1/4/07:  Happy New Year!!  Well, I hope you all had a safe holiday season and enjoyed the time with family and friends.  I know I did.  We got Guitar Hero II for playstation 2 and are completely addicted.  What a great game and some awesome songs associated.  I also got the new ball python book by the Barkers "Pythons of the World: Vol 2- Ball pythons"  It is a great book with awesome pictures.  It is probably the most complete book available in herpeteculture with chapters on general snake maintaince and such.  I would highly recommend it, even if you are not really into the ball python morph scene.  I have yet to read it through as it has been a busy couple of weeks traveling for the holidays and it is a long book, but so far what I have read is spot on.

The breeding season continues to go very well.  We got our first clutch of eggs from our normal coastal female bred to Napoleon, our red jaguar coastal carpet male!   They look good (only a couple infertiles) and there are over 30 eggs!  Here is hoping for a high jag ratio.  If '07 is your year to get some jags, we should have a nice selection available in March or April.  Out of these eggs we should hatch red jaguar coastals, normal jags, red sibling coastals, and normal coastal jag siblings.  This will definately be a long 2 months of waiting for the eggs to hatch.  We have them set up in a very nice incubator, so hopefully incubation will go on without a hitch and we will have babies in February.  This, in my opinion, is the best part of keeping snakes, and any animal for that matter.  Captive breeding allows the animals to do what they were designed and meant to do.  They get to experience life events and pass on their genes.  It is just a great thrill to see baby snakes hatching out!  It is also important to reduce the need for wild-caught snakes and will keep a supply of healthy captive bred and born animals for people to be able to experience the joys of herpetoculture. 

Our jungle carpets have been breeding up a storm, including the much anticipated (by us at least) Skunk and Opal pairing.  You can see pictures of Skunk and Opal on our jungle collection page and see why we are so excited.  I have also put a pair of adult womas together, but have yet to see any breeding activity yet.  The centralians are always together and I will be cooling them down quite a bit to get them into the breeding mood.  I have witnessed a copulation or two in the childrens python cage, and we should have one or two clutches of our VPI line.  Unfortunately, I think the Cape York spotteds are a little too small to breed this year, so we will have to wait until next season for a clutch of those awesome snakes.  I love this time of year, and we should have some great Australian pythons available.  As for ball pythons, the pied continues to do his job and has been hooking up with hets and poss hets left and right.  We are hoping for a bunch of pieds this year.  Our male mojave and male pastel have also been breeding several females. 

On a sad note, we lost our male breeder spider to an acute respiratory infection (RI).  It was kind of a wake up call for us, and we take RIs a little more seriously.  I used to think that RIs could be generally taken care of by heat and humidity, and treatment was only neccessary if labored breathing was observed.  The male spider was observed to have a few bubbles in his mouth when he was cooled with a female for breeding, so I moved him to a warm humid enclosure.  I checked on him the next day and he seemed to be recovering, but 2 days later he was dead.  I took him to our veterinary diagnostics lab and the vet performed a necropsy.  He was in great shape and had adequate fat reserves and looked to be in "good flesh" according to the veterinarian.  Examination of the lungs showed they were almost filled with fluid, which indicated a bacterial origin.  Microscopy and culture of the samples confirmed this.  The female that was with him also showed some signs, and we treated her with baytril injections for 10 days at a dose of 5 mg/kg/d as suggested by the vet.  She cleared up nicely.  We have kind of gone into overprotective mode and are really babying all of the animals to make sure they are all doing well.  We have plenty of baytril on hand and our vet is very competant and helpful.  This was a hard lesson to learn, so I urge you to treat RIs promptly.  Don't learn the hard way.  I guess many times mistakes are made, and animals will die, but we must be vigilant in our care.

Well, good and bad things happen, and we hope all of you are having the best of luck with the new year and the breeding season.  I have added some quick pictures on the bumblebee page and the mojave page.  Our male bumblebee, Nacho Libre (Nacho for short), has finally decided to eat on his own and is really putting down the rodents.  He should catch up and be up to breeding season by next year.  I have to check him out every time I go into the herp room because he is just so stunning.  In light of the tragedy, there is usually something that comes along and restores the excitement of this hobby.  We are still having a blast and are as addicted as ever.  So, I say to you all join us in our excitement and as always... GET ADDICTED!

