Reptile Fight Club - Obligations of Ethical Reptile Breeding w/ Steven Kush

Episode Date: February 6, 2026

In this episode, Justin and Rob discuss Obligations of Ethical Reptile Breeding w/ Steven Kush.Who will win? You decide. Reptile Fight Club!Follow Justin Julander @Australian Addiction Reptiles-http://www.australianaddiction.comIG https://www.instagram.com/jgjulander/Follow Rob @ https://www.instagram.com/highplainsherp/Follow MPR Network @FB: https://www.facebook.com/MoreliaPythonRadioIG: https://www.instagram.com/mpr_network/YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCtrEaKcyN8KvC3pqaiYc0RQSwag store: https://teespring.com/stores/mprnetworkPatreon: https://www.patreon.com/moreliapythonradio

Hey, welcome to Reptile Fight Club. My name is Justin Jewelander. And we'll be your host this evening. With me, as always, Rob Stone, how you doing? I'm doing great. Excited to be here. Excited to have Steven with us. So, yeah, continuing our sequence of great guests.

Right. Yep. Yeah, it's good to have Stephen Cushback. So welcome back. And thanks for coming on. Yeah, no doubt, guys. Thank you for having me. Oh, yeah.

Yeah. So you've been in Texas. now for how long? A little over two years now. Two years. Okay. How's that working out? Is it treating you good?

Yeah, for sure. I've been very fortunate the whole time just to kind of maintain myself on snake breeding financially. So it's been, you know, that was something that I always kind of wanted to do, whether or not that's going to be a permanent fixture or not. Right. But it definitely, when it works, man, it's not a whole lot better than that. So. Yeah. Living the dream.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's, you know, I see, I see a few people making it happen and glad to see you're joining that group. But that's really cool. Yeah, the scrub's still your primary focus. Yeah, definitely. Yeah. No doubt. So, yeah, I'm hoping for a good season. Last year was a little bit underwhelming. Lower numbers than I would have hoped for by a decent amount. But of what I did produce, it was all like top tier stuff for me. So it kind of offset the low yield, I guess, you could say. That just what I did produce are just like, if I could have handpicked a few, they would have been up in my top tier. Right. I really complain.

Yeah. I mean, I've kind of observed the scrub. I've never kept scrubs. I've seen a couple in the wild, which is fun. But, you know, it just seems like, man, it kind of exploded. And I think you're largely to blame for that. A lot of good press from your side. And, you know, yeah, that's pretty cool.

So I'm glad to see it. It's working out. Yeah, thank you. Yeah, hopefully this seasonal will go well for you and produce more species. You got any that you haven't produced before that you're thinking may happen? Oh, yeah. I mean. To talk about it.

Well, the few that I haven't yet produced successfully are malucans, Tannenbars, and Bioxx, as far as what I have that, you know, I have the one lone Key Island animal, which there isn't another in the country right now. So it's kind of like, what are you going to do? But, you know, if I could even cross one of those other three out or more, I'd be thrilled. It's always a great feeling to add another one to the list, right? Yeah, for sure. That's cool.

I've always loved Malukans. They're just so amazing. We had one at our table back in like one of the media. in their herb shows in california the i think it was the n-arbc in anaheim back when it was on the disney property or whatever where you know close to the convention center there and uh i don't think it's disney but anyway um really uh just sat and like held it and looked at it and the whole time i mean it wasn't mine we were selling it for a friend but i was really tempted to bring that home and now with you know how they are and how much they cost it's like maybe i should have

done that. Yeah, I mean, it's really amazing how how that market has changed. I think just a combination of more exposure, people even know what they are to begin with, and then that coinciding with almost a full stop on importation. Right. You know, the two pieces of the recipe for prices to skyrocket. Yeah. It's it's kind of an instructive thing when, you know, we think of imports a lot of times is like garbage animals or something like that. But as soon as that import flow stops, all of a sudden, you know, you see which ones become very expensive and which ones, you know, and it's hard because, you know, you can't compete with the prices of an import. So it's really hard to breed a bunch of captive bread animals that people can get for, you know,

a couple hundred bucks if they're easily imported. But at the same time, if you figure it out, while you have access to lots of animals, you know, you might build up a big colony and then all of a sudden they stop importing them and all of a sudden your animals are worth their weight in gold or more. You know, it's kind of crazy how that works. No, no doubt. It's kind of just, you know, like noticing a trend before it happens or finding reaches that has been overlooked for so long that, you know, fits a lot of the needs of the hobby and kind of, you know, betting on it ahead of time. So, yeah, there's been example after example. of that of, you know, just the right person, had the right group that they had put work into getting together. Then all of a sudden it's like, oh, hey, I'm the only source now. Cool. Yeah. You're right. Yeah, you think about like, oh, it'd be really cool if Australia opened up and we could get animals out of Australia. But, you know, I could see that also working against, you know, people who have extensive Australian collections, you know, the prices might go down quite a bit or

or they're going to preferentially want stuff from, you know, Australia. I'd probably be on that list as well, wanting, you know, new, new bloodlines or new localities or whatever. Yeah, absolutely. It's kind of a tricky thing. Once the flow stops, too, then you're kind of stuck with what we have. And sometimes that's not a pretty picture because, again, it's a little hard to establish wild caught animals. And I'm sure scrubs are no exception to that rule. Yeah, some of them can be super difficult.

You know, a decent amount of them are pretty. good as far as imports go. But then, you know, Hal Maharas have always been notorious for being kind of difficult. And then in my experience, at least the Biax scrubs are like a 90% failure rate, if not even higher.

So they really, really, really poorly while caught, even as babies. Like that with Halmaheras was kind of the key to success was getting young animals in. Biocs, I've had the most success with big imports. I'm really, around babies.

Huh. That's interesting. Great. And then like tank in like a couple weeks. It's very sudden. Yeah. That's that's really interesting. Yeah. Man, yeah. It's nice that you're trying to work that out and figure those things out. Hopefully, you know, I mean, I think we've seen it. This thing, you know, a lot in the hobby as well is once you get some captive bread offspring or the right formula for, you know, keeping them happy and healthy or figuring out what's going on with them.

then all of a sudden they become maybe relatively easy and where before it was like an impossibility. I mean, ball pythons were that way. And now the most commonly easily bred Python in captivity, it seems. Yeah, absolutely. I think it's going to be the exact same. I mean, you know, think about the early days of retics as far as, you know, how aggressive they were and difficult and whatnot. And now they're, you know, many, many generations in. And, you know, people are trying to sell them to kids.

and stuff like that. Now that that's a good thing. Right, right, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I guess along those same lines is, you know, when morphs come in, that can introduce its own issues, you know, now it's difficult to find localities or, and now we have,

you know, several different species. So, you know, you have all sorts of different crosses and hybrids and stuff like that. Yeah, that's, that's quite the debate within the scrub python world of, you know, we, there are a handful of natural morphs that will always be around. but then as far as any sort of like one-off mutations, to my knowledge, none have really hit the states yet. So, you know, it's caused a lot of a lot of stir of whether or not that would be the beginning of the end of pure scrub localities and species and whatnot. And if all the more people are going to now flood into scrub python. So I don't know.

I'm not quite as concerned as some other people are, but I think it definitely is not something to overlook. Right. Yeah, it's something to keep in mind. And I mean, I guess, you know, hopefully we've learned our lesson with these other things. Man, that's a lot of people. Right. But, yeah, sometimes there's, yeah, it's the people who want that easy money or, you know, it's a lot easier to sell them more than it is normal for some reason. But, yeah. What do you do?

That's where we're at. So, and. Yeah, it is. Yeah, for better or worse. Sticking on the BX scrubs for a second. I've always been spraised. And I'm wondering if you have had any insight into this. Why, with the live reptile infrastructure being so strong in Viac, why they've been so rare on the ground in general for the last two decades?

What a great question. The best intel I could give you is that I've heard that collectors are afraid of them. That's about all I can tell you. Because, yeah, and I have the same thought. I'm like, this makes absolutely no sense. why the island where most green tree pythons are coming from are the least or of the amongst the least scrub pythons coming from and there's no reason for me to think that any scrub python is anything other than a least concerned species in the wild so beats me what what and what also confusing me too is

that they're they're so opposite of each other where green tree python bioch green trees are the aggressive, good feeding, well-established, you know, establishing well, they get big, and Biox scrubs are like the opposite. They're the most timid. They do the worst in captivity. They seem to be the most prone to stress, generally seem a little bit smaller. It's quite the anomaly to me. Wow.

Yeah, that's really interesting. Yeah, fair enough. And I hadn't, I mean, they were just, other than what David Means, pair that then got shifted around, I don't know if I'd ever even really seen any. So the idea that even small isn't helping or, in fact, seems to be making it worse is all the more intriguing. Yeah. That's, man, I always hope. I've probably had four or five that I acquired as neonates.

