Reptile Fight Club - Which is a better business, reptiles or supplies? w/Steven Kush

Episode Date: May 10, 2024

In this episode, Justin and Rob tackle which is a better business, reptiles or supplies? With guest Steven Kush      Who will win? You decide. Reptile Fight Club!Follow Justin Julander @Australian Addiction Reptiles-http://www.australianaddiction.comFollow Rob @ https://www.instagram.com/highplainsherp/Follow 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

🎵 🎵 I'm Rob, of course, co-host. Wave to the people. I'm getting worse at these. Yeah. Throw a blow them kisses. We're joined tonight by Stephen Kush. What's up, guys?

Thank you for having me. Yeah. Glad to have you on. Yeah. Great to have you, man. Yeah. So, I don't know. What's going on?

You guys having a good start to your season and herb season and breeding season or whatever season you choose to talk about, I guess. Yeah. I mean, good so far on the herping front. I haven't gotten out too much yet. Got out locally, saw a couple blacktails for like about a month ago so that was good but you know hopefully here soon can make some time to do some club hikes lep hikes and you know stuff like that so i'm hoping this will be a good a good herping year nice the blacktails the the eastern or the the it's kind of like the intergrade between like or not as an, and mellosis zone where they're,

they're kind of like Brown and tan. You're not really getting the gold, but, but not really the silver, like the true or not as so kind of like between here and like parts of New Mexico where they're, they're kind of this like nebulous in between stage. Oh,

cool. Have they done any genetic studies on those or they, do they key out one or the other or they just not to my knowledge, true intergrade zone. And maybe it needs to be another subspecies or, you know, I mean, to me, they seem a little, they seem more mellosis like than, than or not as like, but they're, you know, you're not getting that vibrant gold of the, the Arizona melosis. Um, you, you do, once you get over into New Mexico,

kind of closer to the Arizona border, but, but even in between like mountain ranges that are really tightly kind of placed together, there's some pretty extreme phenotypical differences. So like from, from right there, kind of over to where I am, uh, it's, it's kind of, kind of strange on the, on the black tail front. Okay. That's cool. Yeah. I really like those are not as out in West Texas. They're, they're nice looking snakes for sure. But then again, a high elevation yellow, you know, black tail from Arizona is pretty sweet to look at too so yeah i love them all they're they're some of my favorite rattlesnakes and and to me they're they're like

the most curious snake i've ever had the chance to interact with they're just they're always trying to figure out what's going on they're always watching you but in but like in a in a way where it's just curiosity i feel like it's not defensiveness or super high, strong feeding response. It's just like you open an enclosure and it just kind of meanders out towards you slowly tongue flick. And like most snakes don't do that, but they're just, there's a curiosity to the snakes. I really like. Yeah. Oh, that's awesome. Yeah. The, the ones that, so we, um, we didn't see many on some of the first trips that I did with Rob down in Arizona.

We didn't see too many. I think we – did we even get one the first couple trips we did down there? A blacktail, at least a live one. We saw a DOR that had just been hit that was kind of a bummer. Not on the first one, but on the second one, I think. Okay. And then this last, the last one that we went on, on together, we saw a couple high elevation ones that were really, they were big too. And they were up in price.

I have a tat and then we saw him. Yeah. Just same area as the price. I, and they were huge and nice and yellow. Yeah. But yeah, same kind of thing. They were pretty chill, like didn't rattle or strike or they just kind of like, Oh, you're, you're going to take pictures of me. Cool. Like when

I, when I first spotted the first one, it kind of did a little time, kind of a semi buzz and then started making for cover. But yeah, it was pretty chill. Yeah. Some took some pictures and turned it back and it was cool. Can you hear me? Uh, you're kind of delayed. I'm not sure what's going on. Yeah, I can hear you, but you're delayed.

So, sorry. Yeah. Anyway, that I, I, uh, I got out a couple of days ago. I went out, there's this, uh, garter den, um, not too far from my place. And so, um, I went out and did a little herping for some garter snakes. It's a, it's an area where the Sir Talus and elegans, uh, over winter together. So the Valley and the red spot red-sided garter snake okay cool kind of cool yeah i mean nothing too crazy exciting but it's uh fun to see you know we i

saw probably a dozen snakes on the day yeah and you know just a small area so there's like a culvert with uh where they overwinter under the road out there so it's it's a fun little spot but that's awesome yeah back they they did some uh construction on that culvert and you know maybe five ten years ago you could see like 50 snakes in a day like in just this one little area but the numbers have gone way down since they reconstructed or improved the sure culvert going to the road so it's kind of a bummer but yeah it makes sense yeah i got some pretty decent pictures of uh both the sirtalis and the um hell again so cool that's awesome but that's about all i've done i i did try to go out uh out in the west desert down uh just south of the great salt lake and, uh, flipped a few rocks looking for

some, I need to find a milk snake. It's killing me that I haven't seen a Utah tricolor yet. So I'm making an effort to, to do that. We're going to go down next weekend and try to try some spots that I've been looking at on Google earth or whatever, but so this last time I only found a Western skink and a sagebrush lizard, but that was about it. So give it another shot. Cool. Cool. Yeah. I'm excited to get into herping season, uh, leave for Australia in a, in two weeks. So it's pretty exciting. Yeah, I bet that is. I wish I could say the same. Yeah, it's definitely recommended. It's a great place to herb for sure. Yep. And then Rob and I are headed over there in October, kind of the end of the years.

Okay. That'll be fun to get over twice. Yeah, it's a good year. Two Australiaia trips can't complain about that yeah yeah rob you're taking off soon for um some herping soon right yeah southern california um to do uh gotta try and add ruber and Hellerei to the list. Keep ticking through the U.S. Crotolus. Hell yeah. U.S. Venomous. That's how Nipper's pushing to do it or whatever. But yeah, hopefully continue to maintain a lead over you there.

I know we're pretty close on that. So all good. And yeah, hopefully it comes up. And if we see Rosie Boas and others in ADA, specs in a new place, all that stuff would be cool as well. Yeah. Yeah, we saw a nice speck down there that's really red, kind of pinkish color. It was really a nice-looking snake for sure. So, yeah, I hope you find a lot of good stuff.

That's a fun area to herd for sure. Yeah. Well, and I started getting eggs. I got to watch one of my wheat belt Stimson's pythons push out an egg or two the other night while I was out there cleaning and feeding. So that's pretty sweet. She laid like 16 eggs, I think. So not a bad clutch from a little Antaresia. I wouldn't have guessed that they would have that

yeah i've gotten close to 20 out of uh female or two yeah well they they can lay a few eggs so it's kind of nice but i just shipped out a dozen or so snakes uh last week or earlier this week. So that was nice to move a few animals and clear some stuff out before I leave for Australia. But yeah, I think I have about five clutches in the incubator right now. So we're off to an okay start. The first two clutches have kind of crashed a bit. I only have a couple eggs from each of those two Woma clutches. So that's kind of a bummer. I had a nice clutch at nine, and I thought they looked really good, but they started going bad pretty quick. So I've only got three left from that, so I'm kind of bummed out.

But I've got one more Woma to lay, and then the blackhead should be laying soon, too. I've crossed for a decent year. decent year yeah gotta get some good blackheads to hatch out yeah so how's it looking for your scrubs this year i think you're gonna yeah i'm definitely like not counting my eggs before they they hatch kind of guy but but, uh, I guess what I'll say is I, it's been a, it's been a strange year. Um, not, not in a bad way on, on all fronts, but since I moved in the fall, I, I was like, I'm not sure how breeding season is going to go. Um, you know, a lot of people will say, okay, you're, you're moving. You got to take the year off because nothing's going to breed anyway.

And when I was leaving Indiana, coming out here to Texas, I'm like, I don't have a job. I'm, you know, like I'm trying to do this, this snake thing and see how long I can make it last for. So I'm like, I need to do something. I can't just not breed snakes and expect to pay my bills breeding snakes. So I kind of came came with a bit of like a cycling plan that coincided with the move to try to use it to my advantage if possible. And I might move every year forever now. Really? Yeah, I mean, I've had some stuff come up along the way that I think

has a lot to do with the climate shift and the, how dry it is out here and stuff like that. But all things considered when, when, when the season's over, I'll be like, this is by, by, uh, I mean a long shot, the best breeding year I've ever had. So this is probably like, I'll say, I would say already now that if it's, if it stopped right now, this was like my dreams, the season I've been hoping for since I started keeping scrub pythons. Um, so yeah, I, I should have my first babies hatching not too long from now. So I don't want to jinx myself, but it'll be soon. Which species? So this year, it'll probably be everything will kind of fall under amethystina.

But a few different localities so like the you know barnex of you know different varieties uh maruki southern types the wamina or jaya pura which they probably are jaya pura but the hobby calls them waminas um the the highland type ox oxville tanamera yeah tamika whatever you want to call it like the orange highland scrub pythons um maybe it's a maybe on on on class telepis maybe on malucans um but uh but yeah i guess what happens when you have a lot of them a a lot of snakes. Eventually you're lots of snakes breed. So yeah. I just, I just hope I can take some different things from this year and just be able to apply them going forward to be like, Hey,

maybe I'm one step closer to really having it figured out. That's cool. Nice. Yeah. That's a, that's exciting here. I, I, I thought the rule of thumb was when you move, you have to add five years to your scrub breeding. That's interesting that they year or maybe, maybe 13 months before I moved. So I got her in Chicago, moved to Indianapolis. So I moved her about two months after I got her, she got shipped in from California. And then almost a year after I acquired her, she laid eggs. So the move coincided with that. I had gotten some adult females that laid six months after acquiring them. Um, and I have two other friends who bred scrub pythons who bred them on years when they moved. So I don't know, this might be the trick with scrub pythons. You can never stay in one place or or i'll i'll pack

up all my adults and drive to us and be like all right it's a new spot now you guys know what to do that's crazy huh very cool that's an interesting thing yeah so i mean i'll take it i'm not going to complain at all nice well i'm hoping i'll hope to have some photos to send you of some king horn eye in their natural habitat so yeah we'll be up in can's area and that's awesome scrubs for sure so yeah rob sent me some pictures recently from a an old trip and uh definitely very jealous but it's so it's so cool to see that i just i can imagine what it would feel like to roll up on one of those animals and just know what it took to for that experience to happen and you know how far you had to travel and yeah how you do playing life around

