About Us
Personally I have been keeping reptiles as pets since I was five years old. Back then there was not an internet to help find information on these animals. With the help of my father we would go to the library to look for books that detailed the countries where the animals originated from. From those we would find temperature ranges and other tidbits of information. To this day that has been my method for learning about and keeping any type of pet. The internet is just an extension of that methodolgy now.
I am hands down a lover of chameleons. I have for the better part of four decades always had at least one chameleon in my home. However if you are reading this you are here regarding tree boas. So how did a chameleon keeper get into the hobby of brightly colored angry snakes?
In the late 80's and for most of the 90's I worked in the pet industry. I started when I was 13 just cleaning cages for store credit. Later I was managing entire pet stores. While purchasing reptiles for the store one day I came across a deep red amazon tree boa. I brought it back to the store for a customer who was into tree boas. The customer purchased it and kept for a year before having to move back east. He gave it to me on the condition I would keep it. So a chameleon guy now had a bright red angry snake in the house. Like all animals I own, I decided to breed it. I found what I thought to be the most ugly, weirdly colored, male you could find. I mean this thing was over 6' straight off the boat, had orange and yellow "blotches" and not one but three different types of black patterns (stripes, diamonds, and specks) down it's body. What a mess. In the end that 6' snake must have been about 10 years old when I got it, he died just back around 2012. I had that animal personally for 21 years and that would have put him around 30+? Knowing that only added to the respect I currently have for these animals knowing they will be a part of a keepers life that long.
The first few litters were simply astounding. The vivid reds and yellows. I even had a few paradox babies. I was even accused by some people of altering photos back then but when people had them in hand the animals spoke for themselves. I looked around and found that nearly nobody ever bothered to breed them let alone produce any thing this nice. So I kept at it. They were not hard to raise. They did not need even a portion of the time and care my chameleons need so to me they were as easy a pet as there was to keep. Eventually I got married. I was smart enough to find a wife who liked reptiles after seeing friends get married and then be told the animals had to go by the new spouse. My wife was fascinated by the variety of colors and we decided to try our hand at, well, random pairings to see what pops out. I'm not in this for money, it's not a business and never will be, however I found that selling a litter or two every other year pays for...you guessed it...more chameleons!
I like to hold back one or two animals of very select color and cross them later down the road. It takes almost 4 years to really get an animal to breeding size so this is a long term hobby, one I've been doing now for 25 years. In doing that I have gotten as far as F3 generation animals. I do purchase a choice import or captive bred animal now and then so none of my animals are inbred. When I describe an animal as F3 it means that I can trace part of their blood line all the way back to those original two I got back in the early 90's. I have some F1 blood lines as well since I added a few fresh ones back in 2009 and 2010 that just produced in 2014 for me. I'll be crossing some of those with my F3 holdbacks in about 4 more years. That's how my long term hobby goes. On a side note all my animals are sold as unsexed. At this size it is easy to hurt them and I'm not interested in worrying about the sex that much. It is the colors I always care about.
All questions and comments are welcomed.
I am hands down a lover of chameleons. I have for the better part of four decades always had at least one chameleon in my home. However if you are reading this you are here regarding tree boas. So how did a chameleon keeper get into the hobby of brightly colored angry snakes?
In the late 80's and for most of the 90's I worked in the pet industry. I started when I was 13 just cleaning cages for store credit. Later I was managing entire pet stores. While purchasing reptiles for the store one day I came across a deep red amazon tree boa. I brought it back to the store for a customer who was into tree boas. The customer purchased it and kept for a year before having to move back east. He gave it to me on the condition I would keep it. So a chameleon guy now had a bright red angry snake in the house. Like all animals I own, I decided to breed it. I found what I thought to be the most ugly, weirdly colored, male you could find. I mean this thing was over 6' straight off the boat, had orange and yellow "blotches" and not one but three different types of black patterns (stripes, diamonds, and specks) down it's body. What a mess. In the end that 6' snake must have been about 10 years old when I got it, he died just back around 2012. I had that animal personally for 21 years and that would have put him around 30+? Knowing that only added to the respect I currently have for these animals knowing they will be a part of a keepers life that long.
The first few litters were simply astounding. The vivid reds and yellows. I even had a few paradox babies. I was even accused by some people of altering photos back then but when people had them in hand the animals spoke for themselves. I looked around and found that nearly nobody ever bothered to breed them let alone produce any thing this nice. So I kept at it. They were not hard to raise. They did not need even a portion of the time and care my chameleons need so to me they were as easy a pet as there was to keep. Eventually I got married. I was smart enough to find a wife who liked reptiles after seeing friends get married and then be told the animals had to go by the new spouse. My wife was fascinated by the variety of colors and we decided to try our hand at, well, random pairings to see what pops out. I'm not in this for money, it's not a business and never will be, however I found that selling a litter or two every other year pays for...you guessed it...more chameleons!
I like to hold back one or two animals of very select color and cross them later down the road. It takes almost 4 years to really get an animal to breeding size so this is a long term hobby, one I've been doing now for 25 years. In doing that I have gotten as far as F3 generation animals. I do purchase a choice import or captive bred animal now and then so none of my animals are inbred. When I describe an animal as F3 it means that I can trace part of their blood line all the way back to those original two I got back in the early 90's. I have some F1 blood lines as well since I added a few fresh ones back in 2009 and 2010 that just produced in 2014 for me. I'll be crossing some of those with my F3 holdbacks in about 4 more years. That's how my long term hobby goes. On a side note all my animals are sold as unsexed. At this size it is easy to hurt them and I'm not interested in worrying about the sex that much. It is the colors I always care about.
All questions and comments are welcomed.