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12/12/06:  Things are shaping up nicely for the breeding season here at AAR.  Our pied male has decided to be a breeder pied.  He locked up with our het pied female the other day.  We are really hoping for some nice pieds this year after getting null this last season.  The piebald will certainly be very important for many years to come.  Red Jaguar carpets will be coming very soon, and our female coastal bred by Napoleon will be laying sometime very soon.  She is an early breeder and has given us early clutches the last two years, and needless to say, we are very excited about this clutch.  Maybe our most anticipated clutch of the year.  Should be very fun to hatch out an early clutch of jags, especially red jags. 

Well, things are busy with the holidays, and I hope you are all enjoying this time of year.  It really is a great season, and it is nice to see the spirit of compassion and giving so pervasive.  Yeah, the commercialism is annoying, but the TV can always be turned off.  My wife has been great at getting family holliday crafts going, and we have made gingerbread (well, graham cracker) houses, ornaments for the tree, and winter scene pictures for the last couple of weeks.  It's really fun to watch the kids get so excited about this time of year.  I am excited for a little time off of work to hang out all day and enjoy my wife and kids.  We wish you all a merry Christmas and happy hollidays.  May you have many reptiles under your tree.  GET ADDICTED.


11/21/06: Another exciting new aquisition for AAR!  Man, the good times keep on coming.  We got 2.2 Angolan pythons in trade this last weekend, and they are awesome!  I have added an Angolan page to our African Collection page, so you can see a couple pictures there.  More pictures and information will be added in time.  They are so cool with their bead-like scales and bold patterns.  The babies are a bit fiesty, but I haven't been bitten yet.  They should make a great addition to our breeding projects, and we have offspring from 2 unrelated lines; the Living Jewels line and an unrelated German line.  We got them from Chris Stewart, who has done a great job with Angolans.  We also got some new ball morphs in a trade recently.  We picked up a female Yellowbelly (het ivory) and a male het Genetic Stripe.  I have also added new Collection pages for these two cool morphs.  These came from Anthony McCain.  The male het G-stripe is a very cool blackback, with only a few breaks in the blackback pattern and the yellowbelly is textbook het ivory.  Check out the pictures on their respective pages.

Our breeding season has begun, and we should have eggs before too long.  It will be great to hatch out red jaguars, jungle jags, jungles from Skunk and Opal, and hopefully some womas.  It should be a bumper-crop year for us.  We may have some cool ball morph crosses as well.   Our female spider is feeding well, and we are planning to produce some spider het pieds.  We are also holding back some great Python Pete line jungles to let them color up a little bit, and we will be offering some nice yellow and black jungles for sale in the spring.  We may also be offering some '05 womas if the offer is right.  If you are interested in some womas with a little size on them, let us know.  We may be willing to let a couple go.

My wife and I got some sweet tickets from my inlaws to the Utah Jazz game the other night against the Pheonix Suns.  We were on the 3rd row just across from the oposing sides bench.  This was one of the best games I have ever seen.  Our starters got in foul trouble in the first half, and with the 2nd string players in, were down by 15 at the end of the 3rd quarter.  Okur hit 3 freethrows to tie it up and send the game into overtime.  The Jazz whooped up in overtime and won the game.  It was a great game!  Boozer is the man, and he rocked.  That puts the Jazz at 9 and 1, the best in the NBA.  Hopefully they can keep up the momentum and do well in the playoffs.  It should be a great year for Utah.

Well, here is wishing you a happy Thanksgiving holliday.  We are very blessed to be able to work with so many great herps and are loving every minute of it.  GET ADDICTED! 


