Reptile Fight Club - Reptile Fight Club on Diverse vs Specialized Collections

Episode Date: April 29, 2022

In this episode, Justin and Chuck tackle the topic of Diverse vs Specialized Collections with Phil Lietz.Who will win? You decide. Reptile Fight Club!Follow Justin Julander @Australian Addiction Reptiles-http://www.australianaddiction.comFollow Chuck Poland  on IG @ChuckNorriswinsFollow MPR Network on:FB: https://www.facebook.com/MoreliaPythonRadioIG: https://www.instagram.com/mpr_network/YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCtrEaKcyN8KvC3pqaiYc0RQMore ways to support the shows.Swag store: https://teespring.com/stores/mprnetworkPatreon: https://www.patreon.com/moreliapythonradio

Welcome to the episode of Reptile Fight Club. And I am your host, Justin Julander of Australian Addiction Reptiles. And with me as always, Mr. Chuck Pullman. I am here to Wang Chung tonight. Whoa, all right. Kind of Wang Chung. Did you ever know what that meant? Was that like some kind of weird dance or something?

Wang Chung is a kind of kung fu. That is definitely correct. I don't know if it's Wang Chung tonight or Wang Chung tonight. It's everybody Wang Chung tonight? That was definitely correct. I don't know if it's Wing Chun tonight or Wang Chun tonight. It's everybody Wing Chun tonight? That was Wang Chun. I thought it was Wang Chun. I had a friend that did Wing Chun, so I think he thought it was the fighting one. I don't know.

That's okay. I thought it was Wang Chun. If there is a martial art called Wing Chun, then I definitely Wang Chun. All right. Well, we've got Mr. Phil Leitz on with us again. Thanks for being here, man. Somebody who definitely can Wing Chun

better than I can. He would be in the Wing Chun category, right? All day. You guys are ready for my Wing Chun jiu jujitsu style tonight all right please do not wing chung me too badly yeah no way no way well what's new with you well uh just it's it's like peak just before peak season here. So some of the first EuroMastics clutches just hatched.

And I've got, oh, man, I have a lot. It's a quality. It's a good thing, right? Yeah, yeah. But I have a lot this year. And I'm really nervous because I'm the only, it's just me over here, you know. And it's going to be a busy season. I Justin, did you say I posted those chuckwalla eggs yesterday?

Yeah, man, they are rebounding. They're coming back. Oh, yeah. They they were pretty shriveled when I found them. They were really, really, you know, in a bad spot or you didn't you weren't expecting them or what was the deal no so uh she it was kind of a mix of of both of those things so i was expecting them i i have two female chucks and um they came i i brought them home last year and when in my experience when you're dealing with wild caught lizards, if the older they are, like the closer they are to adulthood, the harder time they're going to have adjusting to whatever you're going to provide in captivity for nest. I mean, sure, that's with everything, right? Yeah, probably. Yeah.

And and so I set up the first female. She was obviously grabbage she's big and fat and so i set up a bunch of nesting spots all around the cage because i knew that chucks can be notoriously difficult in terms of where they want to lay and um i'd hatched them years ago redbacks way back in the day and stuff like that but this is the first time uh these are the white tail chucks and this is my first time uh getting those to breed what's the locality on them or where are they from? They are from Arizona. There's a few, a few places where they, where they occur, but like Maricopa County has, has white tail chucks and redbacks and some other stuff. Cool. Yeah. They're, they're, they're, do they breed true or do you get redbacks and white tails in the same?

So that they do the babies, they all definitely breed true. Um, the way they develop though. So whether you're talking about carrot tail, white tail or red back, you, you, the young males will all go through a very, very similar development where they all start looking like red backs first. Um, and then with the white tail and the carrot tail, as they reach maturity, they, uh, the, their back fills in completely black and it's, you're left with either just the carrot tail or just the white tail. Um, my person like granite Chuck Wallace are kind of my personal favorite, the ones from California and stuff with the Southern California, the ones I like the most, but for the white tail chucks,

I don't know what it is that there's something about them really compelling to me. And everybody loves the, the carrot tails and the red backs. And I just, I like the, it's the same thing with collared lizards, man. Everybody loves the blue Eastern collards and stuff, but I love the, the vestigium, the Baja's and I love bising Tories and reticulatus down, down South. I, I like the more, I'm much more drawn to contrast as opposed to color. Um, but, but at any rate, um, the first female laid her eggs in the sand. She just didn't use any of the nesting places, which was a drag. And then this one, um, what I did is I stacked up a bunch of Spanish

roofing tiles and I stuffed them with cocoa fiber and moisten that cocoa fiber. And, um, she used the spot, but then she backfilled with a bunch of dry sand. And so, but I found, and she laid overnight. And so I came in the next morning and I pulled up the roofing tile and there were these eggs, but they looked real dented and they were shriveled and stuff. So, and most of the time when I find eggs that far gone, they're, they're usually toast. Um, but, but, uh, I put them in pretty dry bedding and then added like a little, uh, cap full of just standing water inside the container and left it with, with no air, no air holes. And it's, they, they stopped collapsing and then now they've started to puff back up.

So they, they look like they're doing really well. And, um, at first I thought maybe one or two, but now all five of them are starting to come back. So I'm just like, rock on, dude. You still gotta, still gotta cross your fingers. They may not make it, but you know know it's still fun to see some progress yeah right yeah yeah it's always nice yeah it's fun to get eggs regardless but it is kind of a bummer when you see them and you're like oh no are these gonna make it or not you know yeah yeah what about what

about you guys i got some uh banded knobtail gecko eggs uh wheeler eye for the first time so yeah i'm pretty excited about that and yeah gee i i noticed they were looking bigger and i and i put them with males about a month ago so i'm like ah she's probably grab it i better give her some moist sand and so yeah luckily i i was ready for her and she that's awesome where she should have laid so yeah it's pretty nice and i think i've got another one or or maybe two that that could go and then you know hopefully they'll give me a couple clutches this year but well yeah how many eggs is that is that is that a two geckos usually just like two okay okay yeah yeah i'm not i'm not sure if any geckos lay more than two eggs yeah i know i mean sometimes you'll get one one right i'll get

one out of a lot of my uh my morning geckos they'll routinely lay one get one egg but sometimes they'll lay two but yeah yeah yeah i think it's mostly two for most two or one or two for everybody i think i mean i'm sure there's some out there that who knows somebody's gonna somebody's gonna send us angry messages like oh no no i had a leopard gecko that laid three one time. I'm telling you. Right. All right. I'm sure it's possible. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Geckos are fun. We're working with some banded geckos now. Oh, nice. My daughter kind of took on the project, and she's pretty excited about it. The little coleonics? Yep.

Yep. Dude, I love those. Yeah. They're really cool. Wait. Me. So, I love those. Yeah. They're really cool. Wait. Me. So one of the last times, so years and years ago, I went out with a couple of buddies out in Arizona and California, and I brought back some Coleonics.

And they were mating in the deli cup. Oh, yeah. Yeah. When we caught them off the road, they were just mating in the deli cup. It's crazy. Yeah, right. Yeah. Right. Yeah.

I mean, we put them in the tank and like threw in some food and they're just right on it. You know, like no, no, no waiting around, no establishing.

I think they just come from such a severe environment. They're like, anything works for them, you know, they are so, I mean, and they got, they've got to be eaten by everything, right?

Everything eats them up, whether it's the snakes or the lizards or the birds or the raccoons or the rodents, spiders, scorpions. They're prey for everything, so they've just got to go. Yeah, and make a lot of themselves. So, yeah, they're going to breed in a deli cup or, yeah, eat whatever is thrown in front of them. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, they're cool. I also got some jungle eggs or yeah. Eat whatever is thrown in front of them. So yeah, absolutely. I also got some jungle eggs. So that's nice. Uh, from, Oh, I saw that. Yeah. I saw that. She's big, huh? Yeah. She's a big girl. So I think I got 13 eggs out of her. So she,

she looks kind of white. Well, I think the lighting, I took an iPhone picture and you know, I think with the lighting. Is it the lighting? I took an iPhone picture, and I had like her nest box was kind of lifted up so I could collect the eggs from her. And I'm like, oh, that looks really cool because like the light was peeking over the nest box onto her head, but then the rest of it was kind of dark. But she's really nice and yellow. She's got some really good yellow.

Oh, cool. Yeah. How's the male look is the male real nice he's a normal jungle and he look he's got stripe blood in him but he's got he's got really good black like really dark black and nice so now there you go yeah cool nice yeah some nice ones i it's nice to have jungles again i haven't read jungles for years and years i kind of laid off of that for a bit well yeah after they were bringing them in like crazy from Europe. Yeah.