leaving for different continent and now you found that snake you were looking for so right yeah that's pretty sweet i was uh right you know rico wal's pretty sweet. I was, uh, right. You know, Rico Walder. Yeah, of course. I was, uh, riding with him. We were driving back from, um, a spot in the table lands and, and we, he was, I was, I was driving, but I was getting really tired. So I pulled over and let him drive. Uh, and we'd been out, you know, herping all night. And then, so he's cruising along and, and I was like, are you sure you're good all night. And then, so he's cruising along and, and I was like, are you sure you're good? You know, cause I'm kind of going in and out, like kind of dozing here and there and, and trying to stay awake, but not being very successful at it. All of a sudden

he just lays on the brakes and we just come skidding to a halt, maybe like four inches from this huge scrub that was pretty much across the whole road. It was, I think it's the biggest scrub that I've seen in Australia. It was pretty sweet, but he avoided hitting it and we got out and kind of played with it a little bit. And how big was it? We didn't measure it, but, um, at least, you know, 10, 12 feet, maybe more. I can't remember, but yeah, it was a good size snake you know yeah i was just glad we didn't it wasn't a road kill after we passed through there but yeah yeah and and it

was funny because uh alan ripashi was driving through the same area on his way back they were taking a different road back but uh and he's he's like a rally car, car drive. Like he drives desert roads, you know, he does the Baja 1000 and stuff. So you like knows how to drive on roads. So he was cruising through this jungle dirt road and did the same thing, like just screeched to a hall. And he's just thinking, I know I hit it. I was so close and they got out and it was just like under, like just right in front of the tire. Oh, wow. Barely missed it. So yeah,

he's like, I'm so glad I didn't kill that. You, you just don't live it down when you run over a big snake that you can't miss, you know? Yeah. Across the whole room.

I can imagine how that would feel. I don't want to experience. Yeah. Yeah. Our, our big one was similar to that, where it was the end of the night, you know,

having coming back, going back to the stay. At the end, we'd seen one that had been a mid-sized one that had been smashed, you know, wasn't there on the way out and, you know, was smashed in the road on the way in, which is super frustrating. But, like, we'd sort of, we were not actively herping. We were just driving down the highway. And it's just the pure instinct reaction of, because it was only despite being 10, 11 feet long. It was only the first 18 inches of its body that were on the road. And it's just sort of at the last second you see you tweak by it and then you pull over or whatever.

And it was like, yeah, hopefully I didn't hit that. And then there's an oncoming car. So I'm running down the highway, waving my arms as in the lane. And you're definitely not going to hit this thing. Well, presuming you're not willing to take me out, then you're not going to hit this thing. After I just, yeah, just that barely instant reaction to miss it. And it was all good. And for, you know, then I was like, well, we're getting right off the road. And it thanked me for the pleasure by putting, you know, whatever, probably three and a half inch long head and just popped

me right on the mid calf. And it was like, oh, well, all good. As you say, it was a lot of time and effort and time, effort, money, sacrifice to on many people's parts to be there. And it was totally worth it. Then when I was holding it it it was like i'd put it around my neck and um when crystal emmy had walked by it backed up it backed up into my chest and um then i thought well if it does that to my face that might be a bit of an issue going through customs you know the next day what happened to your face mate you know that sort of thing so um made me think think about my choices a little bit more after that, but it was all good. That's crazy.

That's what it's all about, getting those stories from the field, getting out in the field and seeing stuff in the wild. It's great stuff. It's too bad New Guinea's not a little safer. I'd like to make it up there someday, but I don't know. It seems listening to Ari on your podcast, he's not recommending heading over there. No, he's not. I'm sure there's probably some areas you can go to where it's not as bad.

I got to assume it's kind of like Mexico where it has this allure of like you're going to end up in the back of a pickup truck if you go down there but it's they're big countries and there's big cities and you know inevitably there's got to be places that are more tourist friendly than others so right yeah but i feel like that might not be easy to find out yeah it seems like there's a lot of birds that go over there and do birders anywhere they're they're far more intense than we are. A bird would go into a volcano if someone says there's a bird in there. Well, you're talking to a birder here, so he, you know,

maybe, do you feel seen, Dr. J? Yeah. I don't think I'd call myself a full birder, but it's, I call it winter herping when I go look at birds, uh, when it's too cold to look for snakes and lizards. But no, I've, I've kind of gotten into it. It's, it's pretty addicting to, you know, just like herping, you know, you want to find as many species as you can and tick them off your list. And so, and, uh, man, birder, birder,

there's so many birding apps and there's a lot of tools for birders. It's just, I wish the herping, uh, was similar, but I guess there's more of a concern. Birders can't usually take the birds home. You know, they don't poach the birds or, uh, collect them over collecting area. Cause it's a lot harder to collect a bird than it is a snake. So that is true. That's the difference.

Good point. It would be nice if we, if we were, if we could treat bird herping the same that we treat birding and that we didn't have to worry about those things. You know, you could just say, Hey,

I saw this cool snake. It's under this rock in this area, you know, go check it out. Cause it's amazing. But would you say birders are a lot more open with their information than herpers are? It seems like it. Yeah, I mean, there's a I follow this Facebook page called Utah Rare Bird Alert, and they'll tell you, oh, I just saw this rare bird at this spot. You know, here's the coordinates. Go see if you can find it.

You know, that kind of thing. So and I followed one of those. It was just up the street from the university I work at. And so I went up there with my binoculars and hung out for a bit. And sure enough, this bird that was like an East Coast bird that had made its way somehow over to almost the West Coast was hanging out. So I got some pictures of it and went back to work. It was kind of cool. Some sort of warbler. I think it was like a black fronted blue warbler or something like that.

As Rob would call it, a fly bird. It was a fly bird. Yeah. All right. Well, um, it's, uh, I, I had the pleasure of meeting you in, uh, at Herpeton in California, Southern California back a few years ago. So, um, uh, and then, and then I, uh, caught your podcast. Uh, I didn't realize you had your own corner in there. So I, yeah, I started going back through the, the interviews you've done. I was really impressive. I mean, great stuff. So, and, and just through that, I just hear all this experience and I mean, you just have a wealth of experience with a lot of different things.

And I mean, you're not that old. How old are you? I'm 23. Okay. You're pretty young. So to have that much experience is pretty impressive for a 23 year old for sure. So, um, but yeah, we wanted to have you on, uh, why don't you kind of tell us, uh, kind of where you fit in, in herpetoculture and, uh, and what you're, what's your, what's your deal now? Now I'm just, uh, I'm a guy in the desert these days with scrub pythons and rattlesnakes and a few other things. What took you out to Texas? Or why did you move to Texas? For a handful of reasons. Texas, for a while for me, has been the destination for reptiles.

I have a pretty decent-sized venomous collection, and there aren't many states that are too accommodating of that. And of the states that are accommodating of that, I feel like Texas' head and shoulders are the best state. That, coupled with the herping, obviously,

out here in West Texas, I'm a stone's throw away from banded rock rattlesnakes, mott modeled rock rattlesnakes, blacktails, diamondbacks, prairies, you know, a bunch of different colubrids. And, you know, so and a lot of stuff that I that I keep, you know, to see it in the wild. That's pretty, pretty special. And another thing that I kind of was always thinking about and from like a longevity standpoint is, you know, I feel like for the last couple of years, there haven't been many threats on like the, our rights of keeping reptiles on a national level. You know, back in 2021, there was national bill, national bill, national bill, state bills all over the place. Very, very coordinated attack on the industry, which, you know, luckily we made it through. But it makes you think, okay, what happens when that doesn't actually work?

And now we're landlocked in our particular states. And the way I see it, the only two states or three states that have a sustainable market, if that were to happen, are Florida, Texas, and California. And of those three states, for what I mean, Florida, 90% of my collection is illegal in Florida, considering that, that Somalia amethystine is illegal in Florida. And that's most of my scrub pythons, which are most of my snakes. And then the venomous thing, it's another half of my collection. So, uh, and then, you know, California is great, but it's prohibitive for cost of living, yada, yada, yada. And then you can only keep native venomous and then heloderma and whatnot.

So, again, there goes a majority of my collection. Process of elimination, Texas. But, yeah, and I hate the cold. So, yeah. That's why Texas. Oh, yeah. I mean, that's a very good reason to, to go to Texas for sure. I mean, that's, um, and I mean, it's sad that we have to kind of consider those kinds of things, but, uh,

you know, that's the way it, the way it is these days. So, um, I, I mean, I, I agree. That's a good place to be as far as herping goes, aside from all the, you know, the private land. Hopefully you can make some friends down there that have a property that you can herp on because training your neck risk and getting hit by a semi truck is not all that enjoyable herping. It has its, its merit and its place, but I prefer cruising through habitat, you know, being confined to roadsides. Yeah, for sure. I'm lucky I have friends who know people and, you know, so I'll be able to see some cool stuff. I guess I'll say that, you know, I'm lucky, very lucky in that way. That's cool. Yeah, I just found out one of my friends bought a bunch of land in Texas with just prime habitat.