11/2/06:  Well, the bee has landed!  Our bumblebee ball python hatched out this past weekend and it's a boy!  Looks like we will be keeping him back for breeding purposes.  He has a very clean pattern and nice blushing in the spider pattern.  We have named him Nacho as he hatched out while my wife and I were watching Nacho Libre, and he is also the color of nachos, so it seemed like a fitting name.  He hatched out a little on the
small side at 35 g, which was probably due to the fact that mold was growing on 1/4th of the egg during incubation.  I was surprised that the egg made it, and even more surprised that we were fortunate enough to get a bee!  Our spider females are growing quickly and most are above 300 g, and approaching 400 g fast.  We are about ready to shut down shipments for the winter, and will be holding everything over until the spring so we will be offering large ball morphs, colorful jungles, and a few other goodies.  If you are interested in package deals for any of our snakes, please contact us soon to get them shipped out before it gets too cold.  We can do some great deals on ball and carpet python packages.  Just email us and tell us what you are interested in and we'll put together a great price for you.

We have started putting breeding pairs together and are ready to start cooling down.  It has been cold here in Northern UT, so cooling won't be a problem.  The cold has been a problem in the past with my rodent colony, so I will probably have to put some removable walls around the rodent colony in the garage to help them retain some heat.  The herp room is very well insulated, and holds heat better than my house, which is very helpful for wintertime.  I also have an airconditioner installed that can cool the room down in the case that the heat goes up too high.  We will also be making our yearly maintainance on the rooms and cages to make sure all the heat elements and wiring are safe and functioning properly.  You can never be too safe when it comes to the safety of your collection.  The new adult ball racks are working very well, and now I am trying to talk Ben into letting me make some for his room.  I will be getting some pictures of the herp room up sometime, and would like to add rack and cage plans to the site to assist anyone out there that is wishing to make their own cages.  Well, keep warm this winter, and enjoy the slow time.  Hopefully that will give me time to get more stuff on the site that I have been planning.  I was able to make a few changes recently on the collection page and now you must choose between the ball morphs and the Australian collection, so choose wisely....
As always, GET ADDICTED!


10/15/06:  Sorry for the delay in an update.  We have been busy with herp shows and work, and rather than neglect the animals, I have neglected the website.  The weather is changing, so we will be stopping shipments soon.  If you are interested in any of our animals, let us know soon so we can get them shipped before the weather gets too cold.  We had a blast in Anaheim and met a ton of cool breeders, and I got a few pictures that can be seen on the visits page.  The show left us with horse voices after talking for hours with some fellow moreliaphiles.  The best thing about being a vendor was the chance to see all of the animals for sale at the show before the doors opened to the public.  Our only purchase at the show was a male het granite Irian Jaya.  We have named him Kip, and you can see below why we chose that name.  It fits well with our current Napoleon

Dynamite naming theme.  There were also some awesome knobtails, and I really struggled with having to pass some of the deals on those, but I am happy with Kip.  We should be producing poss het granite pairs this coming season, as long as Kip is a stud and does a good job with the ladies.  A full body shot of Kip can be seen on the Irian Jaya page, and more will be added sometime.

I did pick up an additional project this last week.  Cape York spotteds that are descendants from the Barkers (VPI) original Cape York stock are tough to find, and I was offered a 3-year old pair and I couldn't pass it up.  They are feeding well on small rats and hopefully will give us a clutch this year.  They sure are beautiful snakes and are very irredescent in the sunlight.  There are some great brick red tones through the pattern.  Check out some pictures of our breeder stock on the Cape York spotted page.  We are definately excited to add yet another awesome Australian species to our collection, and hope to offer offspring soon. 

We had a great stroke of luck with our single egg from a pastel to spider breeding, and hit the odds with a bumblebee.  The anticipation of if the egg would make it and what was inside was too much to handle and we slit the egg on d 52 of incubation.  What a nice sight when we looked in
the egg!  It hasn't come out of the egg, but it seems like everything looks good, and hopefully it'll be out really soon.  I can't wait to get more pictures of this snake.  It looks really clean, and should be a screamer.  An update will occur soon with some pictures of this beauty.  We are hoping for a male, of course, but we won't be disappointed either way.  This egg was a "nipple" egg, and you can see it had molded a bit, so I was happy that it was viable in the first place, so you can imagine how stoked we are to have the odds turn out so great.  Our '06 offspring are growing quickly, and we have a few morphs left. 