Yeah. Rock on. It'll be nice to have them again. And I've got a couple inland females that look like they're going to go any day now. Cool. Sweet. It should be a good year for carpets for me. Excellent.

Excellent. How about you, Chuck? I had a pair of coastals that were outside that that female laid on Easter. So that's kind of cool. So I think my zebra laid on Easter, too. Got some Easter eggs. So that was nice. Yeah. And just have I've got a bunch of viper gecko eggs in the incubator. And I had like three, three of them hatch in the

past couple days so i've got yeah it's just like some little viper geckos running around which is fun and uh love those yeah yeah so we'll see i don't i don't know how anything else is gonna do the rest of the year though so because i i i thought i thought maybe i had a couple more and i'm just not sure now. So we'll see. We'll see. Yeah. This is a fun time of year, though. I love it.

Yes, it is. It's the best. You never know how it's going to go until they lay. Yeah. Oh, I'm on the cross of my fingers I can get these dang eggs to hatch. That's the black-headed eggs. Oh, yeah. That's what I really want.

Yeah. I knew what you meant. Good vibes, man. It's going to happen. Yeah, I sure hope so. They still look good or what? Yeah, yeah, they're looking good. Yeah, you got this, man.

No problem. Just the last clutch I got was two years ago, and they look good, but then we moved, like, right during the operation, and so that kind of, I think that's what messed up. But, I mean, like, you know. They went full term, you know. Yeah. I mean, I kind of feel like you have the failure correlated to the move, right? Like, it's not like they went full term and you were like, oh, they're dead.

What happened? Like, you know. Yeah, I had some indication of what went wrong. Yeah, yeah, yeah. For sure. yeah yeah yeah for sure isn't it isn't it strange how some stuff seems so sensitive where you make one change and you you're done that's yeah tough tough shit next year you're gonna have to try again i got a buddy who uh who will remain nameless who uh uh went to i don't remember where he was somewhere in the southern united states and he found some turtle eggs and i don't remember what kind of turtle but he he put them in a

container and put them in the suitcase brought them home and they hatched man like really yeah i've seen people like ship your eggs ready to hatch and they'll do it for turtles and stuff. It's like, wow, that seems really weird. And they guarantee they'll hatch for you and stuff. So that's kind of crazy. Yeah. So crazy, man. It is so crazy. People drop eggs on the ground and then pick them up and they hatch like, yeah. Right. What the hell? Remarkable. Yeah. I, I, was i noticed that my uh crested geckos at work had laid a ton of eggs and i just had the first hatchling from that batch of eggs that i didn't know was there and you know my god wonder why they're digging around in their cage and i'm

like oh there's like 10 eggs in in the cages nice got a bunch of i'm not sure what I'm going to do with them, but they're hatching out. We have a new reptile shop locally. Jay's Jungle. They've been all selling animals here and there. They're really cool people.

If you're in Northern Utah, come check them out. What else is going on? Anything of note? You're hatching eggs out already, huh? You got baby gymnastics. Yeah. What's the incubation time on those? It ranges just a little bit based on species. So some stuff like Thomas I and Princeps can hatch about 55 days. But it depends a little bit. You know, if you cook them pretty hot, like I incubate everything at about 90 to 92. Some stuff I put down to 88, you know, because they just they incubate.

They like it toasty. And at that at the 90 to 92, the Thomas I hatched 55, 60 days. And then stuff like the Egyptians will take closer to 75, maybe 80 days at the same temperature. And then I've had a couple I've had a handful of like Yemenensis or Flavifasciata, where they're maybe a little bit larger. And maybe I put them at 88 instead of 90 and it takes them 80 days sometimes. It varies just a little bit. on the uh um like sometimes when stuff hatches super fast and right away the babies are like extra vigorous and grumpy and for whatever reason they were just ready to rage and then sometimes if it takes a little longer it you know maybe the baby hatches and it's good but maybe it's a little

smaller than some of the some of the other ones or maybe it takes a couple extra days to get feeding. I don't necessarily think there's anything wrong with that, but it's just an interesting observation. I think that the vast majority of my stuff, it's kind of a little bit of a mess, but that's one of my incubators right there. You can see in the background, it's one of the little hotbox incubators. Most of the stuff hatches pretty quickly and you know they hatch within a few days of each other and they're ready to rage but you know uh they vary a lot but what i'm what i'm not looking forward to even though it's the best time of year is when everything's out oh yeah because there's gonna be oh i mean there's there's a lot of baby 20 baby egyptians and but before they go home

those things are going to be eating and crapping five times a day just just letting it rip and i'm just you know summertime is nothing but poop poop cleaning yeah scooping yep yeah yep that's the fun right it is it is it is yeah it's crap it's craptastic just i don't know so for some reason it's so much funner to clean up after babies oh yeah clean up oh yeah oh yeah yeah yeah yeah the only time it's not is when you get like one of those one of those days where the all the babies decided to take a dump at the same time. And then they decide to paint the cage, you know? And you're like, no, I have to take, I have to take all of you out and I have to soak you guys and get that crap

off of you. And I have to clean all the cage furnishings and, Oh man. See, I just make them wear it and teach them. That's awesome. That's a good idea. Show me your war face. Oh, man. All right. Well, are we ready to fight?

Heck yeah. Let's do this. All right. So today we're talking about a focused collection versus a more diverse collection um which one is really a better thing right so um let's see we'll chuck we'll have you call it and see who gets to debate phil today okay let's call it in the air oh what the hell? That was tails. You're right. Oh my god. And I just want to paint the scene here.

Justin tried to obscure the coin toss. You're trying to paint the scene like Phil's lizards paint the cage. That's correct. Because it was a bunch of shit all over the place there. Based on the trajectory in the arc

i could tell folks that that was a tail's throw that's so great oh that's great okay well phil you ready to call it yeah sure i guess do you want to debate him or do you want me to i want you to you want me to i want you all right i want you guys i've been talking for like an hour today I feel like this is Phil's I'm trying to give Phil

a good fight here Justin you're worn down you're ripe for the picking get him Phil I still got enough vinegar and piss in me so alright Phil you ready to go oh man get him phil i still got enough vinegar and piss in me so all right yeah i'm ready okay i'm gonna go tails again we got heads that looked like all right i'm not gonna lie i would have probably called that one a tails as

well phil so well, my record stays intact. I must admit that my formula did not calculate on that, bro. That's all right. That's all right. You win some, you lose some. Yeah. Yeah. All right.

Well, I think I'm going to go with what I've got, with a varied collection. All right. Yeah. I mean, they all kind of revolve around Australia. I guess that's maybe something we need to start out with is kind of defining that. So yes. What, what we consider a focused or a diverse collection. So I'm going to let you go first. So you're, you're going to be fighting for the case of the focused specialized collection and, yeah. And what that means, I guess, what a specialized focus collection means to you.

Okay. Yeah. So let me, that's a great, I wanted to definitely was thinking to outline the same thing early on, because I think specialization is going to depend just a little bit on what your particular preference might be. So like, for example, in my case, I tend to be pretty focused on mostly desert reptiles, right? But I could also see specialization being one species, one color form, one region, one climate, one continent, one genre. I mean, there's so many different ways to split that level of specialization, right? I'm a reptile specialist. Yeah, exactly. We specialize in reptiles, right?

Like I have just lizards. I don't keep any snakes here. You know what I mean? I've got some. Yeah, I got a corn snake at home just for me and my fiance. It's just because we like it. Anyway, so I think that the way that specialization is going to push you in one direction or another will depend a little bit on how you choose to specialize. And actually, I was talking with another friend about this a little earlier today, just kind of talking just because I was telling him about we were going to do this. And he was like, what do you mean? And I was telling him how if you put my if I were to put my time with reptiles on a sliding scale, it tends to just

drift back and forth between more specialized and less specialized, you know, and some of that is because I have a little bit of ADD. I'm addicted. I just love everything. There's, you know, there's so many cool reptiles. So many. Yeah, exactly. There's so many cool things. And, and then I guess it's going to depend a little bit on if you're just collecting, like if you're just keeping as purely as a hobby, then it doesn't matter as much if you choose to go. And I think in either direction, I mean, it matters a little, right. But, um, and, and we'll get into that. But, um, I think if you choose to do reptiles as a business too,

that changes your calculus because, and, and I'm not, I, uh, I'd like to, I'm hoping that we can keep it relatively free form where, you know, maybe in some, you know, we'll say in some situations it's good to do this. And in some situations, because it just seems like that's the way it goes. But sure. From a business perspective, at least, it does seem that specialization tends to tends to help a little bit. And I think there are a few reasons for that. One is you can really, really dig into the nitty gritty of what makes that one kind of animal tick. So in my own facility, for example, even though I keep a diverse number of species, I'm drifting more and more towards really primarily keeping uromastyx

ornata um and some of that is just a preference that i just love that species a lot i find myself drawn like i really want to keep all five or six of these ones i don't want to sell these you know like it's they're just so beautiful rightly so yeah they're probably the prettiest lizard out there almost yeah they're they are prettiest lizard out there almost. Yeah, they are a ground-dwelling desert panther chameleon is what they are. Yeah, right. And so you can specialize, and that allows you to narrow down the number of variables that you're dealing with on any day-to-day or year-to-year basis. I also think that it tends to be maybe a little bit more financially safe.