It's beautiful. That's awesome. He's like, yeah, you'll have to come out. I'm like, yes, I would love that. That sounds wonderful. So, yeah, really cool guy. So that's who I'm herping with next weekend. So hopefully I can make it down there and check his place out. But yeah,

it's just this prime habitat, you know, nice canyons and close to the river. Oh, wow. That's so cool. Pretty dreamland down there. So, yeah. And so now are you a full-time reptile breeder? Is that kind of. Yeah, that's, that's what I've been doing for the last seven to 10 months or so. Um, I was, uh, I was a full-time, you know, moving operation and then I was, and then I was snakes. Uh, cause that, that was a lot, you know, it was close to 1300 miles across country with 240 snakes and all of their enclosures. So that's gotta be, that was,

yeah, that was, it was a lot. And so I definitely, I'm glad to, I'm glad to have some time of not doing that, but, but yeah, since, since then, just, just been, been living off the snakes and it's, it's worked so far, obviously it's not, well, I will, we'll get into it, I guess that's why, why I'm here, but, uh, you know, it definitely is not the most surefire business model. I guess I'll say that for the time being, um, before you decide you're on. Yeah, exactly. I'm not really sure. How do I feel about my career? No, I mean, yeah, it does have its challenges, but it also has some, you know, nice rewards. So it can work out nicely, but I'm, I'm, you know, I'm also has some, you know, nice rewards. So it can work out nicely. But I'm, I'm, you know, I'm very fortunate for, for being as young as I am. I've, I've,

you know, I was in the, the, the feeder business for better part of five years. And before that was kind of in the zoological world in high school. So I've, I've seen a few different aspects of this and, and, and pretty, pretty deeply to be, you know, being as young as I am. So I'm really grateful I've been able to gain that perspective and have those experiences to kind of shape where I want to go. And it's been super valuable. So very lucky. What experience did you have with the zoological community? So in high school, I worked for Rob Carmichael with the

Wildlife Discovery Center. It was a small facility outside of Chicago in a group called Lake Forest. But it was awesome. I was 13 years old and walking into this place. I didn't know it existed before. And there were big bushmasters, mangrove shanty, vipers, king cobras, a bunch of different rattlesnake species and big crocodilians, large pythons, monitors, you know, birds of prey. There's a bobcat there that I grew to love. And, you know, I'm just like, wow, this is heaven for someone who's my age and is as interested in this as I was. So I started volunteering there right before my freshman year of high school. And then as soon as I was old enough, became an employee and did that throughout high school and then, uh, pride college very briefly. And I, and then I was like, Nope, this

is the academic route. It's not, not going to be my route, at least not right now. And then, uh, by then I was, I was good friends with Forrest Fanning and then kind of together decided I was going to go work for him and started off. I was going to be doing reptile stuff. And within about a month I was managing the rodent operation. So a little bait and switch there, but, uh, you know, learned, learned everything about breeding rodents and that industry, which is, you know, that, that to me was like my college. You know, I, I learned not only about the rodents, but how to run a business, manage people, you know, how to very, very steep learning curve thrown in the deep end.

But sometimes that's what that's the best type of best type of learning. So, yeah, definitely was very, very, you know, it's an opportunity that I was able to take advantage of and learn a lot from. That's awesome. Yeah. What a what better mentor to to, I mean, Forrest was, he was just a great guy. Like he, he was just so personable and, and, uh, excited about everything. It was, I mean, it was infectious. I could see how he would talk you into running the rodent facility. How do you say no to that guy? Well, you know, I was, I was there and I was, I was there for what they were doing. Um, and, uh, you know, I, I wanted to learn it as well. Um, I never wanted to just be zookeeper reptile guy, you know, at being, being in that area in high

school, I was like, okay, I see all these people who are going down the biology track and they're going to their internship at the zoo. And by the time they're 28, maybe they can land a job making 30 grand a year, you know a year. Not for me. As much as I love zoos and I love that community. I did a show with Dennis McNamara last night. He's the curator of reptiles at the Virginia Zoo. It's part of the herpetoculture world I really admire. And I was glad to be a part of it. But I knew that that wasn't what I wanted to do in the long run. But, uh,

but yeah, it was just, it was a great opportunity for, for me to get in somewhere where I didn't need, you know, some sort of extensive education or, you know, whatnot. Um, which is kind of one of the cool parts of the private sector. It can, it can be good and it can also be very bad, I guess, depending on how, uh, how that, that system is used. But, uh, but yeah, what, probably what, what, what I learned from him that was the most valuable was just the, the, this self-marketing the, you know, how to make connections at the shows and stuff like that. Cause that's, he was so good at that, you know, at the, the social aspect of knowing everybody and, you know, getting to know people who he, he, he wanted to know for, make business connections and personal connections, get access to different animals and facilities he had interest

in and stuff like that. So it was really cool to see that because that's something that I felt like I might not even still be very good at, but definitely wasn't back when I was younger, especially being a teenager in the industry. I know, I was, I grew up 45 minutes from Tinley park. So I, the first Tinley park I went to, I was like 10 years old and nobody would talk to me and rightfully so I'm, I'm, you know, most of the 10 year old to running around those shows, you know, they're, they, they don't, they're, they don't care that they think it's cool for now. And then they're going to, gonna you know find the next thing next year but uh yeah but yeah that you know being having him as a mentor definitely helped me kind of evolve as far

as the the networking side and all that went so that was something that i really was able to derive a lot of value from that's cool yeah i um Steve Sharp, he, uh, did kind of the same thing as you. He was 10 years old and he was breeding leopard geckos and like selling them to people. And, and, uh, he had some local, I can't remember who the, who that was local to him that kind of guided him through being a reptile breeder, you know, but he was this 10 year old and he's, he's shipping out geckos or selling geckos and then they'd find out he's 10 and they're like wait a second i'm buying stuff from a 10 year old like wait how's this working yeah maybe it was like 12 but you know same kind of thing like

yeah people would find out and just wait he's way too young what's going on here yeah yeah i was lucky that i kind of developed early but by the time I was like 13 years old, I was about six, one or so. So I looked a lot older than I was. And, uh, and then I just had to learn how to act like I was older than I was. So by the time anyone figured out how young I was, they're like, well, you've been here for long enough, whatever. Why change anything now? Yeah. Oh, that's cool. Well, I mean, your, your background, uh, that's kind of the, uh, that the impetus for this fight is between kind of debating whether or not, you know, the merits of, uh, running a business that focuses on reptile breeding or running a business that kind of focuses on supporting reptiles like feeders and supplies and things like that. Yeah. I mean, you've had experience on both sides. So, you know, I wanted to get your input on that and kind of we'll throw in some of our ideas here and there as well. But, yeah, that's kind of the main thing is.

Cool. So, yeah, Rob and I will go ahead and flip a coin, see who gets to debate you. Rob's been having some rough luck on the coin toss. Okay, go ahead. I trust that will continue. I will switch it up and go tails. It is tails. You got the flip.

All right. That being said, it seems like i'm having connectivity issues so i'm going to uh defer to you and maybe i'll jump in as appropriate the weird bit to me it seems like it's it's you dr j but i will i will take it i even looks perfectly clear i look perfectly clear but it is what it is i will uh defer for the quality of the audio, fingers crossed, hopefully. Yeah. I'm still nervous that mine's not going to record. We recorded a couple of weeks back, a great episode with Ron St. Pierre and my audio didn't work. So I didn't see like the little green line coming up in the side. So I moved closer to the mic just to

make sure it was working, you know, something was recording, but okay. Yeah. I don't know what the deal is. I just see a delay, but I don't, I don't have that with, uh, with Steve. So Steven, so green lines coming up in the corner, you got green lines. Yeah. So I think we're all good. I hope so. I'm just like nervous now. That's the first time that's happened. So I'm not sure what, what transpired there, but all right, go ahead and call it heads. It is heads. I'm a double loser this, this week. So, all right. What are you, what do you want to, what do you want to go for reptiles or, or supplies?

I'll do the supplies side. Okay. All right. Well, and, and I, I mean, I don't really have much experience in supplies, so that's, that's probably a good thing. There we go. More from that, I think. So now, um, Prepare for both sides. So I think I'll, There you go. And, and I'm, I'm happy to hear your thoughts on the reptile side too so yeah don't don't feel bad for losing a few

points by by giving some good uh fight side to my side but um as the coin toss winner you get to decide if you go first or if you defer to to me to go first so i'll defer i'll defer okay um i guess i would would start out uh the argument for, breeding reptiles is, is probably the variety. Um, there's lots of different ways you can go and different species you can keep and different markets you can kind of get into. Um, if you want to go mainstream, there's the ball pythons, uh, you know, leopard geckos, crested geckos, colubrids, that kind of thing. And if you want to be kind of a niche breeder, you've got, you know, endless opportunities for that too. And there's, I mean, different groups and you can, you can really, um, I don't know, you know, I always thought you needed to kind of follow the market, but the more I see people

kind of following those niche markets and doing kind of what they love, um, the more I'm starting to question that. So I don't know. I think the, the risk of course is when those things fall out of favor, um, you have to have something to fall back on, but for the most part, you can usually find people, especially like you kind of mentioned earlier, you have to have a personality and kind of almost build your market to some extent, get people excited in what you're working with. And I think there's some really good examples of people who are doing that. Yeah. So I think just the fact that there's a nice variety of different things to work with. If you kind of don't like the crowd that likes a certain type of snake or lizard that you're breeding, you can move on to like the tortoise group or something else.

You know, there's always another group or another people. And it's interesting, too, that they don't often communicate. Like if you're a Python guy, usually not chatting with the tortoise guys and that kind of thing. So it's, it's kind of an interesting dynamic. So it's almost like, you know, several different markets within one depending on what species group or what, you know, class of reptile you choose.

So I think that's how I'd open up is a nice variety for whatever floats your boat and whatever keeps your interest, I guess. Yeah. So I guess my counter, my first point, I think probably the strongest one is that, especially in terms of feeders, uh, supplies, yes, as well, but definitely feeders. It's, it's the recession proof part of what we do. Um, you know, it's, it's not a, it's not a luxury good, like, like reptiles are, um, you know, 2008 happens again. You're still feeding your animals. You might not be buying new animals,

but you're, you're still feeding them. I hope you're feeding them. You're still feeding your animals. You might not be buying new animals, but you're, you're still feeding them. I hope you're feeding them. You should feed them for anyone listening. Yeah. Feed your animals. Um, but, uh, but yeah, that's, you know, that's the strongest part is they, they, they sell themselves. They there's, there's always a need. Um, if you can reach your clientele, you got them. Um, and, uh, at this, at this point in time, especially with the feeder industry, it's, it's majority about accessibility, price, convenience, customer service. Um, you know, I think the, for now the customer base is a little less focused on quality of, of product. I feel like, I feel like, well, and this might not be, but this I'll say for what it is. I feel like this where the reptile industry is now is where dog food probably was like 15 years ago,

because now you see, I mean, ads on TV and on the biggest podcast for, for natural dog food and stuff like that. Um, where, you know, growing up, uh, my, my mom was very progressive and she wanted to feed our dogs raw food. And when people would find out, they're like, what are you feeding your dog? But now fast forward 10 years, 15 years later, and that's almost commonplace. And if you don't feed your dog some specialized diet, you're considered a bad dog owner by many. And I'm not passing judgment on anyone's dogs. I'm just trying a comparison. But yeah, I think the biggest thing is that at any scale that you're at, there will always be a need for the product, no matter how the economy is doing otherwise.