And, yeah, they all, like, they would eat right away. They would seem great. And then all of a sudden, just for no apparent reason would just take a really hard turn, whether I had some get really bad blisters. I had I want prolapse like a chondro and I'm like I've never had this happen with the scrub before so stuff like that just weird weird stuff that the older animals I feel like it was a matter of do they get established on food whether than just some weird thing happened but I've had that too so yeah they're just I don't know it's very very tricky yeah yeah super interesting. Well, I appreciate the insight into it.

And you said you do have a pair that you're going to give a go this year? Yeah, you may see them running around behind the right side of my screen. They're up there. And yep, there's the mail token to set up. Yeah. That's cool. Yeah. I mean, do they seem like they're a separate species in Biak? I mean, I would assume just based on,

based on one the way that the green tree pythons were split and then two just physical observation of them they are they're just they're very different than many other you know all the other scrub pythons to me at least i find them the most similar to halmaheras in in lots of different ways which is interesting considering that they're very close to the northern scrub pythons or the Womina look kind of phenotype scrub python they're kind of like right in between those two even though Halmahera is all the way over here and like you know right barn X are in between them so it would be nice to see kind of an update on the you know philo geographic nature of the scrub complex and you know what what kind of thoughts are out there I mean you know it seems like in

Australia it's where kind of my interest lie for the most part But, you know, you do get a split of, you know, the far north Queensland ones look to be more like the southern scrubs and the ones down in Cairns area, you know, the King Horny, you know, specifically. Got to love that scientific name. Nick's a job giggle. Yeah. But, you know, there's got to be some split there. And I think Daniel Natush refers to the ones up in the locker bee is like Amistini. So.

Yeah, I feel like at this point, it's pretty well. accepted amongst Australian scrub people that that is it's separate. Those are amethasina up there. Yeah. Yeah. And there does, you know, like looking on ANAD or, you know, ALA or something, there does look to be a break where, you know, you stop seeing the northern kind. Yeah.

I'm not good enough at identifying scrubs to pick out the subtleties, but maybe, maybe something. For what I've seen, it does seem like there's some pretty significant differences. Right. Yeah. physiologically a little bit and then also the color and pattern at least on some animals i've seen captive you know yeah yeah colors on on the ones up there kind of like oranges that you never see goldens yeah right they're really nice looking yeah i saw one it was like almost like a honey color it was so beautiful yeah yeah that came from up further north but yeah i

didn't didn't get to see them while i was up there so i need to go back and check those out at some point. Yeah, no doubt. Yeah, very cool. And then I suppose another kind of question just while we have you as a captive audience, captive speaker would be, what's your thought around people having more success reading shrubs? Is it more a willingness to embrace trying multiple males? I know it's got, it's been a while now since you had Scott fled on with the bowling on. But, you know, it seems like there's a pretty clear through line between success and a willingness to kind of engage with that even going back all the way to Nick talking about that with Dannibars on NPR 15 years ago, right? At first, he wouldn't talk about it. He wouldn't recommend it. You know,

wouldn't let anyone sort of follow that advice, especially to just set him and forget it. But, I mean, that does seem pretty helpful. Is that something that you're routinely doing? Is it not? Are you seeing success with or without doing that? Yeah, I am not doing it at all. Interesting. I've tried a couple of times with the Malukans. and nothing, nothing was any different. Yeah, this year I have not. Well, I have a couple of females that I've moved males around to just on account of the original male not getting the job done. I just, I'm not trying to discount the idea.

Obviously, was for Scott. It's working. I just don't, I don't understand the. practicality like how how does it make sense i can't really that because i you can understand with species that naturally gymorphic species is where to me it makes the most sense right where if you have small males and big female i've seen it with um candelia bibroni australis the small where these tiny males in a big female and i put five males in with this singular female and the um first male starts courting trying to go she's showing

receptive activity and he's worn himself out and he goes off and sits in the corner and another one just jumps right in next yeah literally it's just this sequential sort of behavior um you know it's as you say it's weird with bull and i that are more or less the same size and it's not like they're gonna um you know getting them to lock up is not um the problem right so it's yeah i don't know it's interesting right yeah like i just i want to understand from the biology of the female what is the difference? Unless it's the function of induced ovulation, right, if you go back to Eugene, talking about tigers

and needing to calculate 90 times in a 36-hour period or something like that, and where it's that multiple males, you're getting into a capacity to do that where you couldn't with a singular male, right? Where they can only do X number of times. But I mean, to your point, right, all of this should reflect a natural ecology

or population ecology where like there are you know multiple males engaging in you know in the wall which probably seems right in the bollina context i would imagine you know the sense of being relatively isolated areas that probably sure probably see that activity it's so hard to say you know i mean like in arie's decade plus of research he's only ever seen one male which is so weird you'd think if it was something that was you know some sort of natural tendency of there's akin to anacondas or diamond pythons or whatever it may be, that there would be more males. So, you know, like, like, what are the chances of two Bolins finding each other, nonetheless,

finding one individual female at the same time? I mean, if something's working, it doesn't matter why it's working. I just, I want to understand why it makes a difference. I know, I know Chuck had two males when he. Brett is Halma Harris. And I think they were, one was Missed X or something. He thought he had a trio, but it turned out to be two males. And he had them all co-housed, like, for the, for the year.

And all of a sudden, you know, the two were hanging out. And then the other two were hanging out, you know. And he's like, why does only one female get craved? Found out he had two males. So I don't know if that was one of the reasons he had success with, with Halma Harris. Yeah. Yeah, it's hard to say. Yeah, definitely.

very interesting. I mean, my two clutches, albeit we're very low kind of success rate, we're just one to one. And I think the fertility issues had more to do with heat than anything else.

Especially one female, I just I just think I had her too hot throughout the process. But yeah, I'm always kind of trying to experiment, tinker with things. I just, I have a friend who he got a pair of malucans as a pair, put them together.

They were in fact two males. One immediately attacked the other and it's according to its wounds a few days later. Wow. I would be sick. If I've spent five, six, seven years getting this male and he's perfect and all of a sudden another male just kills him. Right. Yeah. Yeah.

I mean, scrubs have fucking gnarly teeth and they're not big snake. So like the, you know, if imagine a scrub, like, you know, the scrub, the tooth to body ratio does not favor the body in that instance. Right. Yeah, I'd even seen that. I had a, you know, my female wound up killing a male on a feed bite when I had taken him out and reintroduced him and she had packed out of them and stuff. So, yeah, I can relate.

I understand. Yeah. I mean, but like then also, I've, I have accidentally had two males and two females together before, but the, the two males were Helmaheras, and they just kind of sat apart from each other. I almost feel like the demeanor of that species is kind of conducive towards that. And then, I mean, probably more than five times I've had two females together accidentally. And they would like, you know, they would sit together. They would, they would do things that would make you be like, okay, is something happening? But then you're like, okay, there's no

courtship type behavior at all. And then that was around the time when I also really started to notice some of the morphology differences in males and females to where I was like, okay, this male is looking awful female. Let's double check and like, all right. Yep. Yeah. Again, the Miss sex scrub strikes once again. Right.

And it could be just like species differences because I know, you know, in carpal gold diamonds have multiple males in there. The southwestern carpets have multiple, Imbrata have multiple males. And, you know, they don't combat at all. And then it seems like the further you go north where you have bigger, more aggressive males, they tend to battle it out for the females. And so you see combat and sometimes gnarly scars and, you know, teeth gouges from males fighting. So yeah, it could be just a species thing.

For sure. Yeah, there's this really incredible YouTube video. And it was just some naturalist or a birder or something like that. That was, I believe it was Saram. And the video is like, like two king cobra's fighting on the shoreline or something something like that. And it was male combat of Malook and scrub pythons. And I'm like, they were huge.

They looked huge. These snakes had to be like 11, 12 feet long. And it was, yeah, I mean, it was what you know, it was like a rattlesnake. Right. You know, two rattlesnakes going out of it. It was crazy. Right. Yeah.

I think you're probably right about it being probably a species by species thing. you know, think about, just you give like the term scrub python to it. All right, well, you're referring to snakes that come from this absolutely massive geographic distribution, which, you know, likely there's a lot of speciation going on in there and isolated populations for however many millions of years or whatever. Like there's going to be differences. Well, absolutely. And, you know, just for fairness to your point would be as much as I described,

what I did witness in terms of that, you know, multiple males, the sequence sequencing of multiple males with that Irbynaya Australis, the year that I successfully bred them, I just used my biggest male, which is the biggest male I'd ever seen, with her by himself, and he did it fine. Yeah. And that was it. So, you know, I do think there's certainly something to that.

I guess, you know, I don't know how, if you even have an answer to distill this, what do you think then is the, if it's not multiple males, what's the reason for increased success with folks producing scrub buttons? Yeah, back to your original question. I think it's just more trying. I think that people who have them now are committed to them. And I think it's, you know, for the longest time, it was person would acquire a large scrub collection. Sell whole collection over here.