So, you know, if you're keeping 50 different species and you're splitting your attention and your time and your focus between 50 different things that have varied needs and requirements, you might be less efficient at providing top notch, uh, care to each individual species. Now, obviously it's not always the case, but, uh, from my experience, that's, that's one of the things I deal with. Uh, I would say it's, I would say you're pretty spot on with that. And the people who do that well are few and far between.

I think Joey Muggleson is probably one person I can think of who does quite a bit of different stuff. And he seems to do year to year very well. Obviously, I don't know Joe. I mean, Justin, you live closer to him than I do. Yeah, I've been to his place a couple times. He's got a very diverse collection and makes a go of it really well. But I mean, he's got a warehouse. He's set up pretty good size.

And he's full-time and he's got employees. And some of his employees maybe specialize on certain groups or things like that. So within the diversity. So maybe that's an argument against myself. But I want to address maybe it's infrastructure, right? It's, I mean, yeah. Okay. Sorry. Go ahead. Maybe I'll, I'll address the, uh, the, the cost issue. And I would say one pitfall of, of just really specific specialization is most reptiles kind of have that ebb and flow of popularity and whether or not people want to buy them. So if you're just breeding as a business, trying to breed one species and all of a sudden

they kind of fall out of fashion, you're sitting on a lot of babies or you're having to wholesale and you're not making as much and you're going through a lot of work for, for not a lot of things. So, you know, in the case of a more diverse collection, you can kind of put those on hold or just kind of maintain them as, you know kind of put those on hold or just kind of maintain them as, you know, and not pair them up and not breed them and just keep them, you know, as pets for a little while until, you know, that, that comes back around and that cycle, you know, back with where they're more popular. And so, you know, you can, if you have a more diverse collection, you're going to appeal to a broader audience. And so

at reptile shows, you know, they're going to come to your table because you have just a huge diversity. And that's one of the fun things about going to Joey's table is he's got a lot of different things to look at and a lot of cool species that not everybody has. He's got crocodile lizards or blue monitor, blue tree monitors, or, you know, these things that he's bred. And, you know, he's got some really kind of cool eclectic tastes that not a lot of people even know about some of the species he keeps, you know, so it's, it's really a fun, fun thing to see his table. So I think people are drawn to that and you'll see that, you know, with all the importer booths, you know, they've got just like a huge diversity and, know, this is at least Joey's stuff is really

healthy and maintained well. And, you know, it's not just going to die when you get at home or something, which may not be the case with some of the other bit, you know, diverse tables. Um, but so, so it is a little tricky to do, but I think, you know, in, in,, and I guess I'm not necessarily talking about, you know, huge diversity all across the map. But I think you can diversify to some extent. Like, I guess my collection I would consider somewhat diverse. So I've got pythons and skinks and geckos. And, you know, they all have kind of different requirements. But they all can be housed in the same room as long as you kind of meet what they need.

And I'll talk more about kind of that, you know, how to maintain a diverse collection in the same room. But sure. So I'll let you chime in here if you've got something to say. Yeah, definitely. Yeah. So I definitely don't disagree with you on that at all. I think that one of the things that I like, because I've listened to your guys' show every time it comes out also. And I think one of the running... You're our one listener. We found him. Just the one. Now who's going to listen?

You're on. That's awesome. Awesome. And I think like a running theme is that even though that the theme of the show is fight reptile fight club. Most of the conversations seem to fall towards there's kind of a lot of ways to do this. Right. There's a lot of different ways to get this kind of thing done. And I think it obviously it's a great setup because it's really good for us to take a specific position. It helps for better conversation. I think one way that I, one particular topic that is a little sensitive to my sensibilities at the moment is, and this would probably, this is going to speak to Justin, to your profession. When you specialize, when you focus, when you do what i've heard philippe devotiole call a reptile

monoculture um you run the risk of um increased risk of pathogen introduction so like not introduction but um susceptibility to pathogens because if you're keeping the same species say or the same even the same genre right like all the uromastics they could all catch the same, even the same genre, right? Like all the uromastyx, they could all catch the same problem, whether it be a virus or some other, you know, little bug or protozoa or parasite or something. And it could, it could sweep through everybody if I'm not careful. There's a, there's a, an oral fungal issue that occurs in uromastyx that is not treat, it's not curable. And it's, once it's there, you, you can't, you know, you can manage it, but it's always going to be there. And so I have worked very, very, very hard to not have any animals here with that problem. Um if one slipped through my quarantine, it could threaten the whole thing, which is a big

problem for a long-term project. Now, which is, again, sort of an argument for a diverse collection for your side, but I would say that perhaps there's a downside there as well, because let's pretend I have a super diverse collection and maybe i only have four uromastyx well the same thing can happen and either a it's going to wipe out those four and i'm going to have to figure out a new way to get those animals but also it may you may see a spread right it may not meet be contained to just one animal, one type of animal. And by having a super diverse collection, you may run a higher risk. That was pretty good. You may possibly run a higher risk of getting some crossover, some Europeans meet the Mayans kind of, you know what I mean? Kind of thing happening. So I could see both of those turning into a bit of a problem. For sure.

Yeah. I have a friend that's going through that here in Utah. He had a collection of ball pythons and got a Nido virus and it just roared through his whole collection. And he said, it's just tragic going into the reptile room seeing now who's dead you know and like there's nothing you can really do about it except try to isolate the ones that are sick and he's like well when it spreads like that and everybody's sick it's it's tragic so and i i mean i almost feel like you know when you have a diverse collection you can get something that's

completely asymptomatic you bring something in in an animal that's completely asymptomatic you bring something in in an animal that's completely asymptomatic and like you know a lot of people maybe they keep a diverse collection but you know most of us keep like like pythons you know what i mean and you can bring in um you know uh a chondro that's asymptomatic and it makes all of your carpets and all of your ball pythons really really sick right so that that's like that that's kind of to me is almost you know at least if you have one if you're specializing um you you you can safeguard your protocols and you can do all of those things and and and and potentially catch that uh because you know you're working very similar to something uh whereas if it's diverse you may quarantine that thing and it

may be completely asymptomatic you could even test it and it may not test positive but then when you put it in the collection boom you know so go ahead yeah and no that's totally dead on man and um uh i meant to say this before but it slipped out of my mind but um when you're working with a specialized group so let's say in 10 years let's say i'm doing nothing but ornata right um it it's very likely that by that time i won't be bringing in any new animals, right? I'm going to have a sufficient colony of Ornata. I mean, I already don't really, I'll bring in wild caught stuff, but that's it, you know, just because it needs, I need, you know, you might need new genes here and there, but my goal already is I don't, I have a standing rule for the last few years. I'm just not going to bring in new animals from people because I've got enough here to where I don't need to bring in any animals. And I wouldn't have that sort of, um, uh, sort of like genetic security safety net. If I, if I,

if I had a very, very diverse collection, because it's harder to maintain a sufficient population size with a very, very diverse collection, unless you are, uh, like, uh, Joey and myself, where you've got a shop, you've got a flex warehouse space and you can afford to have a lot of different animals even even 20 species and have 20 individuals of each 20 species i mean that could be very safe but um it there is a certain level of of um peace of mind that i get out of knowing that nobody new has to come here. Yeah. Yeah. At least with regard to pathogens anyway. Yeah. And, and I mean, when you have, and this is to your point, when you have a focus collection, you know what to look for, you know, you know what the, you know, unless something new pops up or something, you know,

you know what you're looking for and you know what to expect and what a sick animal looks like. And so that's, that's very helpful. Right. Yeah. I, I guess, uh, you know, I would say if with, uh, that kind of focus collection, at least people like, you know, like, like you mentioned, we run the risk of getting bored with, you know, just doing the same thing. And it's like, okay, I've done this for 10 years in a row. You know, I want something new or a new challenge. And so it can be, you know, maybe a little tedious if you're the one keeping that one. I remember there was somebody back in the day that specialized in just pastel ball pythons. Like that's how. And they made a good go of it for several years, you know, and they had some really nice looking pastels.