You know, that medium rat might be 50 cents less than it was two years ago or more, but that snake still needs to eat that medium rat. So yeah, for me, that's the number one pro over the reptiles for like a feeder business or a supply business is that even when they, when the snakes and lizards stop selling, feeders don't stop selling. Yeah, no, I, I, uh, definitely concede that point. That's a, that's probably the most strong, uh, case. And it's also the reason I breed my own, uh, rodents to feed my stuff because I don't want to pay the prices that it costs. I want to, you know, kind of be in control of what, what goes into own rodents to feed my stuff because I don't want to pay the prices that it costs. I want to, you know, kind of be in control of what, what goes into my rodents and that

kind of thing. So, you know, it's, but yeah, there's always a need for most people don't have the capacity to have a bunch of stinky rodents in their garage. And I mean, I just, maybe this is kind of a, an argument against rodents, but I just had a bunch chew their way out of a tub and then they chewed all the water lines and all that kind of an argument against rodents, but I just had a bunch chew their way out of a tub and then they chewed all the water lines and all that kind of stuff. So it can be a headache at times and it's very, but I think that kind of leads into my next point of, you know, why reptiles over rodents and other feeders is that you can usually, um, the, the mammals, the rodents need

a lot more, uh, care and a lot more attention, um, versus reptiles that you can leave for a week or two and go on her trip. Uh, you're, you're kind of tied to the mammals, the, the rodents, they don't let you leave as often. And if you do, there's often problems. And, um, also it's, it's kind of hard to find people that are excited to work with rodents versus reptiles. I would think, you know, if you're trying to hire employees for a big business, you're going to have a fairly decent line waiting to work with reptiles versus rodents, I would think so. And again, I don't have any experience with that. So you might call me on my BS. I might be talking out my butt. I wish I could use that one to my advantage in this conversation, but

that will not be one of my points. It's hard to kind of get and keep good employees for a rodent business, I would imagine. But then again, I mean, people aren't probably, and if they do steal a rodent business, I would imagine. But, but then again, I mean, people aren't probably, and if they do steal a rodent here or there, it's probably not going to do much to you, but if they, you know, switch out a hat for a normal and, and, and steal the hat, you know, I, I've heard examples of that with, so I'm, I guess this is a point against the reptile side, but you know sometimes your uh employees will uh bring your business down a bit by having sticky fingers uh let's say i've heard some interesting stories about that where people bought hets that didn't turn out to be heads and were actually

normals because the employee swapped out a normal for a head and took the head home and bred it then all of a sudden a different breeder has a new line of this morph yeah totally unrelated to the only one that ever existed before it what does that have it's a miracle it just popped out of the guy who worked for the guy with the only one in existence uh that's a conspiracy, you're, you're, you're drawn to some more. Yeah. Um, Alan Rapashi told me he never hires reptile people to work in his reptile business. He just hires, you know, people who want, who need a job and that kind of thing. But, um, I would, I would say, uh, you know, kind of that, that idea of being, having the freedom to leave and to go, you know, herp is reallyp would be really important to me. And it would be hard to be kind of tied down to a business that is very difficult to leave.

But, you know, if you're big enough, you have employees, maybe that's not as big an issue. But definitely the rodents need more care than the mammals. Yeah. Yep. So my next point, uh, and this is one thing that, that struck me early on doing rodents is that, uh, it's a breeding project that works. They breed. It's not hard. That's not in question. If you have male rodents and female rodents, you will get more rodents. Um, so, you know, obviously with reptiles, one of the, one of the biggest potential issues is, uh, Oh, nothing bred. Now what? Now

where's my mortgage coming from? Um, so there it's a lot, there's a lot more room for error as far as, as purely just a production standpoint. Uh also, in my opinion, scaling rodents is infinitely easier than scaling reptile production. And also, you can really make it a formulaic system that you can plug and play people into different areas of, or, you know, really, really have down to, to a flow where with reptiles, you know, you can't always clean that tub on Tuesday and feed that snake on Thursday. And, you know, that, that doesn't always have to happen. Um, so while, while it is not always easy to get people excited to work with rodents, um, I, I personally have been, cause I've, I've had people work for me cleaning both rodents and reptiles have been infinitely more comfortable with somebody doing stuff with rodents than

with the reptiles. Cause it's, it's much less specialized work and the room for error with, with the rodents is a lot higher. And especially there are, you know, you can have somebody all day cleaning tubs and if they're not super clean, okay, they're going to be dirty again. Anyway, it's a rodent. Yeah. Um, where with reptiles, you know, I mean, even to the point where if that tub isn't cleaned properly by that employee, you could be passing a disease on to another animal in your collection. And then on that tip, from a biosecurity standpoint, especially if you start with a clean colony, you don't need to bring in outside genetics to that colony.

Rodents don't experience inbreeding depression in the same way that reptiles will. If you just, you have your 10 carpet pythons and that's going to be your carpet pythons forever, they're eventually going to have two heads and will corkscrew around, and it's not going to go well. So the amount of specified labor involved in rodents is far less than will be needed for, for reptiles. There are instances where that will not be the case. If you're, if it's a bunch of baby ball pythons or cages of crested geckos, and you're putting the little food dish in there. Sure. But at least with the animals that, that I have, and I, I like be far less trusting of somebody to come in and do that job for me and me trust that it's being done well and in a way where the business will continue to be profitable and generate that revenue. Yeah, yeah, definitely takes more experts in specific areas to make a reptile business float versus a rodent business. You don't have to have much understanding about that. Now I have noticed too with breeding rodents that if

they go for extended periods without water or, you know, something happens where a line gets blocked, then you basically lose that colony or that, that rack, you know, depending on where the blockage is and, or if one floods, then you lose, you know, that, but then the others go without water for a few hours and that could cause some problems for long-term breeding, you know, or they chew on their pups or whatever, you know, it can be a little messy and nasty that way too. I'm not to say that say that you know things don't happen with reptiles but it just seems like not to that extreme thing can kind of balloon out for an extended period of time and you know i guess where they're kind of being bred as feeders

maybe you're they're not so precious so you don't have to you know you know, limp them along or, or, you know, seek veterinary treatment. You just euthanize them and feed them off and move on. You know, that kind of thing. I, that might sound callous, but, um, you know, where, where something's being bred for food, that's, that's less of a consideration than when something's being Yeah. Go ahead. Sorry. Yeah. Man, I just had it for a second and then it went. Okay. Got it back. Sorry, I didn't know. But kind of, it relates to what you were saying. You know, if there's an issue of a rack getting, like with rodents, for instance, a rack flooding out, you lose that entire section. Or even with insects, if you have a room of roaches and it overheats and boom,

all the roaches are gone. Unless you have all of your eggs in that basket, let's say you lose 5%, that's a lot, but let's say you lose 5% of your colony lot, but like you'll see, you lose 5% of your, of your colony kind of keeps going. It replaces, there's a little bit of a dip. If you have a rack that some, an employee doesn't, or let's say it plugs. I had this happen to me,

plugs the, the rack right into the wall. Instead of into the thermostat, you come in the next day, every animal is dead in that rack. That's a catastrophic event for your business. so loss is much more easily recovered with feeders because the replacement rate is that much higher and that everything around it kind of keeps going despite the, so despite what happened

there. And, you know, let's say in that instance, and God forbid this happened to anybody with that rack, those were your breeder males. Now you have all your females and no males to anybody with that rack those were your breeder males now you have all your females and and no males to to go with them uh in with with feeders the the likelihood of of a small isolated event having a widespread effect is is much lower than than with reptiles um and then also when you look at just like the large numbers you're working with on an individual individual with feeders compared to reptiles, um, more error will probably occur, but that error will probably affect a smaller percentage of the whole than it would with, with reptiles.

Hmm. I'm curious, you know, having experience in the, in the rodent breeding business, uh, how did, uh, how often did those kinds of things occur? Like where you had setback? I mean, did you get to the point where the business just kind of ran smoothly or were there always issues to deal with and problems to solve or did it become kind of more routine after a certain time? yeah so i i i'd love to see the perfect feeder operation um because that would that would be a marvel um so i you know short short answer would be no um but the way that i see it uh it all comes down to how you how you set the groundwork up front. If you're patchwork this and that, homemade rack this,

water line you rigged up from there that you didn't originally plan on, the less thought that goes into the initial planning stage, the more issues you'll end up with. And I'm arguing against myself right now, but, uh, but, but it just is what it is. Um, I, I would assume it would have to be the same with crickets or roaches or mealworms or, or, or whatever. Um, you know, where with, with reptiles, we get away with lots of different enclosure. People breed $20,000 snakes and $15 Rubbermaid tubs from Target. There's no feeder equivalent of that. The values in the infrastructure where conversely, the reptiles, the values of the day, at the end of the day, issues will happen, particularly with rodents because of the whole line chewing phenomenon that has plagued everybody, everybody who's ever bred rodents where they have access to water lines.

But I think there's not a lot you can do once you've already set yourself up for that. You know, if you have systems have been closed water lines, you kind of need that from the start. Um, you know, if, if, but if you just are working with the typical setup, then it just comes down to management of it. If you're running at a larger scale and you have turnover of employees, uh, there was always an uptick when a new employee started of, of flooded tubs. I'll, I'll say that much.

I wonder if there's a correlation there. But, you know, it's just really having that regimented system and doing everything you can to eliminate those potential variables. But unfortunately, it's live animals. And no matter if it's a rat, a snake, whatever it is, there's going to be that room for error. And the way I see it, you minimize that by doing the work up front before you even start your operation. I just wondered, I'm curious how much innovation has occurred with rodent breeding. You would think there'd be plenty of literature on nutrition you know, nutrition and kind of the best balance or the best breeding strategies and things like that.