We are gearing up for the upcoming breeding season.  I relpaced many of our old racks with some great plastic racks that I built from some plastic shelving kits from Home Depot.  It was a great economical way to make them, and cost about half as much as a commercial rack would be.  They work great for our medium pythons, and I am very happy with they way they turned out.  Our male jaguar, napoleon has already started breeding our huge female coastal, and we have a big tri-stripe coastal female so we should have a great selection of red jags, red tri-stripe jags, tri-stripe jags, normal jags, red jag sibling coastals, and normal jag sib coastals for sale next year.  This has been a fun project and we are excited to take it to the next level.  We may also produce some jungle jags, but that all depends on how big of a stud Napoleon is.  The womas are also getting ready to start the breeding season, and hopefully we can see a couple woma clutches this year.  '08 should be the year of the woma at AAR with many different pairs up to size for that season.  We are sure hoping for some centralian eggs, and will be cooling them soon for the breeding season.  I hope the males can handle the big girls this year, as they didn't produce this last season.  We have several Irian jaya females set to go with Kip, and we hope he is up to the task of producing some poss het granites.  Our ball python females are huge, and we should have a bunch of monster clutches, so look for more stellar spiders, mojaves, pieds, pastels, and others.  Get Addicted!


8/28/06:  Great things are happening here as we gear up for the NARBC Anaheim show.  We can deliver any animals to the show, so if you are interested in anything on the available page, let us know and we can set up a time to meet up.  Also, if you are going to be at the show, stop by and introduce yourself.  It is always nice to meet new people that share this crazy hobby.  We just got a clutch of eggs from our spider female that was bred by our pastel male.  Only one egg looks viable, but here's hoping for a bumblebee.  We had a great surprize recently as our clutch of two eggs from our het albino pair began to hatch, and a ghostly head emerged.  After talking with the breeder it appears that we have a pair of double het ghost albinos.  We were lucky that the ghost hatched out, so now we know those genes are in the mix as well.  Here is the male ghost 66% het albino.  So next year we have a chance at producing a sunglow (albino ghost).  The female double het is eating very well and should be ready to give us another clutch next year.  What a fun project!

    The woma yearlings are growing by leaps and bounds, and hopefully will be up for some breeding in the next year or two.  They are looking phenomenal, and should make some top quality babies.  It will be nice to hatch out some womas.  The '06 jungles and jungle crosses are eating well and growing.  Some are already starting to look like trophies.  We haven't really been pushing them hard for sale lately, and want to wait until after the show.  I haven't even sexed them all yet, so I appologize for being so lazy with that.  It is just nice to be able to sell these guys to someone we can meet in person and they can see for themselves how nice these jungles are.  My holdbacks from the PXP05 clutch are just about as nice as you can get and are great feeders and are gearing up to make some nice babies in a couple of years.  They are trophy snakes for sure.  The childrens pythons are doing well and growing nicely.  I will feel comfortable selling some soon and have sexed most of them.  Australian reptiles are so dang cool and we are lucky to have some of the best examples available in the states.  I really want to get some amyae, so if you are interested in some of the animals we have here and have some amyae, maybe we can work out a trade.  Napoleon is getting big and will hopefully be ready to make some nice jags this season.  We have 2-3 females lined up for him.  The tiger coastal male is also getting huge and it seems like the lump from a recent meal never lasts very long.  His female counterpart is also doing well and is looking so nice.  She is really light colored, and I can't wait to see the tigers they produce.  It will be interesting to see how this tiger genetic question is answered. 

    You can't get better than a nice jungle or jaguar carpet in your collection.  I had my PXP pair get out the other night and trash the room a bit, knocking stuff off the shelves and such.  I found them pretty easily.  It's nice to have such a secure herp room that they can not escape from.  It just takes a short search, and I can get them back to their nice warm cages quickly.  It's always easy to tell when they are out too, because when you enter the room, it looks like they have been having a wild party.  I sure do love Australian herps.  I had an Australian guy email me and ask me if I felt guilty for having Australian herps that were likely illeagally smuggled from Australia and resulted in the deaths of so many animals that didn't make the trip.  I replied that mine were multiple generation animals bred in the US.  They all probably came in when importation of Australian animals was still allowed or came in from Europe from captive bred progeny, and therefore, I am not in the least sad that I had these wonderful species.  I am glad they are here and I can have the opportunity to keep them and produce more of these awesome animals.  If I had my way, I wouldn't sell any of them, because it is fun to see how they grow and change, but reality dictates differently. 
   