And they could refine that one gene and make, you know, make them look really nice. But, um, you know, what happens when, you know, they kind of fall out of favor, I guess I touched on that before, but, you know, it seems like after a while you'd just be like, okay, I'm, I'm done with the pastel thing. I want to try something else or move on to another project or something. So, and, and yeah, they didn't, they, I think they moved on to something else or, or left, left the hobby altogether. I don't know. So hopefully, hopefully didn't leave altogether, but that'd be a bummer. So I, you know, I, I think, you know, having a more diverse collection lets you kind of get,

get new challenges and learn about new, new species and new, uh, um, you know, get, get, uh, experience with more things and yeah. Oh yeah. You know, you're, you're dead on with that one. And that would have been a, another argument that I would definitely try to make in your favor is that, I mean, I do that all the time, you know, I, again, I focus on the Euros, but I also have Xenogama and I have dwarf iguanas and I've got chucks and I've got, um, Amy, I as well, you know, and, and I do that because I get bored. Um, and, and also not just boredom, but also, you know, if you're working with a lot of different stuff, sometimes you find something, some random quirk of, Oh, it turns out that chuck wallows and Euromastics are pretty much

the same thing. One's just from North America and one's from the Middle East. And it turns out these roofing tiles and these things that the chuck wallows love, all the Euros love them too. So you get this, this cross compatibility with some of your care tech techniques and some of the, you start noticing preferences across animals that maybe sort of inhabit similar environments or some, you know, some sort of similar ecological niche. But I will also say that something that I'm noticing, again, I'll use the species where I can notice nuances about Euromastix ornata broadly that I may never notice in something like Princeps or a Thomasi where I, you know, maybe I have a smaller population of those or, you know, maybe like fewer animals and um this would maybe plug into another point i i wanted to make which is about um sort of scientific uh rigor you know like if you're keeping a very diverse collection you might say well you know i and not everybody does this but we all know a lot of people do this. They'll say, oh, you know, Uromastyx filbii does X, Y, or Z. It's like, okay, but you have four of them.

You only have four. That's nothing. That's a meaningless data point, right? You're using anecdata, right? And that's not sufficient. Whereas with Ornata, I'm getting to the point where, I mean, I still don't even consider the numbers that I've got anywhere close to a sufficient sample size, but I am starting to see really, really similar like pattern and color combinations that occur in Ornata. And that's allowing me to notice quirks in oh that animal

has a striped pattern across the back and is developing cobalt and salmon and that's very rare that you see that particular pattern coupled with that particular color most of the time the cobalt and salmons have oscillations on the back and it's weird. So, you know, I, I'm starting to think about some of this a little bit like, um, I would imagine some people think about their koi operations or some of their bonsai operations, right? You can, you can tweak and refine and, and shave off all those beautiful, all those little, little extraneous and superfluous things that you'll, you would never be able to do with, um, a sufficient level of diversity. Yeah. Yeah. And, and just the nuances of keeping, you know, the more you specialize,

the more you just delve into and notice differences in behavior or, or patterns to behavior. Like you said, when, you know, I think if you, if you have four animals, it might take you 20 years to get to that point. Whereas if you have 20 animals, it might take you four years, you know, it's, it's all about sample size and, and looking at trends and, you know, cause I mean, you know, anything's going to have its individual personality to some extent. You know, no two animals behave the same exact way. And so the more you have, the more you learn.

So I think I'd trust somebody like you, you know, that has numbers over somebody who's got their first pair and read about them on the Internet. And yeah, yeah, for sure. how certain species are different from others or fill different niches and nippers and, you know, that kind of idea. So it's, it's really, I guess you can, you can gain similar experience by having a diverse collection. I mean, you know, your, your specifics aren't going to be as specific, but, you know, overall, you're going to have a really good handle on the group, you know, or multiple groups or, you know, that kind of idea, I suppose. For sure. I know, you know, one of my good friends, Terry Phillip, he's got, you know, he takes care of a very diverse collection of reptile gardens. They have, I think, the biggest collection of reptiles

in the U.S., maybe the world. I think're on the guinness book of world records for a while as having the most diverse collection and so he kind of um identified you know or at least maybe went along with uh some some uh other ideas and kind of refined them but you know he kind of identified that hey when you're keeping you know most reptiles they do well at 80 degrees like they kind of that constant temperature of 80 fits you know is the most common denominator out of all these different species you know and so and that's how you know they kind of maintain that uh collection there's they heat the room to 80 and and that's that's sufficient for most of the

species that they keep to to do their normal functions and even breed and things like that so you do have to kind of find those very common denominators wouldn't harry also say that sometimes he might sacrifice some success with reproduction because he splits to the mean yeah i'm sure i'm sure you know like like you know we were talking about once you specialize you get further and further in depth and you know i mean there there is some nuance to a building like i said you know i've got a species of leaf tail gecko the the riverine leaf tails uh by laris amnicola that uh live in fairly cool temperatures you know kind of at the top of a

mountain or high up in a mountain range. And they, you know, live next to streams. And so they don't need a high degree of heat in their environment and cage. I mean, it might get warm where they live, but so I keep them, you know, without a light and without, you know, the extreme, extreme heat, they just do well at the room temperature and they do fantastically well. They're very low maintenance and they, you know, don't, don't eat a lot of food and things like that. So I can find a spot in my herp room that works for them, you know, and if that doesn't work, I'll take them to my office, you know, work office and set them up there where, you know, it's a little cooler, uh,

consistently, you know, I just pet a furry dog and I got dog hair all over. These guys saw it and they're like, what the hell? I thought you were fanning a fart, man. No, no, no. That's a completely different face. Much worse. I do the same thing, Justin. So my Amy, I, for example, I have UV, I put them under UV, but I don't have any supplemental

heat on them at all because the ambient temperature in the, in the room here is plenty. Right. And what I do is I actually rotate them. So I'll move their cages from in the winter. They're up above on upper shelves because then there's like getting the rising heat from some of the heat lamps. And then in the summertime I put them on the floor because then they don't get, you know, it just helps make it so that, cause if I keep them up at the top during the summer, they'll, they'll cook. I mean, it's, it's like a, it's like a hundred ridiculously, probably 110 degrees up

on the ceilings. Yeah. The euros, they just go crazy. Right. Yeah. But, you know, another thing I was going to say, too, is that there's kind of there's some other downsides to specializing, too. So so, for example, I know I'm totally making your point now, but the for example, the supplies, like you can get dependent. If you're a specialist, you can get very dependent on a specific set of supplies or food or whatever it might be. So I know that California has the, they don't do halogen lights anymore. You can't, you know what I mean? And so I've had a huge influx of customers asking me, what do I do? Where do I get lights? Because I can't get halogens anymore. So they either have to go get reptile specific stuff or they have to go order online and get it sent to them. with a handful of different light manufacturers, or if the grocery store has all of a sudden stopped carrying certain greens, I could be in a bad spot, right?

So it certainly leaves you with some level of vulnerability. But then one of the other problems I found when I've tried to diversify my particular collection for, you know, so for example, I also have Cuban night and all it's a couple of species, right. And they, they don't like it hot here. They just don't. And they do much, much better in, in cooler spaces. And so when I was trying to keep them in the warehouse, I had to throw,

I had to get like a portable air conditioning unit and blow it on them. So that way, cause they just get so hot. And eventually I've just moved them back to my, my home now because there's nothing else there and they can just, it's just much easier for them. But it's almost not worth the resource input. No, it's not. It's just, yeah, exactly. And you know, so when you specialize and by specializing in desert reptiles, I've been able to make interesting improvements to the way I house everything. So so just a few random examples, because everything here likes it scorching hot. I have so many lights and I have so many so many bulbs going that I don't have to use very high wattage bulbs most of the time. In the summertime, I can drop down to 50 watt bulbs on the Euros because it's just so hot.

There's 500 bulbs. In the wintertime, sometimes I have to bump that up. Totally normal. Um, but it, I'm also able to plug and play in a way where, you know, I mentioned the amy eyes, so they, they don't require any supplemental heating. They can, you know, I have a Dubia colony. My Dubia colony feeds the amy eye. It also feeds my anoles. It also feeds my, um, my xenogama, you know, and I have mealworm colonies for the same purpose. So you're, you're able to, um, if you can find animals that fit that specialty, you almost get like a synergy out of it. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. That's the word. That's the vocabulary, the synergy.