But I also thought too, like if I was going to do a professional rodent breeding business, I'd probably put, you know, grommeted holes on the back of the tub. So if there was a leak, it would come out of the back of the tub, go down a, like a drainage system into a bucket with a sensor that turned on an alarm. So you knew like right then that there was an alarm and you're, yeah. And something was flooding. Right. And that's like what I was just saying about having that system in place ahead of time. Um, like, you know, for instance, we, over time, like an idea that Forrest had that worked, but then failed for a different reason was, okay, let's, let's put a, let's drill a small hole into the bottom of the tub for that reason. If that tub starts to flood, you're not going to lose that tub. There's going to be a whole lot of cleanup because every tub below it will be dirty.

But then that hole wasn't perfect. It didn't have a metal guard around it. Choo, choo, choo, choo chew chew chew chew chew rats everywhere more floods everywhere so that that makeshift fix ended up causing more harm than good um freedom breeder uh is doing racks these days with enclosed water lines kind of within a stainless steel cover um i haven't used those personally but i I think that's incredible. I wonder what the accessibility is like to the line underneath, because inevitably nozzles will still corrode over time, especially if you have harder water in your area. But so unfortunately, at least with the current systems and whatnot, a flood-free rodent facility seems to be about impossible. But there are definitely steps that can be taken to minimize that risk. And I think a lot of it comes down to that just people aren't, a lot of rodent breeders

aren't quite so willing to share information with each other. Because, you know, it's definitely, I would say overall, maybe a little bit more cutthroat than some areas of the reptile industry where like, I doubt a lot of these big rodent companies are friends with each other where, you know, all of the top ball python breeders or carpet python breeders or bearded dragon breeders seem to be at least friendly with, with one another. Um, but then there's, with the rodents, there's a whole other aspect of the laboratory industry and, uh, that kind of what, what we do stemmed from the laboratory world, just kind of modified a little bit. And, uh, obviously it's, you can kind of compare it to almost like, like the zoology, zoological keeping compared to private keeping. Even less so where I don't think those people want anything to do with us.

They see us as rednecks cooking meth in trailers on our property. They're a pharmaceutical company. Right, exactly. And they're providing for a totally different, you know, their rodents are serving an entire different purpose. But then the genetic tracking and the science that goes into those rodents is just, it's so extreme that those of us who are on the outside could never have any idea because when, you know, when Pfizer calls you up and says, hey, I need a thousand of these, of this strain, of this age, of this weight, you're going to deliver that because that's, you know, it's one of the most powerful companies in the entire world.

You're going to make sure that they're happy. Where if they went to any rodent breeder who is providing for the industry and be like, hey, I need same specificities. It'd be like, huh? Why? We sell medium rats. You want mediums? We're ordering hundreds of mice at a time at our lab and and they're you know thirty dollars fifty dollars a pop for yeah a single mouse you know so we're our rodent bills

are insane at the university we're yeah i mean for one grant i think we spent $40,000 for two or three studies in rodents. And it's insane. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I'm not shocked, but I think most people who are listening are probably shocked right now at that, at that figure. Yeah. And they're, they're upset when the price goes up by 10 cents on a, you know, on a fuzzy or something and not paying $50 a 50 a piece but then again these are you know pathogen free and they're you know raised in clean environments and things like that you know they have predispositions to different diseases or whatnot or they're diabetic or they're they're humanized yeah they have human cells growing in them you know know, pretty, pretty insane. And those ones are probably on the order of 150, $200 a piece, you know, it's pretty crazy. Yeah. But then I, uh, another kind of influence

that the lab industry has had on, on, you know, the rodent industry for the sake of reptiles and other animals, that's where the diets all came from. And the diets are for laboratory growth so for breeding growth necessarily yeah yeah yeah it's just you know it's like okay we need to get this rodent to this size and be able to run these tests on it this is the diet we've provided for it has nothing to do with nutrition for animals uh you know if this never in their thought process was, well, this might be fed to a snake or a monitor lizard or a crocodile one day, what would be good for that animal? Um, you know, I, I haven't looked in major depth of, of the different diets, both laboratory and, and kind of more commercial diets, but I can't imagine all they're all that different from, from one another. I was talking to a vet friend at the university and he, he's a falconer and he was working with a guy who was one of the biggest producers of falcons in, in the world. I can't remember, you know, where, where the guy was from, but he had this huge drop off and decline in his

falcon breeding. The eggs weren't coming out very viable and and just things weren't working. And he's like, I haven't changed anything. You know, I've got the same supplier of quail and all this kind of stuff. And so they went to the quail supplier. He said, you check with them, see if they've had any changes. And so the quail supplier, no, we haven't done anything different. We buy food from the same place. And they so they went to the feed lot and they said, you know, have you had any changes? And they said, well, we started, we switched this ingredient from,

for, from a different supplier. And so they traced all the way back, you know, also through looking at some of the eggs and some of the quail to show that they were having some nutrient deficiencies because they, they switched a product and the product that they got was inferior to the one they were using. And it was cheaper, but it was inferior. And so that resulted in that kind of chain effect of having poor falcon production. So, I mean, it is kind of a there is kind of a lot riding on that. I mean, you do hear a lot of horror stories of people buying rodents that make their snake sick or a snake dies after it eats a rodent or

people become sick from the rodents that they're buying from these suppliers. And I still wonder if, if Nick mutton got anything when he ate that frozen thawed rat at one of the carpet fests is for a, for a fundraising event. Yeah. You, you wonder about, I'm like like i don't know if i'd eat a frozen thought rat from rodent pro or something but anyway like uh you know so those kind of things can i mean it might be difficult to trace back to a specific rodent supplier but i mean that has happened and you know there can be those issues from that. I think it's very difficult.

I mean, there was the case back, I think it was even prior to 2010 of, I think it was salmonella from rodents that were coming over from China. You know, that's pretty obvious what the cause is right there. But in the way that I see it, I think the biggest kind of X factor that no one really considers and really based on just lack of the information being out there is how these rodents are stored, how they're transported, how many times they're transported, how old truly are they when they're getting to your animal? Because there's a lot of, boom, this supplier gets this amount amount they then sell to their 10 customers who then sell to their each 10 customers and before supplier one got the big shipment of rodents they maybe have been frozen for four months prior to that did they thaw in transit

to this place did this person's freezer, not get cold enough. You know, what, what, what are the, and when they went ended up in the pet store, did we did an employee forget to put them away that night and put them away the next morning? Yeah.

I, you know, oftentimes when people are getting, you know, just buying feeders and I think it's innocuous, there's, there's no way to know what has that rat gone through? How many hands has it passed through? Where did it originate from? And less

about the source itself, because a lot of these rodents are being raised the same way on the same diets, same everything. They're the same rodents. A lot of the rodents that are being bred are just originally lab strains that have been out of the lab for 50 years or whatever. But what happened to that rodent after it died? Between then and when you fed it to your snake, what happened to it? And I don't have the answer, but I think that's a question that you need to ask. And when you're choosing a feeder supplier, choose one that you know can verify, yeah, it was euthanized here. It's been in the freezer for so long.

It stayed at this consistent temperature. It got shipped to you at this consistent temperature with the dry ice, and you're good to go. This rodent didn't change hands four times, get thawed out twice before I got it. Yeah. And unfortunately, no one's going to tell you that second story. So there's going to be a little bit of discernment involved in, in figuring that out for yourself. But, uh, and, and usually it's that too. Usually it's the cheaper ones that are cheap for a reason. It's, I guess it's the same thing with breeding reptiles is, you know, a good deal is often not worth the hassle, you know,

because you're, you're going to have some other issues. Like, why are they selling an adult for so cheap? And, you know, sometimes it works out, but sometimes it can be catastrophic too. So you got to be careful, I guess, in either category, reptiles or rodents. If there's a good deal, it's probably for a reason, you know, and it might not be such a good deal in the long run. Yeah. You know, and all of those are reasons why, as you said, what you do breeding your own rodents, I breed softers, African softers and mice. I don't have a rat production going on right now, but you know, for anyone out there who has even had the thought in their mind, I would encourage giving it a shot to producing your own feeders. Um, you're just, you're eliminating so many

potential variables. And there's research into the breakdown of micronutrients, vitamins, and minerals from the freezing process of rodents. So, I mean, just from a health standpoint, a fresh killed rodent is definitely better than a frozen thawed rodent. Most certainly better than a rodent that was frozen six months ago that you just thawed out. So, and it's not for everybody and people are busy and people are allergic to rodents and, you know, it won't suit anybody, but if it does suit you, even to have a few colonies to feed babies or something like that, you know, I, I just, I encourage it because

you can take so much more control of a process that innately you have very little control over. Yeah. I mean, I do enjoy breeding rodents when there's no floods and when they haven't chewed out of their tubs and when they're, you know, those kind of things. That makes it a big pain in the neck. But otherwise, it's not too bad. You know, it's nice to have that supply. But I do think it does take kind of a, you know, you do have to kind of be on top of things. I mean, it's, it's the same with the reptiles, but you need to, you know, euthanize a colony and you kind of have an idea of how old the animals are and make sure you're cycling through.

So you're not feeding a bunch of adults and that, that aren't having any babies and you can't get too attached. You got to feed them off if they're not producing enough and things like that. You know, I think I'm sure there's some kind of good formula to use or, you know, what ratio to use and things like that. But I don't know. I don't know how much that is in these professional rodent breeding, you know, or reptile supply places. But yeah.

And, you know, feeders can be a challenge, the crickets and things that, that they're difficult to, to raise. And I think there are some really good cricket producers out there that have been doing it for a long time, but we did see what happened when they got those, you know, the cricket virus that went through and kind of decimated the cricket industry for quite a while and switched it over to those more aggressive and the banded crickets for a while that we were, that were being produced. But I think, you know, that's kind of another thing, you know, I think there, there might be room for improvement where we could expand on the number of different prey species that are being offered, you if somebody bred anoles or bred you know other uh some kind of small snake

species as as feeders you know it could could also increase the number of species of reptiles we could also keep and breed and i'm sure there might be a market for something cool like that you know maybe not on a scale as large as rodents or crickets, but you know, some there, there, there should be plenty of, uh, I mean that, that, uh, snakes of the world book by, um, uh, O'Shea looking through that book and going, holy crap, that is a cool looking snake. Oh, it eats blind snakes. Okay. That's, you know, no wonder nobody's ever had that in captivity or whatever, or you don't see those, or I've never seen that before.