Buy whole collection back in whatever parts remain. Sell whole collection again. Or, you know, people would buy, buy a little group, raise them like a berm or a retick. they would die young from being power fed and then discouragement sets in you get out of it. I think a lot of, I guess myself excluded. A lot of people who are into scrub pythons these days have like an adult pair or two or three and are really able to put a lot of focus into those animals and don't have any, it's not a, I want to breed this to cross off the list and then move it on,

of mentality. I really think, I think that's why. And I mean, frankly, you know, I can speak to my for myself, but also talking to a lot of other people. I feel like a lot of Python folks who breed scrubs are just like, wow,

that was like the most fun python breeding I've done. So they're like, I want to do that again. Babies aren't overly difficult to get going. And, you know, they're just, I mean, they're pretty amazing.

snakes. So I think that's just, I think more people are understanding that the stigma that they carried for so long was almost entirely untrue. And a lot of it just came from not understanding the behavior of a super visually oriented python. And especially with captive bred animals, the demeanors are just getting progressively better and better. So I think that, that kind of veil being taken down and then frankly a lot of people who are not on say a lot but a handful of people who were involved in the community who were I guess bullies for the lack of a better term aren't around anymore so that's a much more open and friendly place for new people who want to get involved in scrap python yeah absolutely all that makes a ton of sense to me I would think and I'm curious

your kind of feedback around this. Some of it, I think, is just the fact that it's been done almost gives confidence that you can do it. You know, it's almost like, you know, it's, I know it has Homeris, for example, right? As soon as it gets done once, then it's like, oh, it can happen. It's not some mystical dream. And it gives people maybe that stick-to-itiveness or that extra boost to effort when it seems, you know, difficult or when you're five or six years in without success or whatever. That seems like maybe part of it too.

I totally sure. you said that man they seem to be one of those snakes that people want to get a lot of you know and then they build this collection and it's one of those things where if you have a couple of them then yeah you can really focus your effort and give them what they need without being exhausted by it yeah but when your whole room is full of those animals it becomes overwhelming and you kind of don't go in the room right not me but i i get everyone except for you But I think the fact that you've moderated by not, you know, having it be what you're doing, I think that helps a lot. Sure. Yeah, yeah. No, no question. Yeah, I remember hearing people like on NPR talking about the stress of going into their room with the scrubs and like, oh, this is the day of the week. I got to take care of the scrubs.

And I'm like, man, when I'm taking care of my adults, I'm at like peak calm, just kind of hanging out like, oh, hey, look at that one. Put it down. Clean's cage. Put it back. See how it's doing. I don't know. Yeah, absolutely. And that's no doubt.

I have no doubt that that's part of your success, right? That it doesn't become a burden, that it's not overwhelming. Oh, yeah, no, for sure. And, you know, I've just cut down on other areas in my collection. I mean, I'm still, like, right hovering, I think, just under 40 species in my collection. It's probably included, obviously. But, you know, venomous collection that I've, I'm getting towards having cut in half. this year and then a colupert collection, which is a little bit bigger than it was last year.

So, you know, it's not like I have a break from that being my constant, all what I'm doing. But I think honestly, if I were to objectively think about it, if I had only scrubs, I would probably still be really happy. But, you know, at least for now, I just last year with how my year did. didn't go the way that I wanted it to. I kind of looked around. I'm like, I have a little bit of this, a little bit of that of species that I could totally get again in a day from a bunch of people who I know and trust. Like I can, you know, move projects on and get back into them eventually if I want to, just so I can really try to dial in a few things that I want to do well. And just

see how that goes for a little while, not not counting out re-diversifying at some point in time. But at the moment it just wasn't really doing it for me as much as like I would love to have said that I you know had twice the breeding season with you know a third less animals than I had just felt like I was making progress so it's kind of part of my my thought process there and with the scrubs being the center focus of it obviously I know you touch on it a little bit but just for well as a reminder to me what in terms of your venomous stuff you're mostly working with sort of montane things that are more cooler room set it forget it sort of Kyle style that sort of approach is really cool yeah yeah and you know that's what's

that's what I like about it is just like it's all it wasn't two rooms I'm about to get it down to being just in one room where totally different keeping style totally different climate when I'm in there I know what like I know what that is I feel like it's a way to kind of snap into that okay now I'm doing venomous. Now I got to treat this situation differently. Right. So, you know, and I had some litters last year that were pretty cool. And like, and then I realized in things I did wrong. And that, that was one of the main issues that that caused me to want to cut it down to be in one room was just, I just didn't do my brumation properly. I don't think I got everybody cold enough and had some kind of poor litters as what I believe to be a result of that. Another like trying to learn that.

You know, I feel like I know it, but my, I'm at my core haven't fully got it yet. Like that the, it's not a numbers game. You know, it's more working percentages. What, what's the capacity where you're going to actually get the most, not only success, but then like fulfillment out of it as well because, uh, I've had much, much larger collections than I have currently. I'm probably enjoying my animals as much as I ever have as I continue to downsize. So I still have over 200 snakes.

So I don't have a small number of snakes by any means. But compared to what I've been used to for the last five, six years, it's been nice. And I definitely, I just have found myself able to do an extra handful of walkthroughs through a room during the day, you know, at night not feel like, oh, I'm just so exhausted. I don't even want to look at these pairs again that I threw together the night before. That all, like I'm excited to stay on top of all of it. So for that alone, I think it was the right thing to do.

Nice. Very cool. And is that mostly Mexicans, Mexican, Central American stuff, rock rattlesnakes, those things, or is it Asian stuff? Almost exclusively, yeah, Mexican, southwest U.S. Montains, you know, a bunch of different localities of Klobari, Willard, I, Silas, and Amobilis, polystictus, Marulas, Achilles, you know, all that.

Armstrong eye Campbell eye that type of stuff black tails and then I have I have a couple of the Botryakis palm vipers I have a trio of Marchai

and then I have a trio of lateralis that are actually kind of somebody's going to be taking them soon and I had three pairs of Mangshan vipers last time we spoke and I have one pair of Mangshan vipers so my only old world only kind of species that doesn't fully,

I mean, it fits the montane mold, but doesn't fit the small little snake. Yeah, it's not quite so small. No, but I, because I was going to sell all of them. And then I listed them all. And I was just kind of thinking about it like, I don't know if I want to do. Let's just start with getting down to one.

I can sell them again. I can sell them later if I want to, but I want to regret selling all of my main shans. So I have one pair, and I'm definitely happy that I held on to them. That's cool. They're such an amazing, beautiful species. They are large. I mean, now how big of years?

Yeah. My male's about six feet, female, six and a half feet. Yeah, they're big. And they're like substantially. Yeah. They're nine years old. They're full-grown adults. So they're big.

Yeah. What's your, what's keeping your, your attention the most in the venous room what's your kind of favorite one to work with oh man um it's tough to say i think overall ridge nose are my favorite venomous uh i had a littered silas last year that was for me like probably my favorite venomous accomplishment i've i've had so far that was really cool um yeah those those are pretty amazing i love the the polystictus the lansheads they're incredible. And then probably of what's coming of age right now,

the two that I'm most excited about with my Armstrong eye, and my Zacatecas clobarii. The male is like mid-green and chocolate brown bands. They're my favorite clobarai, Zocatakis animals. They're so incredible. So, yeah. That's really cool.

And just to be completest on this, What's going on with the Calubrids? Yeah. So I had a pretty wide array, and now my Calubrid collection is almost exclusively Pichuovus and Spilotes, with a couple exceptions for two pairs of mangrove snakes, Melanota, and Divergians, and then a pair of Blue Beauties. So within the Spelotis, it's two different localities of Mexicana's, and then a cross locality pair, South American pair, and then 1.2, Sulfurius.

So, and then some holdbacks as well that I have from my babies last year. I just, I love Spolodeus. They're my favorite, colubrid, bar none. That could be a reptile fight club. Why are Spolode is the best Calubrid? But they just, they're just so fun. They're so beautiful. They display so well.

and they're just, they're so fun to interact with you. I mean, from the mouths of venomous keepers, they are, they're mambas. Their behavior is that of mambas with none of the danger. And as I say, probably to some controversially in a far more beautiful package. So, but yeah, you know, I don't have any lizards, but they kind of make up for that with how well they display. It's almost kind of like having a tree monitor and a snake body with how much they use the enclosure during the day. they're very social with each other. I have my pairs cohabed year round.

And they seem to do better that way, breathe better that way. It's only a pain in the ass when it comes of feeding. And I have definitely had my handful of times of pulling two of them apart from each other. But I don't think they're back in really. So, yeah, they're awesome. And then I think I have more pitiful office than Spolode's as far as numbers go, just because I have like a bunch of different localities. of that.

You know, the Mexican pines are where I started, but I think I probably have the most now of northern pines, different localities in northern pines, some bull snakes and Cape gophers. It's, you know, San Diego. There's a little bit of this and that. You know, the Pichuofus genus is such an addicting one. Yeah.

So you pick up the new book? I haven't yet, but I really need to. I had a pretty gut-wrenching car repair come up essentially right before the book dropped. I'm like, oh, just next thing I sell, I'm going to get the book. But I need it. That's cool. 100%.