Yeah. Trying to keep a, like a dubia colony for, for like a pair of AMIA or, you know, it's kind of a, you know, not really. And actually I found kind of a cool thing. I threw in some mealworms with my Dubia colony and now I've got as many mealworms in the colony as I have Dubia. Are they just living in the litter in the litter? Yeah. So I, so I don't really take out the waste from the roaches and they seem to, cause they can burrow in there and the, and the,

the babies can escape the, you know, whatever. And so they seem to do much better with a layer of the frass or whatever you want to call it. Okay. And then the mealworms get in there and do great. So I, cause I, I've got mealworm colonies as well, but the mixed dubia mealworm colony, I think almost does better than the mealworms alone. I'm going to try that yeah i'm gonna try that i have it so that was a fun little thing it is man my my dubia colony has um those

little buffalo beetle larvae in there and i love those things because my baby amy i like or not amy my hatchling xenogama taylori they they come out so tiny you know that they're not really like little mealworms and stuff just aren't really suitable but those little buffalo beetle larvae buffalo beetle larvae just they love that stuff and all i gotta do is sit a pepper or an orange on the litter for five minutes and then i flip it over and i scrape all the worms into a cup, shake them up and dump them into a bowl and the tailor. I just pick them off all day long. It's so perfect. And that's the stats, that synergy stuff that, you know, like that works out great. Yeah.

And that's, I was thinking, I was looking at, I thinking about doing some black fly black fly, the black soldier fly. Yeah. Those seem like a really, uh, good, you know, food source. And I like to diversify my insect feeders and, you know, not just have one all the time. So I was thinking about adding those. It, it might be a little bit of a pain here for the, for the adult flies. So maybe I'll just order them. But, um, I, I saw these, these ingenious ways of raising the black fly larvae, you know, and they have these specialized kits you can get that kind of funnel the larva and then they fall into a cup. So, you know, and they just, they just move up the ramp and just

dive into this cup and then you just pull the cup out and you've got a cup, you know, ready to feed to your lizards or something. So I thought, Oh, what a nice little thing that would be, but they seem to do really well, but you just have to pump them with your, you know, uh, vegetable waste or your, you know, uh, decomposable waste. And I, there was a guy that was living on a boat, kind of like homesteading on a boat out in Southeast Asia somewhere. And he had like a colony of black soldier flies and they would actually put their waist in with those and the flies would get rid of the waste or

something. It's kind of crazy. Did they fish? Did they use the larvae for fishing? Yeah, they used them for all sorts. They were feeding like, I think they had ducks and chickens on board and they would feed those to the ducks and chickens and they would use them. Yeah. For all sorts of stuff. You know, that's's that's crazy so cool um yeah totally this is a slight tangent uh forgive me but so my mother is a she keeps bees and um and and so if you're a beekeeper you know that a lot of times they'll kick out dying bees

from the hive um and they just spit them out right in the front and so my mom has them on a concrete slab in the backyard. And so when they kick out those bees, there's some of them that are still kind of kicking around and moving for a few hours and stuff. I'll go over there and I'll collect all these bees and I'll bring them over and I'll feed them to the xenogama. I used to feed them to collared lizards. The anoles would eat them. And then so do my dwarf iguanas, actually. The catfish, they'll eat them too.

That's cool yeah well i was reading the reason i got into the soldier fly uh um rabbit hole was i was i was looking at those we saw those uh the rock lizards the banded rock lizards in in the mirn's eye in southern california when we were out there and and so i'm like i was i was reading about them and their their bee and and uh wasp specialists or fly specialists so i was thinking well what could i what species of fly could i breed you know to kind of feed them flies but it's a great idea yeah they're really good yeah they are have you ever messed with the the baja blue rock or the never kept them no i've wanted to i i also have a soft spot for the for the mern's eye or miran's eye in particular yeah um i don't know why they are and and and i know that people love the baja blue rocks because they're just so stunning yeah i get it i get it and everybody loves the pretty lizards i mean i'm here for it um but i there's something about the Miranzai that's just like.

They're on the same wavelength. Yeah. Yeah. They're so cool. Yeah. They're cryptic and they're just fun to watch. They are. I thought that would be cool to have a big cage with them in it.

They are down, damn near impossible to approach. Yeah. They just will not give you the time of day it's amazing i love those lizards man yeah they're so fun to watch too so you know i i think i've got i've hit on the point where i just want to go see them in the wild i don't necessarily want to collect them and keep them but i i was thinking if i were to what would i need to do you know yeah that kind of sent me down that rabbit hole learning about them and stuff yeah and you know I guess that's the you know the the the truck the struggle and you know sometimes you'll have animals that have more specific requirements and you know you run

out of space because you you know you got yourself a collection of mirren's uh rock lizards and you got uh you got to have this you know giant cage with a big rock face in it or something, uh, to keep them happy. And, um, you know, there's, there's different, different challenges that way, but, you know, I, I do think that, uh, you know, having those, those new challenges or those, you know, new species that you've never worked with and that excitement of producing a new species is always a pretty, pretty fun thing. Oh, no doubt. I, I, so another thing I think too, that is, it is interesting is, um, and I don't know, this might be pure speculation nonsense. So, you know, take it for, take it for what it's worth. But, um, I think that the majority of people who I know who really are stuck on having a diverse collection,

like it's got to be a lot. And I don't mean just like an interest in a lot of different things. I mean, like they just everything's so interesting. Everything is this hot new thing. This is the new thing. This is the new species. I think people can get a little addicted to that. That's called the Mackinwookie.

Yeah, I don't know that what's that from that's uh that's owen mcintyre's new handle the mackin oh so owen is owen is amassing quite a different collection of different animals and stuff so yeah i that episode hasn't come out yet so that's why phil hasn't heard the oh okay yeah i coined that on the last episode it's hilarious i was trying to think of what the term was and i i couldn't mac and wookie that's great stay with me folks mac and i think i think that needs to be the prize a shirt the mac and wookie shirt should be the prize for our future like the back of the back of the next carpet fest will have the Mac and Wookie logo on it.

That's a good idea. I don't know if Eric will go for that one. I still want to hear his inputs. I don't know. Okay, I'm sorry, Phil. No, it's okay. Dude, I will go off on tangents and talk for

hours about something that has nothing to do with any of this. So that's no problem. I think we don't run short of that here. No, no. Chuck and I do the same. Yeah, but I, and it's not that it's necessarily inherently bad. I mean, I'm just as guilty of it as anybody. I've, and it's one of those hard lessons of herpeticulture sometimes you see this new animal

that you've maybe you've never worked with before or you've never seen before and you decide oh i really want to i want to mess with that because that's one of the coolest things ever and it may be that it just doesn't fit with you with your space with your preferences and whatever it may be and in those cases you you know, maybe actually, okay, maybe I made a mistake on this project and I have to find a better home for it. And that's possible, but I, and that's reasonable, totally reasonable. But I do think that there are a lot of people who, and we all know at least one person who's like this, where they just cycle through stuff over and over and over again. And they, they keep it for nine months and then move

on to something else. They get, you know, they get bored too easily. Yeah. And it's definitely not my style. I agree there. It's like so obnoxious to see sometimes, but you know, then again, like people, you know, it might, like you said, they may not have a good fit with it or they just want to move on to the next thing and as long as they're responsibly moving their projects on you know they're not like just dumping them at a rescue or something like that you know then totally i can't i guess i can't fault them too much but you know some people want to see how many different species they can breed and you know that kind of thing so oh yeah some people just have a short attention span when they just don't get success with something and they're like oh fuck this you know and then they

dump it it didn't breed in 18 months i gotta get rid of it you know yeah yeah yeah no i mean i like and i've i've been i'll be the first to admit i i have been that guy right so when i was younger um i'm not old i mean i'm 35 now but i when when I was in my early twenties and in my teens, I could, I couldn't stay with anything. You know, it was like, I, I would always find my way back to bearded dragons. Cause you could get them to breed tomorrow, you know what I mean? Or leopard geckos. And there's nothing wrong with that. It was just, I was kind of stuck on it and I had that problem.