That kind of thing. So, yeah, you, you need someone with a lot of money who was just willing to waste it to start an operation like that of providing a specialty feeder for a market that doesn't exist yet, or is, is small just for the, for the hopes of starting something up which is what which is what sucks because unfortunately uh you know these days if it's not mice rats crickets dubia roaches and maybe mealworms if you're probably not breeding a profitable feeder um i can't imagine maybe quail too now these days um but but i doubt you could do quail at the same scale. You could do rats or mice. Um, I don't know for sure, but that's just, just a guess based on what I've seen over time. Um, yeah, I, I bought a, a quail breeder rack and it's, uh,

it's supposed to each level is supposed to be able to, I mean, it's not very big, but each level is supposed to house like up to 50 adults. I'm like 50 adults. And, uh, and they would just lay eggs. The eggs would roll down to the front, you know, you could incubate some, eat some, whatever you want to do, you know? So it, it seemed like, uh, they're, they're moving, you know, making progress in that area as well, where you could potentially set up a viable commercial entity. I mean, chickens are a great example. You know, there, there's plenty of, um, knowledge and, and in the chicken industry. And I mean, chicks are pretty, especially male chicks are, are called pretty much instantly

after you can tell if they're male or female. And so, you know, buying bulk, uh, male chicks is, is probably pretty inexpensive but is that a great feeder you know right yeah you know take take that that chick that day old chick that's never you know had a had a speck of food in its life you know and compare that to an equivalent size caturnix quail from a nutritional standpoint you know i don't i don't think you can't compare the two um but then to look at the price of that and that that chick might be a third of the price of the of the quail so yeah yeah and and it would be nice to get you know other other feeder species you know it's interesting that we've basically just have the house mouse and the European rat as our – and maybe soft furs, but they're not bred in much quantity. We haven't quite got those to the same point as we've got the house mouse and the European rat. multi-mamate rats or something like that. But I guess there's also agricultural concerns of if

they get loose, they might take over and, you know, plague the planet. So yeah, that's a, that's a risk, you know, with, with feeders as well as, I mean, I, I, I get nervous that if my rodents get out, my neighbors are going to get upset, you know, and I've had like, I had, I had a, uh, my weanling rat bin, they chewed out. And so I had like 30 or 40 rats, my, my rodent shed. And so I, you know, I put poison out, I put traps out, all that kind of stuff. And then the neighbor's like, we found this big, big rat in our yard. Do you think it's one of yours? I'm like, Oh, probably. I'm sorry.

Don't touch it. I'll come get it. But I suppose if I had a stray python, they might not be as excited either. That's funny. Biosecurity is probably important for both reptile or a feeder. Yes. Most certainly. Well,

any other big points you can think of? I'm sure you have. Oh, sure. Let me look at my, my notes that I had. I thought the other side, you know, you made a really good point about having stability. You know, everybody's a recession, they're

probably still going to try to find a way to, to, to buy a reptile, you know, but depending on what, what kind you have or what kind you have and what, what they really want, but right. Maybe not. Yeah. But, but definitely there's a, there's a risk that way. Um, the other, I guess, risk for maybe both businesses is, you know, you don't have insurance. You don't have, I mean, you have to buy insurance or supply your employees with insurance and that can be very costly and difficult, uh, compared to just getting a job and having the company, you know, provide you insurance, that kind of thing. It's in, in retirement and benefits and those kinds of thing yeah it's and and retirement and benefits and those kind of things it's hard to keep somebody long term if you're not you know able to offer

benefits or insurance that kind of thing so you might have a turnover and that applies to either either business sure yeah uh another one that just just popped into my mind, you know, with reptiles, I feel like there's more, there are more tasks that are required to be a reptile breeder that are not breeding reptiles. Meaning if you, you can, you can no longer be a nameless, faceless reptile business. You just can't. You got to be all over social media. You got to be doing the podcast. You got to be going to show. I mean, not even necessarily going to shows, but it'll help, but not nearly as much as the online stuff goes. You really can just be ABC feeders. And here's my price list. I'm a little bit cheaper than the guy down the road. Buy from me and you'll get business that way. You might not get as big as you want to that way. But if you're ABC ball pythons, here's my enchi pinstripe, you're never going to sell an animal. I feel like these days, especially when it comes to the more popular stuff like ball pythons or crested geckos or whatever, people aren't really buying the animal. They're buying the person really buying the animal. They're, they're buying the person who produced the animal. Um, you know, this isn't my, my leopard clown pie. This is my Justin Cabelka leopard clown pie or my Bob's balls, leopard clown pie. Um, you know, and, and, uh, I'm part of the Patreon and like, you know, there's, you're buying into the community or you're buying the experience. You're not just buying that animal where, I mean, I don't know if there's a parallel

with feeders. It's like, yeah, this is the rat that's in my freezer. I'm not part of a community. You know, I'm not going on the, I'm not going on the African soft for a retreat to Hawaii. I paid a thousand dollars, you know, like, you know, so. I mean, I think there might be a caveat to that with the, um, I think about Josh's frogs and like all the support things that they have with that, like the leaves, you know, they're having people, they're buying oak leaves from somebody and they'll ship them a boxer bag full of oak leaves and then they repackage them, put their Josh's Frogs logo and sell that little bag of leaves really hard to kind of make their name equivalent with the support goods and things for frogs.

Yeah. I mean Josh's Frogs might be like the most like admirable business model in the history of the reptile industry. That and Alan Rapace, I mean, Alan basically brought back an extinct gecko and, and, and, and made food for it that you could mix up in your kitchen and then, you know, made a huge industry out of that. So I, you know, Alan's a fantastic businessman and I'm sure Josh's frogs, Josh is, is also a very good businessman. So, and I think that's either reptiles or, or feeders. You've got to, you've got to have good business sense. I don't think you're going to succeed if you don't have some understanding of we need to put out less money than we bring in, you know, that sort of thing. So, you know, I think another great example is, is Rich Goldzong at Reptile Basics.

It's a big company, probably a lot bigger than a lot of people would think. It's synonymous with a handful of products. You can look at a hide box and you're like, oh, that's reptile basics. Tongs and stuff, how they distribute all the red line science products. They're at all the shows. They're very professional with their shipping, their packaging, their customer service. They run a really tight ship over there. And what's great about, we didn't really talk about supplies as much as, as, as rodents, but, uh, that, that parahemostat isn't going to die. You're not gonna, you're not gonna have a flood in your hide boxes. Um, you know, and every reptile keeper needs to ship their stuff in a

deli cup with holes in it, you know? So yeah. And with holes and yeah, that box with the insulation, I mean, you can cut your own insulation, but when was the last time you did that? You know, unless you had some special order or something. Yeah. You're going to buy a, yeah. I guess if you're, you know, if you, if you want to save money, you do it that way. Cause those costs have gone up too, you know? So sure.

But, but still that, that makes it simple. Oh, you want to ship a reptile here? Here's the, you know, here's the you know here's the way to do it and yeah this is what you need yeah you want to go to a show you got to have this display and this cup and you know that kind of thing so yeah yeah but then the the the immediate con to that is the barrier to entry on on a business model like that is so much higher you know i mean even even with rodents you you can, you can theoretically build up a million dollar rodent company from one rack in a bedroom, you know, theoretically speaking, you're, you're not going to create reptile basics or triple L or Josh's frogs,

you know, from a supply standpoint in that same fashion, probably not anymore, especially with the really established brands, you know, you probably need a significant six figure to seven figure initial investment, a warehouse distribution for cliffs. You know, there's a lot of all the racking that goes involved managers, employees, you know, that that's not something that you're starting out of your, your, your garage. Yeah. How much, how much is a mold for like a hide or a, you know, a rubber made container, you know, it's, it's a significant investment. Yeah. Like tens of thousands of dollars. And then

like the injection mold machines that actually produce those are like a hundred grand to half a million, depending on how big that machine is. You know, there's, there's, there's levels of this where, you know, you, you need to either leverage your entire life or know someone with a lot of money to be able to even think about doing this stuff. Um, yeah. I've seen a few people kind of make that transition, uh, TSK, uh, Dan and Colette Sutherland, they, they kind of switched over to more, having more dry goods and things. And they bought, you know, the, the punch to put holes in deli cups and things like that, you know, or where they had a rodent business and they kind of traded it out for, they sold the rodent business and bought the supplies side. And,

and I think, you know, your supplies aren't flooding, your supplies aren't, you know, they, I mean, you might have problems storing them or you need more space to store stuff and things like that, but, and that can have its own challenges, but, you know, they, I mean, you might have problems storing them or you need more space to store stuff and things like that. But, and that can have its own challenges, but you know, they're not dying on you necessarily. Yeah. You might have a bad batch or if your machine malfunctions, you know, that kind of thing. So I guess there's challenges and struggles with just about any business you're gonna run or like another one that uh you know similarly has has kind of carved out a nice little niche for itself or as far as you know

streamlining their production model is uh ars you know i in indianapolis i live 15 minutes away from ars i you know went there on a number of different occasions um you know to whether it was racks or rodents or whatever, had me over there. Pristine warehouse, super clean, organized. But stuff comes in and they assemble it or repackage it and send it back out. Their racks aren't being manufactured in-house. They're basically just distributing a bunch of their own products that are not being produced there. And if you can make that work, more power to you because that's an awesome way to do things where there's no stinky rat facility or you're not molding metal. You don't have a stainless factory. You're working with cardboard boxes and forklifts and pallet jacks and,

you know, maybe the occasional drill. That's a pretty good way to do it. But again, it's another one where you're not, you have to get to a level like what you said about the Sutherlands getting out of the rodents and getting into supplies. But they had a lot of capital to dump into that, that move to supplies from, from selling a rodent business. So I guess maybe the, the long and short of it is, you know, take, take one thing to progress to another thing where you don't have to do the dirty work anymore, but it's the point where you can.