    All of our '06 ball hatchlings are doing well and growing quickly.  Even our runt mojave is putting on some nice weight.  It will be hard to sell any female spiders, as they are eating like champs and gaining some serious weight.  Unfortunately, the het pied to het pied clutch was a strikeout, and we ended up with all 66% poss het pieds.  On the bright side, they were 2.3, so we didn't get stuck with a whole clutch of males.  Most have the nice pied marker.  They should be nice looking poss het pieds, so if you are interested in starting out a pied project for not a lot of money, let us know and we can hook you up with the whole clutch.  Our female pastels from last year are in full feeding mode, and should be ready for the '07 season.  Still trying to decide what we want to breed them to.   The male pied has also grown very well, and will hopefully be ready to handle a few girls.  The plan is to breed him to a couple co-dom morphs to get some spider het pieds or mojave het pieds.  We can then make some spieds, pastel pieds, and piejaves in a few years.  Pied projects have proven to be very nice, and should be good investment morphs for a long time.   It's too bad our pied clutches this year were a bust.  We were hoping to hold back a few females for the combo morphs.  There is always next year.  Well, I look forward to Anaheim and hope you are all having fun with this years hatchlings.  Take care, and GET ADDICTED!


7/17/06:  It's about time for an update!  It's been too long.  Well, snakes are everywhere and we still have some clutches to go.  Make sure you check out the available page for animals that are ready to go.   We have hatched out some awesome jungle carpets and we will be posting them shortly and sending the images around for those on the waiting list.  Most have started eating mice without any problem, so they will be ready soon.  There are going to be some great looking jungles to say the least.  The mojaves and spiders turned out really nice and some are almost completely striped.  There is just something about a stripe on a mojave or spider that adds to the beauty.  Childrens pythons have also started in on the pink mice and should be ready soon as well.  Irian jayas have hatched, and we should have a few available.  The jungle X coastal crosses are also doing well and ready to go.  I need to contact everyone on the waiting list so you can secure your animal and we can get it out to you.  Our female spider surprised us with an ovulation last week, so we are greatly anticipating that clutch.  I sure hope we can hatch out a male bumblebee!  What a great way to end the breeding season.  On the down side, two of our poss het pied girls slugged out.  I was really hoping to prove them out this year, but it will have to wait until next year.   We also got no eggs from the centralian pythons.  I thought they would go this year for sure. 

Well this last week was a very hectic week.  Aside from all the summer events that have us driving back and forth and the 4th of July stuff, I have been putting some finishing touches on the herp room and have been wearing myself out every night trying to finish things.  The herp room was in disarray,  and it was all I could do to care for the animals.  I am sorry if I didn't reply quickly to any email queries for additional pictures or weights on different animals.  I am back to normal now, and can start getting info out much quicker.  I'll have to post some pictures of the herp room.  I am pretty happy with the way it has turned out.  The 4th of July was great this year.  My parents were in charge of the festivities in Hooper, the town where I grew up.  My son, Jake, brother in law, Anson, and my friend Jared and his brother Adam, and myself won the Hooper bed race this year!  What a prestigious win that was.  The bed race is a tradition from back about 20 years that has been revitalized this year.  You make a bed mobile and have 4 guys push and one guy rides.  Some thought we were a little too old to win, but age and heart overcame youth and vigor. 