And now sometimes I have the opposite problem. So I have these, these damn cat tricks defense or and Alfred Schmidteye. I love them, and they're super cool. But, man, I haven't been able to get them to work yet. But it's also they're not really going to go anywhere until I can get them to work. I mean, even then, once I can get them breeding, they're probably not going to go anywhere. But then I have other examples of stuff. Like I used to keep the, uh, phrynocephalus mustacious, the, you know, the predator agamas. Right. And I, I thought they were going to be the coolest things to keep

and don't get me wrong. Very, very cool. Interesting social behaviors, everything, but my God, they were, I don't know what it was. I I'm sure I was doing something wrong, but they did not fit here. They, they were, they were so grumpy and they bit the shit out of me, man. They bite hard and, and they, they were, they were just really picky and, and, um, didn't like the K you know, I tried a dozen different caging styles because they just didn't like what I was giving them. And I i i eventually had to move on from the project and and that's that was for their benefit you know like it was clearly i wasn't giving them what they needed and it was meaning it was pointless for me to try to fit a square peg in a round hole you know like it's just

just wasn't worth it and that was was within my specialty, right? That's a desert lizard. And just for some reason, it just didn't pan out. Yeah. You know, it's hard. That's, that's for sure. But, you know, I think, you know, another, another justification or good reason to have a diverse collection would be for educational purposes, you know, like a zoo or things. And that's, you know, kind of departs from the breeding scenario or the business scenario you know if you've if you've got a you know it seems like all the reptile youtubers are starting reptile zoos now and they're kind of popping up all over the place and you know more power to them i suppose i guess if i had unlimited funds and i

was making i mean where do, where do you go when the flash on the internet wears off? You, you invite them to your place and show them the flash. Exactly. Yeah. And I mean, I, I can't fall in for that. Cause I'd probably do the same thing. Cause who, you know, what reptile keeper hasn't dreamed of having their own reptile zoo, you know? Yeah, no doubt. Right. So, um, and so, you know to have a diverse uh collection in a in in that setting is obviously very useful i mean i couldn't imagine a zoo where you went in and just looked at different ball python more no yeah you get bored real quick yeah no you know someone's paying to get into that zoo man someone's like i gotta go yeah

and and you know to i guess to that point is most i i know that uh terry kind of said for a zoo to function you have to have the big five you know a giant snake a giant tortoise a crocodilian of some sort you know and like a cobra, yeah, a dangerous venomous animal and, and some other group, I don't know. And, and like, that's kind of what you had to have to be successful. And so, um, I, you know, the, for the most part, the public couldn't name, you know, five different reptiles, you know, specifically or scientifically they tried. So, you know specifically or scientifically yeah yeah yeah they tried so you know it i think some of the diversity and some of the unique species is kind of lost on the general public but you know obviously like a zoo that's trying to do some conservation work and things you know

they might have to specialize in some ways on their projects but but overall you know they need that diverse uh yeah, yeah. Collection. Here we go. I got it. This is the, this is, are you ready? This is the, this is the finishing blow. Okay. The death blow.

No, I, not really, but so I just thought of this though. Um, so I will say, I think, so it's obvious that herpetoculture is changing, right? Like it's, it's a, we're a super, super young industry. We don't have any political representation or lobby. We don't have a, like any other than fish and wildlife, really. We don't have like a really powerful or effective governing body. We don't have an, you know, other than getting your degree in zoology with a herpetology focus, we don't necessarily have an education system put in place for what we do. I think that it may be, and I think it's, this isn't just my opinion,

it seems to be a trend that some level of specialization seems to be what allows um a greater diversity on a on a on a on an industry-wide scale to survive so you know i i think i personally anyway i tend to follow the people i tend to follow and pay attention to while there are plenty of people who keep you know let's say like braun st pierre very very diverse collection of reptiles and i pay attention to what he's doing because i got a lot of respect for the guy but i also very much enjoy a frank pain or a um uh uh i'm actually blanking um like a like a like, like a phantom dragon, right? Or a fairy tale dragons, right?

Like people who really do focus on one or a small number of things. If it wasn't for Frank, I mean, it's entirely possible that we might not really have a great carpet chameleon population or a Ligodactylus williams eye population in the United States. And if everyone keeps a diverse collection, there's not necessarily the sort of captive arc, as it were, right, to support the herpetoculture industry with that particular animal. Um, and, and I think the future of this industry may be that sort of artisanal niche based, um, at least in terms of business, like if you're going to be in herpetoculture, you, you might find more success in specialization

and you might get a little bit more success in bringing a healthy group of animals, you know, and put less pressure on the wild population. I mean, obviously, that doesn't necessarily hold up with everything because we've got more than enough ball pythons here and they still pull know, I, I, to, to a hundred percent to that point. And I wanted to go back to this because, you know, Justin made the point that, that, uh, you know, a lot of times the, the, the, the in flavor changes and you have to cater to that. But I think the people that you see who, you know, the Frank Payne's, the Ron St. Pierre's, yourself, who have, you know, a specialization that they articulate why it's amazing, that they have a passion for it, and they can share that passion in the rest of the community. One, you'll always have that section of the community who is just diehard reptile people who will always be a fan of that.

Right. But I think when you can communicate that love to, uh, the reptile community at large, people support that the, and Nick button is a great, you know, like Nick just does carpets and he communicates his love for carpets very well. He's not the only person doing carpets, not by far, but he, you know, and, and, and Nick obviously is a salesman in his craft. Um, but, but nonetheless, I think the point that I'm making is when you have somebody who's passionate, talented, and can articulate why they love their specialty that translates. And people want to keep electric blue day geckos because they feel that Frank Payne is right.

That that's important. Right. Right. And it doesn't help. It doesn't hurt that they're nice and blue. Yeah, I do. I do agree.

That's a, that's a very good hit there. And, and I, you know, to your side, but, but I w I would say too, there a, that's a very good, uh, hit there. And, and I, you know, to your side, but, uh, but I w I would say too, there's, there's some, um, inherent risk in that to some extent, because we look at, uh, what happened when, um, uh, Burt Langworth died. Could you find

Australian water dragons anymore? No, they just disappeared overnight almost you know and so i think a lot of times when we say okay um oh i want to do your mastics but but philip's the guy to do your mask so i'm not going to step on his toe so i'm going to find something else to specialize in yeah i'm gonna find somewhere obscure thing you know i i think um it's good to have groups you know so you know to have redundancy and to have, and, you know, I've been sending a few, uh, different species out to, to friends to make sure that they're in, you know, good hands in different collections. So in case something happens to my collection or something happens to me, you know, they're, they're the bloodlines

are out there and the animals are out there. Also, I think you know i i do consider my collection somewhat diverse but at the same time specialized in in in the fact that you know the the animals that i have the most numbers of are the ones that fewer people are breeding and that i kind of have specialized in and that would be you know the anteresia the the western stimpsons and that's kind of my specialty even though i have a lot of different things but i've only got like one or two pairs of the other stuff you know yeah yeah i would say i would say it's not special you you you generalize on in in an aspect but you also specialize in certain aspects of being general like you you stick to yeah basically one continent but you have some specialties within there right so it kind of having my cake and eating it too

which hey man i didn't have both sides but that's what it's not the awesome part though right because you can be a bit of a generalist but still be a bit of a specialist too so it's like this conversation is super nuanced right yeah yeah exactly and i think that's you know and and like i was saying before i can i can adjust that so if all of a sudden everybody and their dog are producing western stems i can slow that down yeah kind of put them you know yeah stop pairing them up for a while and start pairing up something else that you know my you know like the inlands this year That's kind of one of my focuses this year is getting those Inlands going, getting, you know, more diverse and specialized or cool-looking Inlands produced.

So, you know, it's looking good on that front, but, you know, that's the way it goes. Has the market for Inlands gotten better? There seems to be a lot of demand in them and there's not very many out there i mean i think no that's fair watch and then there may be somebody else or you know one or two clutches in the country you know so i've got a list of people that want inlands you know i don't i don't i don't i'm so surprised yeah well it's because they don't photograph well yeah they're they're ugly in pictures you get them in hand and you're like whoa this thing's crazy you know yeah that's true that's the hard thing and then you know they start saying yeah and and i mean not not every reptile is

everybody's cup of tea either so you could feel more the most passionately about the species you keep and and then you show it to somebody like like, Oh, that's cool. You know, what else you got? That's about it. That's what I've got. This is, this is me. This is my interest. You know, I don't think we can be friends. Please move on. Loser dude. You don't like that. This isn't your favorite thing. Yeah.