Yeah. Being able to interview Craig on my show was probably my top highlight from all the podcasts I've done so far. And that's no slight in anybody else. It's just like how awesome it was to get two plus hours of Trump Bauer stories. Yeah, he's a character. That's very true. Yeah, but talented herpeticulturalist, talented field herper. Yeah, no doubt.

Great communicator as well within the hobby. I definitely love his perspective on things. Yeah, we'll throw out a plug for Craig Trumbauer's new book on the, you know, bull, pine, gopher snake complex, the pitch of office. I think it's a complete picture office, right? It's how it's framed. So I don't know if it's shipping yet or it's still in pre-order or how that works, I'm not sure.

Yeah, just if anyone wants us to take a look, it's a, I believe if you look up eco-publishing, or I think it's like eco-universe.com. But yeah, and then if you're on Facebook, you've seen any number of people posting it and sharing it. So definitely, I think it's a complete guide to bull snakes, pine snakes and gopher snakes. I think that's the full title. So, yeah, definitely worth checking out for anybody who's a fan of the genus. Yeah. Absolutely.

And kind of another question that I've had, sorry, we're running so many different directions, but Spelotis kind of fit with the wild scrub python thing where, while some people had limited success, I would say that the framework of Spelotis in various species and forms has sort of entirely changed in the last 15 or 18, 20 years. and sort of the way that I'm seeing in terms of certainly the volume of captive bred animals that are being produced. You know, it seemed they used to have a pretty bad reputation as wild caught. What do you anywhere out of that? Yeah, I think, well, I think the first person I'll give props to was Gavin Brink, rest in peace.

Definitely be like one of the pioneers. And then especially as far as getting the word out to hobbyists, you know, mostly through Facebook and then Jason Hood, obviously. kind of was doing that project with him, really carried the torch after that. You know, when Roy was producing his sulfurous year after year, that definitely helped as well. And especially, like, people seeing how he had his set up, I think that that did a lot to bring more eyes to Spilotis of, you know, not only these big, impressive, beautiful snakes, but like, look at this giant zoo exhibit that this guy is built for his trio of adults. And anyone can do that, you know, with.

the right amount of effort, obviously, not, you know, make a kind of minimize what he, what he did there. But, yeah, I just think that it was just a matter of more, more exposure and a few people really kind of championing the genus. That, and I think then also, man, there's just something when, when you see an animal that's as beautiful as that, like a black, yellow and kind of orange, big snake in a tree with keeled scales and, you know, those big eyes, the slow tongue flicks. It's just a very charismatic snake. So and, you know, a lot of the times if you go to a show, you may see them, but they're kind of poor conditioned drab import South Americans that are pretty easy to walk right past,

especially if they're not displayed in a way that really shows what that animal is. So definitely one that is easy to walk past at a show, but if you, if you know, if you're scrolling on Facebook or Instagram and you see a, see your reel of one in an enclosure or something, it's hard to scroll right past that if you're a snake fan. That's for sure. Yeah. I was listening to Jason Hood on, was it not another reptile?

Is it Adam? Adam show that. Adam? Yeah, expert in the yeah. Yeah, he's a fun guy. I like Jason. Yeah. But yeah, he's done well with those.

Yeah. I think he was talking about those when he was saying he could he's looking to maybe put some outside, you know, in larger enclosures just because they're they can use the space, you know. Sure. Yeah. I mean, that man, they're in the right place to do that. That would be, right. That'd be awesome. Yeah.

I'd be very curious to watch somebody else do that. Right. Yeah. I'm good personally, but. Yeah. Well, then they started talking about like pentostomes and all the, you know, scary things that could happen. outside and it's like yeah maybe it's not worth the risk i don't know yeah i feel like keeping reptiles outside is uh much more of like kind of a novelty than a trick to make anything work right

you know i've heard some people have had like with the gurneya skinks that you know they have better success outdoors i guess snakes but yeah snakes are maybe a little more tricky in some ways sure at least i'm sure some species work great outside you know i mean it seems like diamond pythons are one of those that do very well outside in certain places here in the U.S. Yeah. So, you know, be it Southern California or Florida. Yeah, that would be pretty incredible to have some diamond pythons outside. I saw Brandon Wheeler set up at his house and I'm just like, this is like a dream right here.

Yeah, that's cool. Yeah, Chuck had his setup outside. I think Adam has a pair outside as well. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. And Tony Doer has those animals that Chuck had at his place also outside. Yeah, so that's cool. Yeah, pretty freaking cool.

Yeah, I love diving pythons there. Yeah. They are pretty fantastic. Is Jason just on with you as well? I feel like he's been on a couple. You did a round table or was, did he be on more recently than that? I had him on my show in August, I believe, or July. I think I'd come around late to it.

So I just listened to it. But yeah, that was good too, man. I enjoyed that, you know. Yeah, I guess, I mentioned your podcast. You know, that's definitely one of my favorites on the Drap Talk Network. Yeah, it's great. Great stuff. I appreciate that.

Yeah, Jason's one of those guys who's like, he's like a professional reptile podcast guest. I'm not sure there's the podcast that Jason hasn't been a guest on the last like eight years or so. And for good reason, he's, you know, he's always a fantastic guest. So, yeah. Always really interesting to hear what he has to say. Yeah, knowledgeable guy for sure. Yeah, it was, we did a trip to Australia to. and just spent a lot of road hours with Jason chatting about.

I think he did mention that a few times when I had him on. Yeah, he, I kind of had to remind him. He had an idea, but he was one of the first people I met in herpticulture. He definitely doesn't remember, but I was pretty sure I was like nine years old when I met Jason. I was kind of always around.

Yeah. Especially up until he left Chicago. I went to Florida. Yeah, he's such an imposing figure. He's huge. Yeah. He was a nine-year-old. Right.

You're tall yourself, but. Yeah, I wasn't that tall as a nine-year-old, but yeah, he's one of the only people I know who makes me feel genuinely small. He's like, oh, fuck. But he's super approachable. You know, he's not, yeah, great guy. Yeah, for sure. No, no question. Yeah, Jason's.

Well, and that just made Justin's time with him all those hours in the car in Australia, all the more exciting. Yeah. felt bad for him though because we didn't have the biggest car and like he's grabbing in there. I guess it guaranteed that he got the front seat. So maybe a benefit of being that. I can't imagine that plane right over for him. I don't even. I've never done a really long haul flight like that.

The longest flight I'd been on was seven, seven and a half hours maybe, Chicago to Amsterdam. And I don't really remember. I was much younger. But man, just the thought of like a 15 plus hour flight. Yeah. I don't know. That's like one of the biggest things that has me hesitant about going. I'm going to, I'd push through it, but I'm like, oh, my gosh, that would be terrible.

I think it would be terrible. It feels like it would be terrible, but who knows? I might get in trouble for saying this, but like it's probably like childbirth where it's really horrible at the time. But then you forget all about it and you just remember all the great things that are, result of that. Oh my goodness. Maybe we'll leave that one alone. Justin and I went.

We left the, I think at least at the time, we went Dallas to Sydney, right? That was like the third longest flight that was operating at that time. It was like 1545. Yeah. The nice thing is you can get up, walk around, there you have snacks

in the back, you know, go eat at Tim Tam or something. It's totally fine. Yeah, that's no big deal. watched seven movies you know that's true and then it's like you just get to be like so fascinated by that giant plane that you never get to be on as well yeah I remember I was the one yeah the long flight I took was a

or a couple were 747s and I was like yeah it's pretty it's pretty neat yeah so the best is when like you're sitting down and they close the doors and there's nobody in the seats next to you and you're like sweet I get a lay down on the on three seats instead of trying to sleep in one. That would be the best feeling ever on an international flight. You took a lottery that day. Right. How did I get this lucky? Yeah. My wife and I just booked tickets for Prague. We're going to. I have a work conference over there. And then we're going to take a little

loop around Germany and, you know, Switzerland, Austria, that kind of stuff. So it should be pretty fun. That sounds pretty great. Yeah. I got to go to Australia for my 50th. And so this is Heidi's 50th trip. So it should be fun. Yeah. Sounds like it. That's awesome. Good times. Well, sounds like you got a lot of great stuff going on, and it's always good to see what you're doing. Thanks, man. Really cool stuff.

Any other questions, Rob, before we proceed? No, I guess it's, you know, past 45 minutes in, you know, as is my one. Well, I guess we didn't start talking about the thing we're supposed to be talking about. Yeah, the chit chat went a little long, but it was well worth it. Oh, good. All right. Rob, why don't you introduce our topic for the night? Yeah, absolutely.

So I've been listening to a lot of Stephen's great podcast, both new and not as new. I guess they were just aggregated in my queue episodes. It's making me a little bit. My time's out of order here. But I listened to one that you just had Joe to Stefano of the Clubebred Corruption podcast. And, oh, what, 90 minutes in or so, because I had to find it that then send it to Justin to give him the context. you had obviously just seen something, a statement from somebody that they shouldn't pair animals if you don't have predetermined homes for them. Essentially, you shouldn't breed and produce animals if you don't have predetermined home for them.