Well, I hope you like the new look of the web site.  A buddy of mine also built me an animated banner in flash with music and everything, but one it was on the site, the music was a bit off of the animation.  It is still pretty cool, though, and you can check it out at http://www.australianaddiction.com/AAIndex06.html  Flash is pretty fun.  I will be making some additional changes over time, but I really like the simplicity of the site and how easy it is to update and make changes on my own.  It doesn't have all the bells and whistles of some of the flashier sites, but hopefully the content makes up for it.  Hope all of you are enjoying the summer, and check back often for updates, and as always, GET ADDICTED!


5/26/06:  It is almost time for more eggs to start hatching.  We have a couple ball python clutches, sired by our spider male and mojave male, that should be hatching out this week.  Knob-tail eggs are beginning to dent and should hatch in a matter of days.  Our jungle clutches are also due to hatch soon.  If you are interested in any of our animals, fill out the waiting list form found on our Available page.  We also have a number of '05 holdbacks and late starters for sale that can also be found on our Available page.  These won't last long, so contact us soon.  A few jungles from Skunk X Deb are about ready to go, and we will be contacting people on the waiting list for jungles from this pairing.  There will definitely not be enough for everyone on the list, but we will have some phenomenal jungles hatching out from JB X Lilly in the next few days, which are beautiful Python Pete bloodline and have consistently put out beautiful jungles. 

The womas are settling in nicely.  There is still a small chance that we may get one clutch from one of the proven breeder females, but at this time it is difficult to tell.  I would anticipate that we should have plenty available next year.  We are also growing up some awesome '05s that should be great stock to replace the existing breeders at some point.  Australian Addiction will definitely have some fantastic womas available in the near future, which is a goal we thought would take many years to accomplish.  Our tigers are also looking great and growing quickly.  It appears that we have two females instead of a pair, but that is just fine with us.  The woma page and the jungle carpet python page have also been updated with some new info and pictures (actually the jungle page just has one new picture of our awesome '05 striped girl, Trixie).  I have almost completed the switching out of the old cages in my herp room, and Benson is getting a new place with a much larger herp room and room for rodents.  That will be nice to get some of those stinking rodents out of here. 

My wife and I got back from Puerto Rico a couple weeks ago.  What a tropical paradise!  Aside from the traffic, it was a very nice place.  I got pretty scorched while snorkeling, but the fish and the beach were worth it...well, almost.  I saw a few wild iguanas, some neat anoles, some whiptails, and Coqui frogs were everywhere.  It was cool to hear their song everywhere there was a little vegitation.  My wife loves them, and she was the one that spotted the ones we saw.  It was very nice to get away for a week. 

Well, life is good, and this is the best hobby.  Keep posted for changes and watch the available list.  It should be a great year, and will just keep getting better.  GET ADDICTED!


5/1/06:  Well, April has to have been the best month ever for AAR.  The biggest news that we have is the aquisition of "Python" Pete's woma collection.  He was reluctant to let them go, but he was ready to free up his time for personal reasons.  We are very excited to have the best woma collection in the US.  I have been drooling over Pete's womas ever since I visited him in 1997.  Well, the time has come, and times are very good!  Thanks again to Pete for parting with such a magnificent collection.  We flew down to San Diego, rented a truck, and hauled the snakes and cages back to Utah.  I just can't get over how awesome they are and can't help but sit and stare at them when I am in the herp room.  Pete is my mentor and one of the reasons I am so excited about Australian herps.  He is one of the best breeders in herpetoculture and quietly produced some awesome gems.  I am glad to call him my friend.  I put up a quick woma page with a couple pictures and will be adding more to it in the near future. 

The tigers arrived, and they are spectacular.  I also made a quick tiger page to show off our pair and will be adding to that soon as well.  We also have many clutches incubating from carpet pythons, childrens pythons, knob-tails, and our ball python projects.  We may have a centralian clutch or two in the next little while as well as a possible woma clutch.  We'll be very busy in the next few weeks.  The Skunk X Deb jungle clutch has hatched, and there are some great looking babies.  Once we go through and pick out the keepers, we will be photographing each animal and setting up our available page.  We'll contact those of you that are on the waiting list in the order we received your names to give you first picks.  If you are not on the list, and are interested in any of our projects, get in quickly, as they are filling up fast.  We should have some awesome things to report soon, so stay tuned for some great updates.

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