So yeah, it's, it's, it's definitely a nuanced topic. And I think we, we hit some good points on, on both sides here. So, yeah, it's it's it's definitely a nuanced topic. And I think we we hit some good points on on both sides here. And me, too. There's this was a really good conversation. Yeah, man, I totally agree. And, you know, it's it's funny because, you know, with less, you know, it's just like with euros. Right. We're going to be because that's my main deal. So I used to for a long time, my goal goal was like i got to breed every one of them every single species right and i got to this point where i was able to get okay all of the species in the states that i can get my hands on i've read them and it was it's great fun and it's like a

resume buffer and it makes me feel really good and it's fun but then you know you get into some stuff where you have like uromastyx dispar molyensis and uromastyx dispar dispar yeah they're pretty much that they don't look that different right i mean to my eye obviously they do but that's because i'm in the know right but they're so similar and it's it it's not necessarily useful to have i mean i don't i'm not going to leave it out altogether because they're great animals right but it's not necessarily effective for me to put a lot of effort into maintaining two separate subspecies that aren't terribly different, that may be joined again in classification and may spill it even further. I mean, it's just not necessarily very useful, right?

Whereas what I've done now is I've reduced my, I still have like eight species here, but regardless, the species that I'm focusing on are ones that obviously I like best personally, but also that I think have a great future in herpeticulture. And that's allowed other people, so there are a handful of other people breeding euros now, and they're getting, people are getting more consistent, which is freaking awesome. And what that's given is an opportunity for some other folks to pick up the mantle with, say, Euromastix ocelota, Euromastix or not a Philbii, with some of these Flavifasciata, people are able to take up that particular Uromastyx and say, all right, well, I know Phil's not working with those and I don't care for ornates as much as Phil does. So I'm going to, I'm going to work with Flavies, right?

They're just, that's my thing. And further, I still, I need more people to pick up the mantle and work with Ornata too, because as you pointed out, if i get shot tomorrow or if i have a heart attack or something that's it ornates are gone right there's a few people breeding them out there but there i got the largest collection of ornates probably in the world honestly like i mean i don't know i i obviously can't say that for sure i don't know there's probably some dude in europe with a million of them i don't know but as far as i know

anyway definitely in the united states so it's like that's a risky thing which is why i need more people to do the same yeah and but it's also so nice to be able to see all right well my friend nick alexander is kicking some ass with his philby eye and he's got like i don't know eight pairs of those things rolling this year and so it's and i don't do them anymore at all. And it's so nice to have that ability, you know, because it would have been kind of cool to say, to see the same thing with bearded dragons, for example, like it would be, it would have been so sweet if you got your viticeps and then you had like a person specializing in Barbada and then you got a person specializing in the

Rankins. That'd be so, you know, and, and, and both of those are still around, but they're just not around like'd be so, you know, and, and, and both of those are still around, but they're just not around like Vitiseps are, you know? Well, here, here's my question to you then. So if, if, uh, you know, they're pretty much similar in their care and, and, and maintenance and things, is it possible? I mean, if you had a pair of those, you know, Philbi or whatever, the other species and just had them on hand as kind of a insurance colony in case something happens to your buddy who's who's specializing in those yeah i i see that as a really uh you know having that diversity but maybe shallow diversity so you're not necessarily producing them every year you're you produce them every once in a while

maybe your buddy has a bad year and you think i'll pair mine up you know and that kind of thing and then i'll send him a couple or or you know you diversify a little that way oh yeah i i think that could you know only be a help to the the industry as a whole but where your focus lies is kind of that you know the or not or not but that's still specialization right yeah i mean you yeah you're not you're you're just uh but there's a huge diversity of things that that are maintained the same way you know that right same i get the habitat and and the same keep like you said desert lizards that covers multiple continents and yeah but but i mean you have to okay so go kind of tying those two points that i the point i made earlier is like phil has to be there to specialize to to show people oh man

these are fucking amazing then they start doing their thing which allows him to continue to specialize in his thing but also bring other people in. So, so, so specialization is almost a way that you can build a diverse network. Whereas if everybody generalizes, it's much harder to build that, that diverse network because nobody is the guy, right. And nobody's ever going to stay the guy, you know, forever, which is why you have to, you the phone and tell you what you were doing wrong in some cases. And, you know, even piss you off if you if you didn't want to hear that. You know, you're a fun story on the Herp trip about that. But, you know, he was pretty blunt being of European descent.

But, you know, where that's what baffles me is that I guess everybody just thought, oh, he's the guy. Why do I try to compete with him? You know, I'm not going to keep Australian water dragons or whatever, because that's his thing, you know, and that's, that's a shame. And I think we need to move past that, get past that perception because I mean, 300 million people in the U S there, you know, or plus there there's, and there's lots of room for, for multiple people doing the same thing i mean you know the reptile world is a little smaller than that and you know you might but but if if ball pythons have taught us anything is we can produce a crap ton of those and and they find homes you know and and some for big

money so you know we don't want to don't want to think of this as like a oh that's his area you know i mean and yeah yeah you might mix it up a little bit but you can also be the the australian water dragon guy even though there's a burt langworth in the world you know when totally it's it's definitely not winner take all i think yeah and and i and i really think that um you know you said it there's there's 300 i think it's yeah 330 ish million people in the United States. Our industry is only going to get bigger, especially, you know, like the more densely packed people get, the less likely people are going to be wanting dogs and larger animals. People are going to want smaller pets. Right. is like we start getting better ability to move animals across borders in due time like especially you know in a hundred in a hundred years we'll probably move reptiles as easily as we move koi you know what i mean or at least hopefully right yeah and so then you have a global market but but it's not even just about market specifically so um i do definitely do exactly what you're saying

justin so i you know my or not are my, but I also have a handful of others because I think that they are, for example, the rare ones, the ones that I think don't necessarily have a very, very long, like a long-term future. People struggle with more that are not commonly imported and things like that. Yeah. struggle with more that are not commonly imported and things like that yeah so like thomas i princeps and yemenensis those are the three that i hold on to that are very very rare there's only a few people doing them and if if i go they're gone you know it's just the way it is there are a few people and thankfully now we got some yemenensis and some other places and some princeps and thomas i but it's still like it's a long road ahead but i've also got ones like moroccans you know euromastics nigra ventress these things i mean they used to get

imported by the thousands and i don't know what happened but nobody nobody works with them anymore other than i mean i've i've got them and i know a couple of people with a couple of pairs but that's it and moroccans are i mean they might even be the best Euro for the pet trade in some way. I mean, I think Ornate are the best. But, you know, Moroccans, both sexes get incredible color, both of them, not just one. And they're a little bit larger. They're a little tougher. They're a little more cold tolerant.

They're a little more tolerant of beginner error. And the only pain in the ass for me is that the babies hate each other. So I have to split them off all the time because they just brutalize one another. That's a downside, but it's not that big of a deal, you know? Um, but I, so I've got, my plan is to focus mostly on the Ornata, but I've got the Nigra Ventress. I've got the JRI, which are the saharan uromastix and um you know i've got egyptians but only one pair of those because they're sort of they're so big there's not that many people that can care for them right right yeah but the the idea is the hope is to have

some room for all of those things going forward yeah and as you said maybe the the jri i take a couple of years where i don't put them together and they just can grow because somebody else is doing a bunch of JRI this time. But at this point, it's also for me, it's about space allocation and long-term sustainability. Because I have so many ornates, I can ensure that it doesn't matter if they never get imported again from the wild. I got plenty of animals here. We got enough ornates for a long, long, long time. But that's not necessarily true of a lot of the other ones. And so then it becomes a balance of like, do I commit to keeping the ornates alive and making sure that there's plenty of genes for the future? Or do I continue to keep

my ornate colony just a little smaller in favor of a small group of Thomasi? You know, it's like, yeah, that's, I mean, that's, that's the balance, right? And I guess that may be where like, like Bert did, where, you know, it seems like a lot of breeders are kind of tight lipped with how they're successful. And so, you know know if you get somebody like bird that just shares the information you know tells me how to exactly how to do it and show you know shows you and uh you know if you find somebody that's just as excited about your mastics you know you kind of guide them into that you know here here's a great niche you could fill here's a great nipper you could cover you know read this species and yeah i think you know yeah um things stop being imported and so then you know if you're working with those

all of a sudden you have a very very valuable project and if you've kind of honed your skills and got a diverse genetic collection while they're being imported all the better you know you're you're just that much better off and and you've got a clean, you know, colony by that time. So you're not worrying about dirty imports and you got captive bred animals that are, people would pay a little more for a captive bred versus a wild caught. And, you know, most, most, most times, at least if they've done their homework. And, and Bert, I mean, shout out to the goat, man. I mean, he's, as far as I'm concerned, he was the best that's ever done it, you know. And I love that same willingness to share. I try to copy that, you know, as best I can.