This seems like a more extreme version of what we've heard for decades, right? And I guess this is kind of where maybe there's more of a conversation or at least where we can nuance is the idea that you shouldn't pair what you can't at least, you know, that you're not at least willing to. either you do know where it's going to go or you have a defined avenue for where it can go or you're willing to hold on to them and maintain them yourself. So I guess maybe that's a little bit more fair version, although I'm interested to hear sort of we can take the extreme view because I don't doubt that that was being put out there. But yeah, that's surprising to me.

That's a very extreme position. So maybe we structured as well-thought-out, planned versus. is if you breed it, they will buy it. Yeah, right. Maybe the two sides of the, yeah, right. Maybe that's the two sides of the fight here. So, well, I'll flip the coin. Rob, you want to call it and we'll see who gets the pleasure of fighting.

It is heads, but I will have you do the fighting tonight. So I'm a little out of it. But, yeah, I got beat up good in Waterpullet today. All right, Stephen, we want to call that one? Heads. heads his tails there's so i guess you can rob gets to pick which side he wants to fight sure but i'm interested mostly it stephen said it with great aplomb on the show and i'm mostly interested in him fighting the side that he wants and want to get in engage engage the

other side for the conversation but no i'm curious to yeah go whichever way you prefer and we're just breaking all the rules and protocols tonight huh yeah this is what i always do You know, with the new framing, I'll take the side of being very selective about pairing. Okay. All right. Well, are you going to chuck in? I will still chuck you. Okay, so you're going to go first.

All right. Yeah, you know, I think that the main thing to really consider when you look at this conversation of pairing animals, animals, planning your breeding, man, look at a site like Morph Market of how many tens of thousands of ads there are out there at any given point in time. There's an overabundance of animals in the hobby. There's no two ways about it. You can look at it from the perspective of, well, okay, these are a lot of ball pythons or a lot of crested geckos or a lot of whatever it may be. but then at the end of the day, there are only so many keepers out there that can potentially purchase and own and properly take care of all of these animals.

So as a breeder, I think ultimately you have a responsibility to understand the impact that your breeding is going to have on the animals themselves. We've seen through the years mass production be almost glamorized in our industry, particularly in some of the morph trades, be it ball pythons, corn snakes, leopard geckos, crests, wherever you want to look at it, bearded dragons. And, you know, unfortunately, I just think it leads to a lot of poor outcome for the actual animals themselves. Ultimately, at the end of the day, with the main motive of said mass production being the almighty dollar. And we know how it goes in our industry when that is the primary motivating factor that leads you to make your decisions.

Right. I did hear a really interesting talk at, I can't remember where it was exactly. It might have been at the Gecko Symposium at Tinley, but they were talking about, I think with Steve Sykes was talking about the reptile market, you know, that kind of thing with that. And he said that, you know, when things like crested geckos or gargoyal geckos or something, they had a huge market over in North, or not North Korea, South Korea. and they were just shipping like all the gargoyle geckos over to South Korea. And so they had limited animals here for sale. And so, you know, people saw them as kind of a more of a rare commodity rather than just something everybody was producing. And then all of a sudden that market either dried up or was closed down a different way. And then on the same token, he breeds a lot of Australian geckos.

and they stopped letting those be exported to other countries. And so all of a sudden, you could only sell them within the U.S., and so that was more difficult, and they just had an overabundance of animals. And so all of a sudden, you know, the gargoyle gecko project is all of a sudden saturated in the U.S. And it's very difficult to sell things, especially for the prices that they were selling for. So you really kind of have to have your finger on the bolts.

And if you're just producing for production sake, rather than understanding those factors and kind of keeping an eye on foreign markets or whatever, you know, you really got to be kind of careful. I think that's something that I'd never thought about. Like, oh, you know, oh, these people who are producing a ton of them, they export most of their stuff. And so that's why you don't see them selling things that shows or, you know, they still do, but they're not selling a lot of their stuff. So I just thought I'd mention that. Yeah, no doubt. Just hearing the discussion, right, and hearing kind of maybe the initial prompt or, you know, what was bringing that view, I think a big important framing to this question is the number of animals that we're potentially talking about. For the most part, this sounds like the sort of Facebook advice that's being leveled at someone who has a pair or two pair of snakes, right?

Which, truth be told, there are probably, you know, mechanisms to absorb that volume that do exist, right? they may or may not have the connections with the wholesalers and they probably don't have those connections, but it probably isn't out of their means. And this globalized, you know, the globalized Internet, they can probably find a home, not necessarily a good home, not necessarily a productive life, depends what it is, maybe even, you know, as you hit on a little bit, the idea that they might wind up being food for something else, right? And we've normalized it's fine to feed rodents, fine to feed birds, you know, functionally reptiles, you know, to other things.

but for most of us, we have a hard time feeding get spread reptiles to other reptiles. So I guess just didn't thinking about it, right? That framing is important. If that advice is intended for that person with a pair or two, I certainly understand the point, right? And if they're just sort of generic pet animals of whatever, there probably isn't the impetus or need to have them. Simultaneously, the market could absorb those animals without great impact. the more important person that they probably need to be talking to, as what you're saying,

is someone has a large collection and potentially could produce a lot of animals, you know, and really run into them the challenge of the ability to hold on and manage and feed those things. My question is, to what extent the kind of counterpoint or vulnerability is, like, to what extent has the die already been cast by someone sitting in that position, right? Someone who has hundreds of all pythons or whatever. or like they've already, now they're at a point, that really is sort of the rock and the hard place of if they don't produce them,

if they don't bear them, then they have no hope whatsoever to be counteracting all of their expenses associated with roans, even if they're putting in the time and effort to raise their own rodents, the own food, food, shavings, all the infrastructural costs and things, that they almost, they have to produce, you know, perpetuating the tragedy of the commons in the marketplace. Yeah. No.

That's definitely a good, a good, you know, approach to take on it as well. Like, you know, where does the problem actually lie? But then no matter where the problem lies, the problem does still exist. So, you know, whether you're adding on a small percentage to that problem or not, I think, you know, that, the conversation may turn to, okay, if you're a new keeper, you aspire to, to breed, well, how much critical thought really needs to go into exactly what that decision is. Do you, okay, I'm interested in a species. Okay, well, are you interested in it because you actually have interest in the biology of this animal?

Or did somebody you look up to say, hey, if you take this and put it to this, you make this and you make this much money? What are your motives? And if your motives are in either part or in full, hopefully not in full, but to make money, okay, then look at who you're competing with. Look at the giants who already have been in control of this market for 20, 30 years in some instances. And you really think that you're going to outcompete those names that have been doing this for as long as they have. So what if you, you know, find something, let's even, you know, even just take ball pythons as an example. If you really like ball pythons, but you look at the market, you see where it's at, why not look for something like Angolan pythons?

A very underrepresented species that are very similar but different in some pretty amazing ways than ball pythons and are available sometimes and not available at other times. There are probably enough people out there that don't even know what an Angolan python is. So what role are you playing in herpticulture as a whole? Are you advancing it? Are you a neutral effect? Are you adding to potential, you know, flooding of markets over saturation? What can you as a sovereign herptoculturist do to kind of improve the whole of the community? Yeah, absolutely.

I mean, and I think you hit on a great point there of the glamorization of scale. that was predominant in the hobby 10, 15, 20 years ago, right? Where it wasn't. And honestly, some of that has to have reflected the fact that they're looking, you know, you got a live buyer on the line. And if you got someone who has the money to buy a pair, maybe they have the money to buy two pairs or several pairs of different, you know, your different, various different offerings and those sorts of things.

And it's only more recently, I think, that even the sort of, high-end or conglomerate, you know, producers within the space are starting to pitch the idea of, actually, you know, they would even prefer, Kevin McCurley, right, even 10, 15 years ago was pitching that if he, you know, if he were a new keeper now, or if he were to redesign what he was keeping now, he would want to have a 11-slot rack with, you know, the coolest things that he could have, and that would be it, right? So they could have that small scale, but just with the very coolest things. You know, I do think there's another idea of like, well, and it brings me back, too, to the idea that I've always found problematic with the leopard gecko community, where there's almost this idea. And I, even Eric's talked about this in carpal pythons as well.

