Happy February everyone!  We hope that you all had a wonderful holiday season.  As for us, we had a great time with the kids, celebrating the season, enjoying time off, and being together as a family. 

Randy was out in the dragon room about 2 weeks ago and noticed that a few of the dragons were up trying to bask, so we decided to wake them up a few weeks early.  Needless to say that means Randy is super busy again cleaning and feeding.  We have already noticed the males bobbing away ready for the females.  We are beefing everyone up so they will be healthy and hopefully give us nice big clutches when the time comes.

The corns are still in brumation. So there isn't much work there.  I did get my first "real" bite a few weeks ago.  I was busy cleaning their cages, just changing out the paper towels, cleaning and refiling water dishes, when I went to grab my hypo female Caliente, and I must have startled her or she just didn't want to be handled, and bam she grabbed on to my ring finger and twisted all around my hand.  I got her to un coil but boy she it was a little more work to get her to stop biting me.  I was always afraid of being betten, but now I know it isn't any big deal.  Well at least from the corns it isn't!  I did bleed but I was pretty much healed up by the next day.  Rat/mouse bites are much worse, and more painful, as are cat scratches.  Randy finally built me a rack for the ball pythons (still need them for the corns, and my many corn hatchlings I plan to have this year).  The balls are busy being balls.  Eating, and pooping.  I have decided that I dont want to get bitten by them, their mouths are much larger then the corns so I assume it will hurt more.  LOL

We acquired a female uromastic this year, and hope to introduce her to our male.  I have to do some research on that though, as I have no idea how to incubate their eggs, nor do I have any idea of when the female will be ready to reproduce.  I think the biggest work though is the Rats/Mice that we started breeding to feed my snakes.  They aren't producing like I had hoped, and now Randy has to spend even more time cleaning and feeding.  The biggest problem with the rats though is their desire to eat through the plastic water bottles.  Eventually we will have a drip system for their rack and wont have to worry about that issue.

We wanted to have everyone ready for brumation/hybernation the weekend after Thanksgiving, looks like it is going to be the first weekend in December instead.  That is ok though, we are still on schedule!  Everyone looks healthy, and ready to sleep for a while. 
I am hoping that during this period I can get Randy to make me some much needed new racks for my snakes.  I have to have a baby snake rack built this year for sure.  Hoping to have a lot of corn snake babies therefore I need homes for them all until they find their forever homes. 
I am very excited about our 2012 plan for the Beardies too!  We finally have leatherbacks, and translucents in our plan!  I cant wait to see what we hatch out this year.
As for the Hays household.  We are ready for the holidays.  We had a great Thanksgiving with Randy's family.  Our house is decorated inside and out for Christmas.  Now we are just waiting for Santa to come.  HMMM maybe he will bring me those racks I want/need. 

2011 is Over.  We had a small quiet year, not many babies were produced.  We think it was because of the weather.  Spring/Summer just couldn't figure out when to start here in California!  Currently we are busy getting ready for the winter.  Moving cages around to accomodate our new breeding room, changing lights, worming the dragons for brumation and cleaning.....always busy cleaning. 

Right now we are also getting our plan for 2012 together. 

As you know male dragons (or females) dont always want to breed with who you pair them with, so we are trying to figure out an A, B, and C plan.  While we didn't breed much this year, what we did breed worked well for us.  We got those hypo translucents we were hoping for!  Next year (if everything works like we plan) we will hopefully have hypo trans leathers for sale! 

I have the corn snakes all figured out, we just need to build a few racks that will hold the babies when they arrive next year.  I did have success with the few adult that bred, and got butters, carmels, amels, normals, and 1 lavendar!  However, with the excitement came the disappointment, the lavendar died a few weeks after it hatched.  I hopefully will have better success next year in that department.

I am very excited for my ball python plan this year.  I should be breeding my 66% het pieds, and possibly breed my 100% het axanthics!  Keep your fingers crossed for me on those. 

I have also got a new business plan together for next year.  There will be many updates, the biggest will probably be our name change. 

Good luck to all out there going into winter, and breeding season!