And not to, I don't mean this to toot my own horn. It's not meant to sound that way. But it's going to sound that way is the people who are doing well with Uromastics anyway, like the other few people are people who copied me, you know what I mean? And I don't mean, I don't mean frame for frame, but like, we're, you know, paying attention when I said, Hey, don't do that. They just like, okay, I won't do that. You know, like, and the people who, yeah. And it just baffles me when you still get people who you're like, they come to you for all this advice and they ask you all these questions and how do you do it? And you know, you spend the time and you tell

them, it's like, you do these things and they come to you a year later and they're like, wow, man, it's like all my eggs failed. And you say, well, did you, did you do what I told you to and not house them together? And they're like, no, they're together. I'm like, you just, I told you, I told, I told you how to do it. You just, you just got to do it. And I think that that may have been why Bert was, could be blunt from time to time because that dude, he was just so, so cued in, man. He had so much great insight and so much time studying and observing and paying attention. That's just, oh man, I wish that guy was still around. Yeah.

Yep. He's definitely missed. You know, and I guess we need to carry that torch, you know, help people, help those around you succeed because it's all of our success. You know, you can be the greatest breeder, but as soon as you go away, like what do you have to show for it? You know, if you didn't get those things established, I say this in the lab all the time because we've got some technicians that think, oh, I'm the only one that can make this work. And it's like if you can't train somebody to do the things you're doing, then, you know, what good are you? You've got to be able to pass on the information, pass that, because that's your legacy. You know, if this is what you're doing and this is your focus, pass that legacy on.

Get somebody else that knows your secrets. And from that standpoint, diversity is the key to success. You know what I mean? You have to have, you have to be, no, no, no, no, no. You can specialize, you can specialize, but you have to have you have to be no no no no you can specialize you can specialize but you have to but as a community you know think about think about those breeders who are like oh if i tell everybody what the secret is you know and then they stop working with it or they you know something happens and yes i know i know but you know and they can apply it to other things like you know you're saying if if you get into uromastyx and you find out well ornates aren't really for me

and philip's doing a lot of those i'm gonna i'm gonna check out this group of yeah uromastyx and they excel at those and and not every reptile is gonna do that great in your area you know there's just some people like trying to keep you know desert reptiles in the the southeast could be a huge challenge you know because it's just too humid and they just don't do so great there so you know you got to find what works for you and that's another thing that burt did really well was finding those things that worked damn right he lived and could be crept outdoors in outdoor cages and, and he, he did it that kind of low, um, mate let the sun give them their UV, let the sun do the work. You know,

I'm in a breed, breed rodents and insects that do well outside. I mean, he was the one that introduced the super worm to herpetoculture for the most part, you know? What a legend. Yeah. Yeah, man. I couldn't agree more. And, and hopefully, and I think things are changing for the most part you know what a legend so yeah yeah man i couldn't agree more and and hopefully and i think things are changing a little bit you know i think that this whole this old thing where people would guide or guard their trade secrets and stuff like that i think that's all going away because i think the more people we have doing stuff the more we realize like there's no it's not like you're gonna feed euros some special flower and it

all works all of a sudden you know what i mean it's it's a very holistic thing and i think that it's very likely that in 150 years we're gonna look back and say okay all these things that we thought were super super easy like a leopard gecko a bearded dragon a corn snake a ball python turns out they were a little more complicated than we gave them credit for and then all these super easy, like a leopard gecko, a bearded dragon, a corn snake, a ball python. Turns out they were a little more complicated than we gave them credit for. And then all these things that we think are the hardest things in the world, like, you know, croc monitors and, and, uh, uh, Bolin's pythons and all this stuff. We're going to bring them all right. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. We're going to bring them right down into the middle and be like, actually, they're not that

bad because it's, it, you know, eventually you're just stacking that knowledge and stacking that information and it won't seem so complicated anymore and um and captive animals you know you're uh establishing a very healthy population of captive bred animals that are used to captivity but that takes but to do that takes oh yeah oh yeah initial oh yeah hard in the initial and everything that we talked about it's hard to get it going. But once it's going, you realize, OK, this is the thing. And or you bred them twice, or you bred them five times. Are you the expert, you know, or you, did you get lucky five years? You know, it's hard to say, okay, this is what worked and this is, this is how you do it. You know, like you said, you know, experience is, is kind of hard to pass on to some extent because they've got to do the work on

there. They've got to listen to what you're saying first off, you know, and they've got to do the work on their, they've got to listen to what you're saying first off, you know, and, and they've got to maybe adapt it a little bit to their surroundings and their circumstances. But for the most part, you know, you can kind of work out what they need to, to thrive and do well and have the best chance of success. Um, but you know, sometimes that's hard to, to, this is why, this is why specialization is so important because if because you're never gonna i think it's gonna be you may never uncover some of those some of those uh those little bits of info if you don't delve in the time you know and it i can i use a lot of martial arts comparisons you know because i'm a martial artist and it's like you can I can show you in five minutes I can show you exactly what you need to know to do the a perfect rear naked choke or a perfect arm bar right I've been

doing this 15 years I know how to do each of those but unless you spend the time trying those moves on like hundreds and hundreds of diverse types of resisting opponents you're never going to be able to you're never going to be able to apply it you know and and and that's what i think that's what speaks to what you were just saying is like i could have somebody that i could impart all this uromastyx whatever to them but until they go through the motions and do it themselves and walk those steps it's probably not going to work the same way, you know? Yeah. Developing technique takes repetition.

It's a lot of time, man. And that's why I love that. I love that, you know, I'm half Japanese and Korean, and I just love that ancient, you know, that Japanese, that love of just getting into just the just the same thing over and over and over and over and over again. I just love it, man. That's what it takes. You know, that's, that's what it is. It's discipline, right? I mean, that's kind of what you boil it down to. And you don't ditch it just because it doesn't breed in 18 months, you know, keep, keep at it.

And that discipline really applies to reptiles. It really applies a lot to the pitfalls of reptiles because there's so many of them and you can do, there's so much available. There's, there's just, it's, and I am so with you, Phil, and there's just such lessons to be taught by that discipline, by that focus, by that repetition. And it's such a huge teacher of patience, of technique, of all these things that are absolutely critical to hard-earned successes. And then you can take that, because if you're successful in one thing, that's like Musashi said, to know the way specifically, or I mean mean to know the way broadly is to know the way specifically, or it might be the other way around. Right.

So if you're successful in one thing, you can take those lessons and put them into something else. It's like, okay, I bred euros, but if I decided to go and do tree monitors next year, I could pretty, I guarantee you, I could make it work. I mean, it might take me a few years, but I'll figure it out. And it's because I know I can say, all right, I'm going to respond to these animals and I'm not going to give up right away. And I'm going to, I'm going to, I'm going to fail as fast as I can, because that's how quick,

that's the quickest way for me to learn, you know? And, um, yeah. Yeah. I think you just tied both our sides into one. I don't think you can have one without the other. I think I'm the clear winner. I'm clearly the winner. Just kidding. By merging the two, you've taken over everything and you're the winner. No, that was great, man. That was really fun. Really, really fun. Yeah, yeah. Great discussion. Thanks for coming on. Throw out your information. information i mean you were on a while back but yeah so i'm on instagram and facebook as arids only that's a-r-i-d-s-o-n-l-y and uh on facebook as philip leeds um i do have a facebook page also that's arids only but i i

always forget to post there i usually post on my personal page and whatever. And then air, it's only.com but Instagram is where I post most of the time. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, man. Good stuff, man. I still need to get out and see your stuff one of these days. Both of you guys are welcome. Yeah. You guys are both welcome anytime. And likewise, you're welcome out here. So it'd be fun to get you. I'd love to do that yeah that'd be great no i know what i mean i know that'd be a great time we gotta do maybe one of these uh

whether i'll come out to utah or something or maybe one of these days we'll go down to socal and and find some uh we'll go find some baja collard lizards together man yeah that sounds good sounds great yeah. Yeah. Cool. All right. Anything from you, Chuck? No, that was great. All right. Well, thanks to Morelia Pythons Radio for hosting our podcast. Check them out at moreliapythons.com. Wait.

Is that right? I always forget. Does that sound right, Chuck? Moreliapythonradio.com. MoreliaPythonRadio.com. MoreliaPythonRadio.com. All those talks are getting to you, man. Yeah, exactly. My brain is shot today. You are not a pitch man, that's for sure.

No, homage to the podfather. He's doing a good job. All right, well, thanks for listening to Reptile Fight's, uh, he's doing a good job. Um, all right. Well, uh, thanks for listening to reptile fight club and we'll catch you again next week. We'll be back for another black belt performance. so Thank you.