It's almost like you're not taken seriously if you don't have a minimum quantity that you're working with, right? that, oh, the person with one or two pairs is not taken seriously. I think we've actually pushed back on that a little bit, and the social media actually allows that in terms of expanding viewership outside of just, I think the market in the age of glamorization of scale was really the reptile market, whereas social media is allowing people to access a market that is not people that have any awareness of the broader reptile hobby. Right? And it's people that are, as much as it's derided, putting top hats on hog nose or whatever,

but it's a singular animal with its sort of TikTok account or whatever. Oh, look at the little noodle doing its thing. And maybe those people, if you have a singular pair, maybe that's actually, and I have no doubt that the terms of service on those sites don't allow you to actively promote sales, but you could still link to a whatever that you could still probably get people there. where you maybe have better access now than 20 years ago to effectively move offspring from a single pair than you would have, you know, just as a lone keeper with a pair 20 years ago. Yeah. I remember hearing Brian Barcheck and, you know, he may be kind of the one who really was responsible for that glamorization of the large-scale production. And, you know, I mean, I remember as kind of a new breeder thinking, oh, how cool would that be? Look at all those rows of racks and, you know, man, think of all those snakes, you know, just doing it full time. And, you know, I think we've kind of come to the realization that it is difficult to be a full time breeder. And yeah, I'm sure you can speak to that. But, you know, the things that you have to do and plan for and understand, you know, within that reptile, this reptile industry is, and I do remember him kind of in later years,

talking about, you know, I'm not looking to sell to the Tinley crowd. I'm looking to sell to the, you know, just individuals. And I wonder, you know, if how he might have accomplished that. You know, I didn't really follow up or hear anything else on that. But I just remember him kind of talking, making that distinction. Like the Tinley crowd is small. They already know what they like. They already know what they want. And he was saying, I'm going to go after the just the kids that they're, you know, they're asking their mom for a snake and educate them, get them buying these things. Because they're not going to be your competitors. They're not, you know, you don't have to worry about, you know, selling them on the pyramid scheme of buy this and you'll be this rich or

whatever, you know. Sure. Yeah, you know, I think it goes back to, you know, Rob, what you said about legitimacy through volume. And that was definitely, when I was first getting into learning about the industry 2008, 2009 or so, the people who were glamorized, you know, Brian Barcheck, Pete Call, you know, many others, Jeremy Stone from the Bose, Ralph Davis, you know, the bells, the Macs, like, you know, this was the status symbol, was the giant production facility turning out numbers and numbers and numbers. And, you know, the viability of that, of that business model has just changed over time. And the primary driver of that, amongst many other things, but is the cost of feeders. Featers were dirt cheap back then,

especially if you could get a source that B grade, whatever, you know, you can get mice for like less than 10 cents apiece. and you know you could you could feed a massive massive collection of animals and have it not be you know such a great expense that you're going to you're going to tank yourself based on that alone the cost of labor um I think now these days I mean you know for me specifically the name of the game is is cutting expenses I could make as much revenue as I want if my expenses are right up there. I'm doing terribly.

And we think, I think we see a lot of examples, especially these days of people who became very successful as like a basement breeder, maybe with a helper or two, but no, you know, not a staff. You're not, you're not paying for a building that's not your house. And the market has reacted to the product you're putting forward. And you're making a lot of money and you're very profitable on top of that. And the urge, I think, in a lot of instances is, all right, how do we take this to the next level? And especially these days, I think we've seen that taking it to the next level,

the next level is usually failure. So I think for a lot of people who aspire to be breeders to whatever degree, I think these days the status symbol is probably, at least I'd hope it's shifting from the volume of your collection to the quality. of your animals and the customer experience you're able to provide, you know, the, what you're able to provide after the fact with just support for the buyer. Because a lot of these big scale people from back in the day for better rewards. Reputationally jerks. Yeah.

It's like you bought the snake. All right, fuck off now. Like, I don't know what you want for me. So that, and especially in the age of social media, when it's so easy to bash somebody. and, you know, there's, there have been situations as of late that have just driven me crazy. And not only that it's so easy to bash somebody, people bash for their own benefit, for attention, for views, for, you know. So now that there's even, there's even more incentive than I'm going to get my revenge because you wrong me. I'm not even involved in this situation.

I'm going to insert myself for my own vanity. and you know those type of people can access you can get millions of views on on videos that have nothing to do with them so reputation is more important now than ever and you know I think ultimately reputation will come down to how what do you do when you make a mistake but preventing those mistakes is the first part of that equation and the more animals you have the more mistakes you have that you're going to make. And there's just no two ways about that. So I, and ultimately, it's for the better for the sake of the hobby.

I believe that, you know, no giant scale. I can't see another large scale production facility just popping up. Right. I mean, that's really unlikely at this point. Because of your background and experience, I'm curious too on, you know, you mentioned the feeders and, and it seems like like a, it could be a huge cash cow. Like, why don't we see more rodent breeders? Is it just a difficult industry?

Like, it's just wears you down. Yeah, honestly, I think a lot of that comes down to it's dirty. Yeah, dirty work. Definitely not fun work necessarily. You know, it's not fun work by any means. But it's not the worst in the world. Like, it's kind of dirty work and it's not always the most rewarding, but at the same time, like, man, it beats sitting at a desk for me.

Right. You know, I have my small little rodent colony, nothing too crazy. But I enjoy when I go clean it every week. Yeah. And I had the same setup, you know, just to small enough to feed my own stuff, maybe produce a few extras. But yeah. Yeah. And, man, I don't think, I did a podcast just shy of a year ago about this with a few people who breed rodents that.

at different levels, but now mostly small levels. Yeah, it was great. Yeah, I love that episode. How much money you can actually make in a really small space doing rodents? Right. And there is a, I don't want to say there's a shortage of rodents because there isn't necessarily, but there's a shortage of quality rodents. Right.

That's the damn sure. So if you can produce high quality rodents and service your local area, you're going to make money doing that. And it's going to take a whole heck of a lot less time than your nine to five. will. So I have no idea why more people don't do it, honestly. Making, you know, making 50 grand a year off of rats or mice or whatever is very far from a full-time job. Right. You have to be on top of it. You know, if you have to, if you're taking a vacation, you got to have somebody who's going to be watching it over. It's not, you know, not like the snake tree. You just kind of leave him, you know,

give him some water, leave him beef for a little bit. Even though with, with like, Freedom Breeder racks and ARS racks. That's kind of the reason why the company Freedom Breeder is called Freedom Breeder is because it gives you the freedom to go on vacation. Right. That's where the name came from. You fill that feeder all the way up. You either have your automatic system or you fill your bucket all the way up.

You can theoretically leave for a little while and they have everything they need. You know, kind of, I guess minus a thing. Nothing goes wrong. Right. It sounds like a flood doesn't happen. Right. So, you know, I truly have no idea why more people don't do it. I think it might just be a matter of some people speaking about it publicly in a matter

that is a little bit exaggerated, you know, how terrible and awful this is. And oh, it's so dirty and just disgusting. It's like, man, I'd much rather do that. They work at a dog kennel. Right. Like, there's probably infinitely dirtier animal jobs. You can do work at work on a farm with hogs or cows like yeah Compared to rats and mice like people in lab coats do this stuff in universities

Right at pharmaceutical companies like this is not that dirty when it comes to animals is it dirtier than your ball python rack sure But when it comes to animal husbandry this is on the low end So yeah, that's true. Oh, thank you. I just thought I'd have you talk about that a little bit because of your experience in the past and things. But I always thought if times got really tight, you know, that could be a backup plan for me. I could start breeding rodents, you know. Yeah. It seems to be.

I actually discussed that with Forrest back in the day. Like he was, you know, thinking about, hey, if I, if I bred them out here, you know, you have buyers out here, I could just ship them to them to them, you know, that kind of thing, you know, where it's hard to ship from clear across the country. And like you said, regional, you know, suppliers. There's a pretty big, big breeder in, in Utah already. I don't know. It'd be interesting to see. Yeah. Here I thought you were about to say during COVID, you were wondering how to start eating them. Right. Yeah. I mean, I guess it could be a source of protein.

I read a really crazy book. It's called Out of the Ice. And this guy was like his parents were Russian. And he ended up in a, they moved back to Russia to open a Ford plant. And then all of a sudden there was the whole uprising or whatever. and all these foreigners found themselves in these gulags and he was one of those and and like he discovered that rats were pretty good protein source and they tasted pretty dang good. He said he still remembers how wonderful a rat tasted because he hadn't had protein for, you know, any meat for a long time. And he offered it to his fellow prisoners and they would rather die than eat a rodent.

I'm like, morons. Like, eat the meat. Who cares? Yeah, for real. Got to watch Nick Martin eat a frozen pod rat. They grilled up at one of the carpet fest to drum up a little donations. It's pretty hilarious. Got it your protein one way or another.

Exactly. I think as long as you pull out, you know, you just want to clean it pretty well. I think it's the only. Right. Yeah. Well, and I guess so my question, right, recognizing that I think one of these sides is a little bit stronger than the other, what sort of affirmative helpful advice can we give because it does bum me out i don't really go reptile shows at this point um but when i when i do go and i see somebody sitting there

with a bunch of ballpipons that would have been nice a decade ago and that's all they have and no one's stopping to talk even the other ballpiping people aren't stopping and looking at what they're doing what sort of what have you thought about strategies advice anything that we can offer is sort of an idea and all of brands because the bummer to me is that that's got to be really disparate. I mean, you can see it on the face. It's dispiriting. And they're probably going to be, you know, I think in the same way that what I alluded to with the leopard gecko folks where, oh, you're not serious unless you're running, you know, 15 pairs of them. Well, that's hundreds of babies. And, you know, you're talking about people

just starting and now they've got hundreds that they're trying to move and there's no marketplace. to talk about, you know, not a flooded marketplace, right, for those. And they're that much less tolerant and harder to keep and maintain yourself than snakes in terms of the work that's required. Like, what's the advice for those? So we don't lose those folks to the hobby, right? So they can transition, you know, transitioning away from your failed breeding venture. What's your advice on that?

