show? Yeah, yeah. A little bit. Yeah. Uh, the later seasons, they get into revolutionary periods, and I'm like, holy cow, man, if you knew what you know today, going back then. Right, right, right. Yeah, crazy man, crazy. Yeah. It's a cool thought experiment, traveling in time. I, uh, I go down that road, I dabble, I dabble with that from time to time. It's always fun. Um, but we've already asked you, button or fly, uh, do you want to remind everybody, are your jeans a button jean or a zipper fly? Uh, really? Yeah, I knew it, I knew it. Uh, so Justin's team zipper as usual. Okay. Um, no, but Justin, man, thank you. It's, uh, this has been awesome. It's been really fun tonight. We had a great turnout. Um, it's been a lot of people, a lot of people in chat. We want to thank you all so much. We do apologize if we have missed any questions. We definitely do our best. If you want to comment on this video after, uh, we'll do our best to try and relay those suggestions. You guys, you guys nailed it though, really. I feel like, I feel like you hit on a lot of important topics that get overlooked. Um, yeah, yeah. Real, uh, the real meat and potatoes. A lot of stuff we're like, we'll, you know, miss it, go around the surface. So all right, a lot of fun. I enjoyed it. Yeah, I love, you know, going through the thought exercises with you as well. Like, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's what we like. We like getting you going like that. That's cool. Yeah, yeah. We like that. But you know, all right. Yeah. Well, thank you all chat, obviously, uh, you know, we'll be here next Wednesday talking about this interview, I'm sure for a while. Um, Justin, really truly appreciate your time, man. Um, yeah, until next time, we'll have to have you on again, but uh, good night everybody. See you. Awesome. See.