Maybe the, the dry goods kind of both the reptile and the feeders. We got to the answer. It's, it's the non things. It's sell, sell books and stuff. And yeah. But then again, it's just, you know, I'm not doing that out of my house. Yeah. Yeah. That's, and if I were to, I don't know if I'd have time to do my reptiles anymore or I need to sell 60% of them or hire someone full time. And then we come back to the issues we were presenting earlier with, how do I know this person's doing it right or keeping all my animals where they're supposed to be? Um, because I don't know what I would do if, if I came home

one day and I realized that that one hold back scrub Python isn't in his tub anymore. That would be like, I, this, whatever I'm doing to take me out of the house, isn't worth that. You know, like that's especially at the end of the day, all of this is about the reptiles. You know, any rodent company isn't really existing for its own sake. It's existing to feed into this thing that we all care so much about. Same with the supplies. So to me personally, at this point, I want to do things in a way where it will balance out with what I really want to be doing at the end of the day. And I don't think I have it right. I

think I probably have far too many reptiles and, you know, there's, there's days where I'm just like sitting on the couch at the end of the day. Like I have, I could do six more hours of work right now and it's 11 o'clock. It's terrible, but you know, I guess that's all, all part of the journey is kind of finding out that, how that balance works for you. Yeah. And that, that's, that's a struggle in and of itself, you know, like I'm sure a lot of people who've been doing this for a long time have a lot of, you know, but I don't think that's easily transferable knowledge. I think a lot of it you have to do through experience and figuring out yourself and seeing what works for you and that kind of thing.

So, yeah. Just figuring out yourself and seeing what works for you and that kind of thing. Yeah. And I was lucky to be around people who, when I was like probably about 18, 19 years old, who had produced reptiles on the largest scales that were ever achieved. And they're like, life was terrible. I was miserable every single day. That was the worst time of my life is when I had 10,000 breeder reptiles in my facility and 10 employees and you know yeah because you're not you're not out there with the reptiles you're you're on the computer making sales or you're making a video or you're putting even if you are you do these 15

racks today you can't sit and admire an animal for a minute exactly you're not enjoying them it's just a commodity or uh yeah farm more more so than a yeah yeah and that was another uh a con towards reptiles that i had written down in case i was because it came up was uh when you go to in terms of scaling the the ethical battle i feel like comes forward a lot faster than it does with feeders because we all kind of i mean anybody who isn't a vegan accepts that farming exists agriculture is real this has been going on forever there's the food chain this is how things work um but then when you get into scaling reptiles and the the purpose of those animals is not for them to die. Okay. When, when, when do your morals take over and be like, I I'm producing these animals for the wrong reason. Um, you know, there's, there's multiple sides of the argument, but

the percentage of animals that are born every year that make it to that next year, I, I got to imagine it's a lot lower than we'd like it to be. Um, so when you're thinking about having a reptile breeding business and you want to make money doing it, okay, well, where, where, where's the line where it's, you're doing right by the animals and then you cross it over to exploitation. I think that's much harder to bridge than it is with feeders, because the way I see it, someone who's done it, it's not for the faint of heart. If you have a stomach, don't do it. If you cry easily at nasty sites, don't do it. But at the end of the day, the way I saw it was if the animals have a good life if they're treated well we can provide the the best you know parameters and then they're you know euthanized humanely and as many of them as possible can go to be food for some other animal

probably doing it the right way you know, but then when you're breeding reptiles, unless you're breeding like feeder crested geckos or morning geckos or something like that, you know, there's an entire different set of ethics that you're having to, having to wrestle with. Um, I don't think there really is one answer to that. And I think that might be an entire episode of, you know, scale question, but, uh, that that's, that's a big part that's involved. And the way I see it with reptiles that is less involved with, with feeders per se. And it's also becoming more and more apparent with, you know, all the increase of online presence and people know a lot more about your business than they used to. And so, you know, if there's something that's going wrong or somebody wants to come and see your facility and, you know, that, Hey, this guy's not doing it great.

You know, the, that word travels fast and you could, you know, your business could suffer. And so it really is an important thing, uh, becoming more important as well. I mean, it's always been important, but you know what I mean? Like, yeah. It just a lot more visibility these days where someone like Samson Pruitt was getting away with it until the social media era, uh, you know, until smartphones, when an employee could go snap, snap, snap, snap, snap. Uh, you're fucked now, you know, in the nineties, he could abuse his retics all he wants and he's tucked away in the

middle of bumfuck wherever and you know no one's gonna find out the other the the old guard of that community they don't care enough to say anything or they may be treating their animals the same way and so there's there's there's some virtue to it you know where people can be be be called out on their on their bullshit and and if it if it holds everyone to a higher standard then then good um but uh and i think another evolution is like the large-scale reptile production model if it's not for the sake of like supplying pet stores if you're if you're going direct to consumer i can't imagine it works too well i just can't imagine you make money if you need,

if you need multiple employees to run your reptile business. I just don't, I don't think any of these people are making money. Yeah. Yeah. It'd be interesting to see the actual books of some of these businesses, you know, that, uh, and, and I, I think, you know, it is, you're, you're also limited because I mean, not everybody wants to buy reptiles and, and we see, you know, periods of fluctuation. And so I saw a really nice talk by Alan Rapace over, it was, it was given to an Australian crowd and he was saying, you know, in America, the, the economy can support maybe, you know, a hundred full-time breeders. And, you know, he, he did all the math and kind of figuring out, you know, basically what it would take. And, and he, and he

said, you know, you guys have a 10th, a 10th of our population. And so you can have 10 full-time breeders in all of Australia, you know, which is the same size as the United States. And so, and you see that over there, there, it's very difficult to make a go as a full-time reptile breeder in Australia. And so, you know, I, I think that needs to be considered over here too. I think a lot of people get hoop dreams, you know, they breed their, their, their, a couple of things and then they say, okay, now I want to do this full time. And they just start ramping up and buying stuff. And like you said, that, you know, ramping up is not as easy as it seems. It's like, oh, I did well with a pair.

I'm sure I'll do well with 10 pairs or 100 pairs. It doesn't scale up the same way as rodents, like you said earlier. So that's something to be aware of, you know, if you're thinking of trying that out. Yeah. And I think the whole, the hoop stream comparison, it's a great one. And unfortunately it's because that's how,

that's how the new people are sold. It's not look at this animal. It's makes a great pet for this reason. That reason. I love how this behavior is about this animal. You know, it's look at my facility of, of stainless steel and solid gray tubs i make this

much money here's my porsche like yeah you know that that's that's it's by my snake like that's i don't know that to me it's gross like it's it's like a pyramid scheme that's kind of what you know it seems like a lot of this is is like yeah you, you too can be like me. If you buy this snake and this snake and breed them together, you know? And, and I think that's kind of, I think it's going away a little bit, you know? And I think it was mainly a product of the ball Python industry when you saw $20,000 snakes, $60,000 snakes. I knew I was talking about ball Pythons there. That's crazy.

You know, but, but yeah, I mean, I think, but it's bled over into other, other, you know, areas. And like you said, you're selling your, your, your, um, business model or you're selling your personality rather than you're selling your animals. And I mean, I see that at the shows, like I've got, you know, cool crested geckos and I'm selling them for 50 bucks, but they go over to this table and buy one for $350 because they know the breeder, you know, the breed, it has some lineage or some fun little morph name on it. And I'm like, it looks the exact same as the one I've got at my table, you know, and it's six times the price or whatever. So, yeah, crazy.

Which is unfortunate. It's just like kind of the nature of consumerism. You know, it's why we all love iPhones or they want their European designer bag that looks the same as whatever you're going to get from Target or whatnot. But, you know, you feel more and more more special that way which is okay with perishable non-living goods it's okay with a t-shirt you're like why have this for 200 because you'll be special but like once you i don't know when you apply those same principles to a living animal it is yeah yeah it's like kind of like the french like french bulldogs you know it's kind of i feel like that's a similar thing like it's like, like French bulldogs is, you know, it's kind of, I feel like that's a similar thing.

Like it's like a, it's a status symbol and it's this, you know, they're very cute, but they're, they're abominations. They're not real dogs. You know,

I just got a French bulldog. You know, every time I do that, every time I do my, I traded snakes for it, but yeah, someone's like, I want to know they're,

they're, they're awesome little dogs. They're very cute. Great dogs. Yeah. But you're right right i mean i i heard there's a there's a large breeder somewhere here in the in the valley near me and they produce all this you know all these french bulldogs but they have some huge like loss rate like 20 to 30 percent loss rate of puppies i'm like how is that a thing you know like i thought i thought dog breeders were all over puppy mills or whatever. You know, I, I would think a 30% loss rate is pretty high, but maybe it's just the nature

of the, you know, abomination of the French bulldog. My children would agree with you, by the way, they, they don't like him much, but I mean, there's a very cute bit, but any animal that can't give natural births you've you've done something to that and i have a question you know that's it's been taken into into a new form um yeah but you know one thing that i i kind of like about how the reptile industry is has gone is you know like the the transition to naturalistic keeping and big enclosures and stuff like there's a obviously a big debate there. And I don't think there's a right or wrong answer.

But I think with it comes a mindset of less being more. And, you know, I think. I think the future is breeders that are on a smaller scale are producing really high end animals and are attracting a decent price tag for those animals. So if you, you know, if you sell, you know, 30,

40 animals a year at $2,000 a piece, you're making more than most people make. And you could probably do that out of a couple of bedrooms in your house. And maybe even one, depending on what those animals are, if they're, they're geckos or small colubrids or something like that, you know,

um, that we also are seeing the import industry kind of decline and a lot of countries aren't allowing exports. And so those captive bred animals are going to be more important and the prices are going to go up. I mean, we saw it with the monkey-tailed skinks and a number of other things where once they stop imports, everybody all of a sudden realizes how cool the animal was because now it's no longer a throwaway pet that you get for 20 bucks at the pet shop. You know, now it's a really cool animal cause it's worth money or, you know, it's rare

or whatever, you know, you don't see them anymore. So. I mean, I I've benefited from that directly with the scrub pythons. Um, you know, they were, people tell you stories. I bet Rob has a million stories of the a hundred dollar class telepis on, on the, the, and on cams list in 2005, you know, and, and now that, that snake today is $3,000 or something like that. Um, you know, which it, it sucks for, for eyes to come on to a species because they're rare all of a sudden in the hobby. But I feel like that can then go one of two ways. Okay. You have the attention. Now, how do you sell this? Is it like, they're rare now. So if you get into them now and you

breed them, you're going to make a lot of money or look at how amazing these are. Look at all the different natural color variations. This is what I like about their body structure and how they move and set up in a display enclosure like this. You can witness these behaviors. You know, to me, I think that's a stronger pitch in the end than the money because it's more sustainable because people who are buying them are like, wow, I want to, I want to experience that. Wow. I love this animal. It's the way that I get to interact with it is super special. That to me is sustainable. Um, you know, I, I wonder how many ball Python breeders love the physiology of the ball Python. Um, you know, I mean, I, I, I have ball Python and not many, I only have a few pets, but like I'll always have them.