Yeah, that's really tough. And I think, you know, you know, it really depends on why they got into that to begin with. So if you're looking at, you know, discouraged ball python breeder who's been doing it for a few years and realizes this is not what they signed up for. And not necessarily to pick on ball python. So let's go ball python, crest of gecko, whatever, any of the staple pet species. I think for anybody who it really was just like, hey, I had a friend who was like, hey, I'm making so much money doing this. it's not that hard. You should do it too. I think it's better that the hobby loses that person,

honestly. And not in like a way of trying to be exclusionary of those type of people. But this hobby is shown over and over again that if the love of the animals and the passion for what you're doing isn't at the center, it's only, you have a shelf life. Whether you know, one way or another, you have a shelf life. So, I know, I think this kind of mean is that might sound, especially if somebody's already kind of feeling dejected, it's like you might, you might just, this might just not be for you. But if that person genuinely was like super excited about being a part of the industry and maybe they just got into ball pythons because this is their, you know, you're the kind of personality type where you are more of a follower, not to use it as like a pejorative, but, you know, just where, hey, these people seem cool. I want to do what they're doing. I think you kind of have to like strip back to the core what your motivation was to get started in the first place. And, you know, let that kind of be what steers the ship to find something that truly does interest to you instead of having just followed the pack on an idea. Try a little bit of this, try a little bit of that.

You know, in an ideal scenario, find someone to you locally who has a collection. and hey, I'll clean cages for you for free. I just want to get experience hands-on with the animals or whatever it may be slowing down, not having to be a rush of, all right, I'm going to be a breeder in three years or whatever. It's like, wow, that's a great way to not be a breeder in three years.

And then what does that even mean to be a breeder? Is it somebody who's producing animals that they're not even able to sell? You know, is it somebody who has one pair of, some kind of oddball species that isn't really being worked with frequently that you got people lining up to get your offspring when they happen. Well, who's more of a breeder of the last two I describe? You know, who's who's providing towards the common good of herpticulture more? You know, breeder one might have 200 babies a year and breeder two may have 15, but if breeder one is not able to

sell those 200 babies and that's, you know, kind of a net negative on the industry overall. So I think I think people really in this hobby kind of thrive when they find something that they can kind of put their stamp on and really stand behind. And I think that also coincides with finding a species or a genus or whatever that you're just super passionate about. And it takes a while to find that. That's not something you can just come, you know, come to overnight. I got lucky. that I kind of found my version of that young in life overall. I got I was 16 when I got my first scrub python. But I didn't keep me snakes for seven years by then.

And I'd never had a scrub python before. So, you know, I'd have to imagine that most people by the time, they're seven years into this hobby, don't have this crystal clear vision of what their future is going to look like. And frankly, you shouldn't. Because if you do by then, you probably weren't thinking hard enough. You were probably just following trends and not, you know, I'm not expanding your horizons enough to understand.

I've been, I mean, I'm super blessed to have worked with pretty much like every designation of reptile there is out there in one degree or another, be it in my collection or in others collections. So I have a pretty good idea of what I like at this point. Right. From, you know, geckos, small lizards, big monitors, crocodilians, every type of snake you could think of venomous, non-venomous. non-venomous, et cetera. And, you know, I'm fascinated by them all, but I definitely have found the few things that I'm the most passionate about. It took quite a while, but it was really fun to get there.

Like, don't, don't lose that sense of fun with it. That might be, that might be the, at the center of it all is, just let it be fun. It is not fun what the hell are you doing. Right. And I think, you know, tear back the layers until you can build back up to that. Yeah. I think that's a great point that people are in a rush to be a big breeder instead of figuring out what they love first. And you see it all the time where people buy up, you know, a pair of everything.

It's like everything under the rainbow. And then they realize real fast, okay, this isn't for me. And they turn around and sell it. Oh, this isn't for me. And then it just looks like they're all wishy-washy, you know, trying to build a business like that. It just, you almost need to get that out of your system first and then say, okay, I'm focused on these. I'm going to start offering babies or whatever and get people excited and pumped up about them. You know, I think that's that's a smart way to go about it.

Yeah, find out what you were passionate about first. And on that note, if you got to go through your Noah's arc phase, which many must do, okay, here's a new species I want to work with. Get one or get a pair. Don't get 10 of them. Right. Start slow. You know, if you find like this, I'm obsessed with whatever this is, there's going to be more out there. Right. There are very, very few, if any, species in this hobby that you'll only have like one shot ever in getting.

Yeah. Back around. You might pay a little bit more or it might not be exact the way you had access to the first time, but you're going to, it's going to come around. You know, there's nothing that's that rare in this hobby. Right. And you're also more equipped to give them. I mean, I think, you know, with having that idea of rack upon rack upon rack is hopefully going by the. the wayside a bit. And now people are focused on, okay, I want to give this thing the best life it can have. You know, I'm going to give it. Okay, it's going to be a scrub python. It's going to be this big. I'm going to give it a, you know, a 10 foot cage or whatever, you know, eight foot tall, you know, and just really kind of go out of your way to provide for the animal. And now,

obviously, you need to figure out if you really like scrub pythons first before you're sitting aside. But, you know, I guess keep in mind. Keep that in mind when you, you're starting out on these projects, like what it's going to need to really make it seeing. And I think people are looking for the minimum. What's the minimum sized enclosure I can have success in? I think we need to flip that on its head and say, you know, what would make this animal happier? You know, how can I best provide for this animal? And I think there's, there is a movement towards that where more people are considering that.

But I think that's a, if you're going through your nose arc phase, at least give the animals that you're experiencing a good home. while you have them. And that will help you too because you'll get to experience them. Like say, okay, well, I got a sandbow and it's always buried in the sand and I never see it. So I'm not that excited about it. Or, oh, I love this sandboa because I can see its little head poking out. And it's like a little, you know, attack from below sandworm or something. It really excites me. You know, maybe that's your thing. Who knows? But. So, you know, you never know until you kind of give it that chance. But if you're keeping it on paper in the rack system and you never see it, how do you truly know if you, like it or not, you know, if you get it out once a week to, you know, maybe handle it or something.

Yeah, 100%. No, that's a great point. No question. Well, Rob, any final words or we kind of made some points or we have anything left to discuss? No, I think this is really good. You know, I do think, unfortunately, it is sort of a common problem. I understand where, you know, the prompt had come from, right? Certainly I understand the place that it's coming from. And I do think it's most instructive in the context of folks that, you know, mostly, hopefully it's gone away. But sort of the glamorization of scale that we talked about is where it's the biggest issue. And then where you've got folks now that are sitting on a lot of stuff and having a difficult time with that.

And I think you're right, Stephen, the answer is to wind down as much as you can, you know, without, But, you know, obviously we, I guess the hard part, right, is navigating that, often is making sure people kind of, especially if they've then, they've committed to or emotionally committed to sort of downsizing that they do that in an ethical way, right? And that they don't just sort of check out on it and then let things get. That's how the whole, you know, the entire industry, the hobby, however you want to frame it, gets into trouble is when people just sort of. to check out and walk away. And then there's, we see that stuff, you know. And unfortunately, it seems like we've seen that even more recently with sort of the, maybe the say, the pitch of the idea, you know, the grand vision or whatever that folks

could do this. And then we see, you know, it doesn't look good in the news when there's, you know, oh, we came upon this house with a hundred dead snakes or a freezer full of a hundred dead snakes or whatever that's. So, you know, if folks are in that spot, that it's important to remain sort of, remain true to your ethics. These are living creatures and be be truthful and honest with them. Yeah. And I guess maybe to round out the topic kind of go speak a little bit maybe on the actual kind of thing that prompted all of this. You know, I think the idea that you shouldn't

breed anything until you already know that all of your babies can be sold is quite ridiculous. I don't think there's, I don't think too many people are going to have. much to say to oppose that aside from just a strictly ideological argument. I think a lot of us breeders have experienced the waitlist phenomenon and how that normally goes. Your list of people who are just super gung-ho. And then when the time comes, oh, message was read 45 minutes ago, they're going to get back to me, won't they? Two years older. Aw.

And then to look at the other side of it, okay, let's say, let's say you do have 10 people who want a baby from this hypothetical clutch. Let's say they give you their money and your female reabs on you. Are you, now what? Do you just keep all that money in some sort of like escrow kind of situation? Just give it all back at some point. Like imagine being the buyer in that situation. You know, this isn't dog breeding. Like this isn't something where there's a really kind of formulaic approach to it.

So and then the other side of that is, okay, could we look at this like super idealistic, picture perfect world where every animal you produce has a home? Okay, sure. Guess who's not doing it? The facilities that are producing tens of thousands of snakes a year. So if you want to look at it from that perspective, the only people that would have animals available on a routine basis would be the ones who you as a keeper are probably not super thrilled about the prospect of purchasing an animal from that person. So I think it's important to, like we've been discussing, think about what potentially your, what impact your breeding will potentially have on the overall market. And kind of like what Rob was saying earlier, what are you willing to hold on to? until next year. If you produced a clutch of X and you had 10 babies and you sold four of them

and now you have six, maybe don't throw the parents back together. Maybe see if you can sell those next six over this coming year and once you're down to zero, okay, now start over again. Instead of having 16 that you can't sell and now you're slashing the price or you're selling to a wholesaler for a hundred bucks a piece or whatever it might be. That's where the hobby gets into real trouble. So it's, you know, just breeding animals for the sake of breeding them, as we've seen. It's clearly a bad idea. But I think all it takes is a little bit of critical thought to not have to relegate yourself to. I'm only going to breed something if I know for a fact every single one will be sold beforehand. Like you got to really not trust yourself for

that to have to be your approach. Right. Right. Or you have a very valuable project that, you know, that everybody wants and there's some projects that by their very nature will be that. I mean, right, right. You know, I guess for just to speak for myself, like, if I had another clutch of Halma Harris, I didn't sell any from the first year. No question I would be able to sell every single one of those babies for whatever, at whatever price point. But at some price point, there are more than enough scrub enthusiasts out there who are

chomping at the bit for a captive bread Halmahera. Right, right. And I don't need to take a poll of people that, you know, I just know from from social media and getting messages every now and then like, hey, do you have any available? Like there's, there's a demand for them out there. So if you, again, can't get a gauge of that by the interactions you're having with people, you know, maybe this is more of a you problem than a problem of everybody else around you. If you, if you have that little awareness of your situation. Right. Yeah.

All right. Well, great, great discussion points. I mean, you just have a wealth of knowledge and experience, you know, in a lot of areas. So we appreciate you coming on and sharing that with us. Thank you, guys for having me. It's fun as always. Yeah, yeah. No worries, yeah.

Co-sign on everything Justin said. It's really great stuff, Maine. Thank you. I appreciate that. Right. And if people want to find you or see your stuff, where do they find that at? Yeah. Scrub Shepard on Instagram, Stephen Cush on Facebook.

Facebook, Cush Reptile on YouTube, Morf Market as well. And then my podcast is called Cush's Corner on the Trap Talk Reptile Network, YouTube, Spotify, Apple, Google, all the platforms you can find it. Yeah, highly recommend your podcast. It's really great. Thank you. Yeah. I guess I need to check out your YouTube page. I tend to just try to find people who show herping videos. Yeah, that's definitely not what you're going to see on my channel as of now. But I guess I see your reels on Facebook or Instagram. Yeah. Well, yeah, thanks again. I kind of like to end the show with anything you've seen cool in herpetulture or herpetology in the last bit that's really got you excited or those kind of things. Let me think.

Yeah. I think, oh, I mentioned, you know, I was listening to Jason Hood and I listened to Nick Muttons. on the Adam's podcast. What's the name of it again? The expert in the idiot. Expert in the idiot. Yeah.

He's had some fun shows lately. So yeah, good stuff. I mean, let me try to think. I was really encouraged by being at the Pomona show. You know,

aside from like a show like Daytona, probably the best species diversity I've ever seen in a reptile show. Oh, nice. That's great. It was awesome. And from, And from what I understand, that was very intentional on Romney's part for that to be the case.

But, you know, I mean, there were there were sun gazers at the show. Oh, wow. Like that, you know, that's not an animal that most herpetacultures have seen in person. Right. Period. So be able to see that, they went for sale, you know, obviously. But to see an animal like that at a reptile show is pretty incredible. Right.

There's a lot of cool calubrids. There are a lot of cool, you know, like San Zinia, West Indian. Boas, you know, there was a Madagascar Ground Boa at the show species that most people be like, whoa, why is that Dumarol so orange? Well, tell you why. Yeah. Yeah, just some, you know, captive bread green tree pythons, more scrub pythons than I've ever seen in a show before, both wild caught and captive bread.

Yeah. Just it was really encouraging to see how much diversity was present at that show. And I think it is indicative of, you know, and on my show in particular, I've been pretty critical of reptile shows over the last couple of years. And I'm not saying that has anything to do with me. But, you know, I don't think that my sentiment is something that I solely. Right, right. It's, you know, a lot of people feel this way about reptile shows that there's way too many of them and they're way too cookie cutter. So the promoters who are not just resting on their laurels of this is the,

the brand that I've built and everyone should know who I am. I'm such and such. This is this show. They're putting a lot of effort into promoting themselves the way that you're supposed to promote your business in this day and age with social media and whatnot and then curating their vendor list. So where it's not 80% ball pythons and crescent geckos and then every now and then you get a table with boa morphs. Right. We're now even to the point where like a leopard gecko table is like a rarity at some of these kind of like monocrop reptile shows. Yeah. But yeah.

So to see all the variety of that show was was really, really encouraging. I mean, Daytona was the same way, but Daytona is, Daytona is always Daytona. Right, right. You know, that's, that's the, that's the diversity show. It kind of,

I feel like it always really has been. Yeah. So, yeah, as far as like breeding, you know, we're kind of in that time of year where there's not a whole lot of cool stuff being, being born in January and February. Yeah. But, and you know, I, I don't, I don't like really go deep into social media rabbit holes for unrepital. So, like, I'll see stuff that, like, my friends are doing that are cool.

But I can definitely miss something that that happens right in front of my face just because I'm not scrolling far enough for it or that my whole feed is taken up by, like, Chicago Bears Post or something like that. You're right. Yeah. But, yeah, I mean, I think that, uh, yeah. I feel like also generally speaking, the kind of doomsday fears of the market has been crashing or whatever. I feel like that's kind of past us a little bit. I feel like I don't hear that quite as much anymore. And it was inevitable after the COVID boom that there was going to be pretty major correction.

And I think everyone's realizing that the market didn't crash. Certain aspects of the market crashed. And you just happened to be in the one that got oversaturated. The whole time when Ball Python were. fallen by like 40% a year, nobody could keep green tree pythons in stock. Right. Or, you know, whatever it may be or when, you know, like certain monitors had started to be produced so much that their, their prices were falling.

It's like, all right, well, look over here at Water Dragons. They've been, they've been listed on CITES. You can't get imports anymore. That $50 lizard is now $500. And a couple of people who are producing them can't keep them in stock. Yeah. So it wasn't a matter of the market. It was a matter of your, your sector of the market got oversaturated.

And that was the, the, the lenses that you were seeing the rest of it through. Yeah. There's, there's such a diversity, just so many cool reptiles out there. It's just sad to see like this monoculture. Like everybody's got to have the top five, you know, and you can't venture outside of that. Like, I love Paul Duren's story of, you know, getting a pair of scrub pythons. That's the first species he bred, you know, and did maternal incubation with him. Like, how cool is that?

You know, we need more stories like that, you know. And I guess it's probably a factor of there's so many around. Like, yeah, your neighbor, oh, I'm giving up a snake. Do you want it? You know, it's a boa or a ball python or whatever commonly available species are out there. So. And imports, of course, helped with that. But I do, I am encouraged that there is a diversity.

And, you know, it probably is mostly to do with. Rami and his, you know, selection of who's vending his show, but it's good to hear. And hopefully that gives people a broader perspective and they can learn about more cool species, you know. Yeah, I mean, you think about it from the perspective of, hey, you want to vend a show like, you know,

Super Show or Daytona or NRBC, bring something that they don't have. That's the thing to ignore. Right. I'm someone you don't know who has the same stuff as all the people who've been vending your show for 20 years. You really think you're at a table? Yeah.

I don't know. So bring something new. I mean, that's, you know, Bob Ashley, whenever he does come out publicly, he's always like, yeah, you know, people, I've had people hit me up the last second. Like, hey, I have a, I could bring a one table full of this to your show. And he finds a way to make it work because that diversity is that important. If it was, hey, I have one more table of all pythons for you. You can't imagine that message is you're responding to.

Yeah. And there's nothing more depressing than not knowing. when one table ends and the other begins because it's the same displays, the same species, the same, you know. Yeah, that's a topic all together. The reptile show display. I'm not a fan of the typical reptile show display.

I think it's a poor design. Yeah. No, I've always made my own, like, they look, you know, the earlier models looked a little ghetto, but they, you know, they served their purpose and they were unique at least, you know. Sure. Yeah.

No question. Cool. Well, great again to have you on and thanks for your insights. We'll thank Eric and Owen and the NPR crew for hosting us and we'll check you out next time for Reptile Fight Club.