They're just not the most engaging snakes. You know, it's kind of shocking how, it's not shocking how it happened, but it's a shame how colubrids were all the hype. Ball pythons came and washed over colubrids. And now these days there aren't even really corn snake breeders like on scale, you know. It's made a little bit of a resurgence, nothing like it was 10 15 years ago yeah that was the show was all colubrids all the time and maybe one table with pythons you know now it's exactly the opposite you know yeah and with all you know all the variety milks and kings and all the different rat snakes and you know old world i welcome this new you know reptile industry i i i think we are kind of sold if uh you know a false bill of goods or

whatever where we you know everybody will i i need to keep i need to have like rows and rows of racks and i need to be like brian barczyk or you know, whatever big name you want to, you want to name, um, that just has thousands of animals in rack systems. And, you know, I thought everybody kind of thought, Oh, that's, that's the pinnacle. That's what we need to accomplish. And, and I'm hoping that's kind of going away and that, like you said, we're moving towards non, you know, throw away or, you know, more, more expensive animals, but also fewer, nicer non, you know, throw away or, you know, more, more expensive animals, but also fewer, nicer setups, you know, larger enclosures, things like that.

I think that's all a good thing. Yeah. Less is more, you know, you can really, especially if you're a hobbyist breeder, you don't need a, you know, every, every single gene or every single, you know, and, and also these, I love the species that have no morphs, you know, every, every single gene or every single, you know, and, and also these, I love the species that have no morphs, you know, that are just the snake and you appreciate it for what it is. You might, you know, have some selectively bred traits or something, but there's, you know, it doesn't get washed over by morphs. Yeah. To me, the, the specialty that goes into like a line breeding project of a wild type is so much more exciting than this and that. There's just like, to me, this, you know, okay, I'm looking at my rack of scrub pythons I've been raising up for a few years. And I like, I think this one's base color will do well with the pattern of this one. And the way that these two, they have weird neck patterns that I haven't seen many others. What if I breed

them together? Will that pattern extend further down the body? I don't really have those answers, but to me, that's, what's fun about it is I want to find out, you know, I want to know what, what the F4 of, of the animals that I've been raising up are going to look like. Um, and, and I, I, I see other people kind of, kind of going down that, that path as well. And if, if you, if someone offered me a pied barnack scrub python tomorrow, I would, I would sell my car, you know, like I'm not, I'm not hating on more, so I'd buy that snake in a heartbeat. But I think it's all about balancing it out. Not necessarily one over the other. Find virtue in all of these different aspects of herpetoculture. And one thing that I do see with the new wave keepers, the naturalistic

style keepers is just a total rejection of of the old school so to speak of these guys are all so wrong they were animal abusers they were this or that it's like you you're here because of them be grateful you can improve on whatever you want to improve on but know where you came from you know and and respect the groundwork that was that was laid for you and there's a lot to be learned from, from how things were, were done in the past. And it works too. You know, I think that's one thing. By necessity. It's not like, you know, sometimes they didn't have much of a choice or, you know,

that kind of thing. And, or they just didn't know. And, you know, there was no way to know. And that's the only way you find out is by, by trial and error over time. So I don't, I don't, I don't like that part of it. I think that, you know, if we should all, you know, obviously if someone's abusing their animals, you know, that's a different thing. But just because someone kept in simplistic setups on paper or whatever, I don't know. I don't like the sector of the hobby that yeah exactly the the bullying the don't do it like i do so public virtue signaling

i have pathos in my cages so i must be so much better than the people who were breeding snakes for 40 years and i'm you know i'm 22 and my. Yeah. Yeah. So, I don't know. I just think we all have, we all have a lot to learn from each other. And anyone who has that, that closed minded perspective is just,

is hurting themselves at the end of the day. Yeah, for sure. Well, I think this has been a really nice discussion. I really appreciate your input and you brought up some really nice points, but, um,

hopefully, uh, you guys listening, uh, got some good stuff out of this. So, um, how can,

uh, people find you where, where are you at on online? Yeah. So right now really just, uh, Facebook and Instagram. Facebook is just Steven Cush.

And then my Instagram is scrub shepherd. So, okay. Where are you finding me? Nice. I I've been enjoying your, uh, podcast shepherd. So where are you finding me? Nice. I I've been enjoying your, uh, podcast too. Why don't you throw that information out there? Yeah. Uh, every Wednesday night it's live on the, uh, trap talk reptile network YouTube channel. It's called Kush's corner. And, uh, yeah, a lot of different guests, no real theme, just kind of whatever I feel like talking about that week. And, uh, I've been having a lot of fun doing it. So I hope, I hope some of you guys check it out. Cool. Yeah. I've,

I've been listening to the episodes. I really liked the, you and Patrick geeking out about all the different scrub localities and lineages and stuff like that. It was a lot of fun to listen to. And he's, he's very passionate and very knowledgeable. So it was fun to listen to and he's he's very passionate and very knowledgeable so it was fun to listen to you guys uh nerd out there on yeah i like those episodes where i end up forgetting that there's an audience you know it's like this could have just been a phone call i i had with them you know uh that that to me that's also i like listening to that too you know i i like just being like a fly on on the wall and uh seems, you know, it was like a conversation between friends at a bar or something like that. That's what I think is really cool about these podcasts, especially with how kind of fractured and online the world is these days.

It's a, you know, even if you're not there, you kind of feel like you are. And that's cool. And that's a great way to learn. So, but yeah, I mean, if you guys are down for it, I'd love to have both of you guys on my show individually sometime here in the near future. Yeah. Anytime. That would be awesome. I also, I want to give you props to note, no offense to anybody that's had Ryan Young on their show or no offense to

Ryan Young himself, but you got some really nice information out of Ryan. Yeah. It was a great conversation and I really enjoyed that episode. Like it was like, he's a little more tight lipped on other podcasts that I've heard him on. So you, you got the, you got the conversation flowing and it was really a great episode as well. So yeah, it's hard to pick favorites and I've only done nine episodes, so I'm very new into it, but that,

that might have to be my favorite one I've done so far. That was, yeah, that was, that was pretty awesome because at least, you know, for someone like me, who's, I'm primarily doing pythons, fewer people right now. I mean, you know, I maybe could have had Dave Barker. That may have been, you know, the one step above or, you know, and I won't even say that because I think Ryan is absolutely on that same level, but it's hard to have a better overall Python guest than Ryan Young. So that was an awesome. Sure. Yeah. Very knowledgeable guy. He's yeah. He's cool. He's fun to herp with too. We've, I've heard of them a couple of times and,

and he's a cool guy. So, yeah. Well, um, I don't know. I, I think that's kind of the, the fun stuff I've been listening to lately is your podcast. And I really enjoyed Eric and Owen and Lucas interviewing. Oh, my gosh. Now, I thought about it just a second ago. And now the name is Dale DiNardo. Yeah.

OK. It came to me before Rob saved me. But yeah, Dale's episode was fantastic. That guy is fun to listen to. So if you haven't checked out, um, Morelli pythons radio interviewing Dale DiNardo. Yeah. He's talking about like egg incubation and stuff. I haven't made my way to that episode yet, but now I'm definitely going to need to check

it out. Oh, that's fantastic. And he's just fun to listen to. And I mean, extremely knowledgeable. I mean, it was a, it was a great episode. I think that's one of my favorite NPR episodes that I've heard. Awesome. Yeah. It's, it's fantastic. So, and that's saying a lot cause they've been around for 12 years, 15 years.

What are they going on now? I did an episode like four years ago and I said in the, to kind of a mixed reaction. But I mean, they got me through high school. That show. Yeah. That was my like Tuesday religious experience was like looking at my podcast. I was like, it's there, right?

Getting the train and throwing it on the way to school. Yeah. And then if they missed a week or something, you're like, Oh no, we're going to listen to this week. Right. Yeah. Yeah.

That was good times. Yeah. Um, I don't know anything else. Cool. You guys have seen in the last, uh, week or so or more,

uh, any, any kudos out there. I, I think, uh, that, that, uh, yeah, the kudos out there. I think, uh, that, that, uh,

yeah, the Dale DiNardo episode was probably my highlight of the week. That was fun. I need to listen to it again. Yeah. I definitely need to check that out. That sounds like an awesome episode for sure. Oh yeah.

All right. Well, thanks again for coming on Steve. This has been fantastic and really great and we'll have to have you back i'm sure you've got a wealth of topics you can cover so um yeah but we appreciate you coming on yeah i i love doing guests and any any time as you can tell i i definitely i can for some reason i'm not this way really when I'm not on a podcast, I don't know what it is, but you know, sometimes you just get rolling on topic. I still, I still get it. What was your old, uh, when, when you're, um,

what was your old personality that you would do on? Was it conservation? There you go. I got, I got bullied out of, uh, out of doing that. So There you go. I got, I got bullied out of, uh, out of doing that. So too many people who I respect being like, I absolutely hate that you do that. I'm like, all right, I'm out. Yeah. I thought it was, I thought it was pretty funny, but yeah. Some people didn't. All right. Well, yeah. Uh, well, thanks to NPR for, for hosting our podcast and Eric and Owen and all the good stuff they're doing.

And we'll catch you again next week for Reptile Fight Club.