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Info BHB Reptiles?

RonanRat said:
Sincerely asking here, not to play devil's advocate of course but with the amount of snakes BHB produces and owns, are a few mites here and there strange or uncommon? I definitely agree they should not ship any that -do- have mites, but isn't it pretty common for a place of that size to get them on occasion?

Granted, if they see any they need to quarantine right away instead of continuing to have it on the main floor, but I digress. I apologize if I come across as ignorant but I don't currently own breeding snakes or have a business (yet) so I am pretty unaware of how things operate.
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No its not common, It happens from lack of proper QT of animals coming in and going out and coming in.

When going to reptile expos, animals that went with, must be QT away from the stock, as well as when new arrivals came in.

Mites are caused from your lack of care plain and simple. Ive never had mites and know many as well that have never had them either.
 
A little birdie in a PM was kind enough to give me the aforementioned link. I highly suggest watching it in HD otherwise you will not be able to see the details I mention below.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rXFofP-xcts&list=UUCGLzU6yF7DBAIg0493j9ow&index=7

Go to 00:49. You'll notice that he does pick the albino up off the ground, so there is the possibility of dirt adhering to scales. At 01:03 you'll see four black dots on the side of the albino ball python. The lower dot on the back coil of the snake does move on its own. Could be mites, could be a fruit fly, it's impossible to tell from the video, but it is certainly a living invertebrate crawling across the snake.

Okay, this will be my last post. In response to Lissa, I wouldn't think it's unusual for someone who has thousands of snakes to occasionally have a mite problem.
 
RichsBallPythons said:
No its not common, It happens from lack of proper QT of animals coming in and going out and coming in.

When going to reptile expos, animals that went with, must be QT away from the stock, as well as when new arrivals came in.

Mites are caused from your lack of care plain and simple. Ive never had mites and know many as well that have never had them either.
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Alright, thank you. I've never had a mite problem so I wasn't sure.

To snowgyre: that video is pretty bad, sheesh. You can see little black flecks -all over- that snake. I'd QT right away with a snake that looked like that, not have it near the racks. :( Gross.
 
I have never bought from BHB.What I have noticed at Tinley every year,they charge double compared to everyone else..I was gonna buy my girlfriend a anery hondo,BHB wanted $80.00 everyone else priced at $40.00.
 
RichsBallPythons said:
No its not common, It happens from lack of proper QT of animals coming in and going out and coming in.

When going to reptile expos, animals that went with, must be QT away from the stock, as well as when new arrivals came in.

Mites are caused from your lack of care plain and simple. Ive never had mites and know many as well that have never had them either.
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I will respectively disagree with you Rich. This statement may be true in Michigan, but in the south, it is not true at all. I have gotten mites ... and the only place they could have come from is outside. I live in the country and there are many wild snakes here ... rat snakes predominately. The mites can come in on your clothes or come up through the floor boards.
 
Snake-Queen said:
I will respectively disagree with you Rich. This statement may be true in Michigan, but in the south, it is not true at all. I have gotten mites ... and the only place they could have come from is outside. I live in the country and there are many wild snakes here ... rat snakes predominately. The mites can come in on your clothes or come up through the floor boards.
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Still, Allowing Mites into your collection is lack of husbandry period. I go field herping yearly, go near others collections and never received them.

Not to mention most mites we deal arent found in the wild naturally in the US but get there from our negligence from importing.

Mites can adhear to your clothing for hours and jump off you later on, or catch a ride from a visitor, and they become dormant and float like dust in reptile shows as well! To get them, you slipped up somehwere
 
Interesting to see that Brian's "over" pricing has been brought up twice in this thread. Nothing about it has anything to do with how he does business. Seems his snakes sell too. Put the time, effort, and overhead into your businesses, and you too can "over" price. Mites and hets that don't prove out are an issue, pricing isn't.
 
Rich, what did you have at your house? 20-30 snakes? Get off your damn high horse. It sucks to get mites but they are a fact of life for real business' in this industry. Do you even have a clue how much time and work it takes for somebody like Brian to care for probably a 100,000+ adult animals and then the insane amount of babies he produces??? No. you have no idea. It is not a dig on you but you are a small time, part time, hobbiest who bailed on the hobby posting all over the net that the tiny collection you had was too much for you!

You get mites at shows, you get mites at pet stores, I will bet Brian gets mites from people who come to his building to pick up animals! You talk about quarentine like the small level you are familiar with. Where should BHB qarentine their animals when they already have over 10,000 square feet of animals in their building? You just need to get off bashing people when you have no concept of the work involved.

For all of you with small collections, mites suck, but they are part of keeping reptiles. If your kids go to school and get head lice from other people and your neighbors tell everyone what trash you are and how disgusting your house is you just tell them that you will do better at quarentining them next time. It is not a big deal, it is just life. Cats and dogs get fleas, same deal, they get them from other animals.

Parasites have been around as long as the animals they feed on. It is part of food chain and they serve their purposes in nature. You buy one of a dozen remedies, you kill the mites in your house and you move on and do the best you can to keep from getting them in the future but as long as you go to shows, go to pet shops, buy or trade animals, at some point you are going to have to deal with mites.
 
I think this thread has become a bit of an unnecessary dogpile and rehashing of old grudges, little of which has to do with OP's inquiry.

I have no idea what the mystery black flecks are. I have an albino that gets bits of crap/mulch on her all the time. I don't think you can reliably tell from a few seconds of video, and believe me, I was looking on a rather large monitor.

As to other claims about Brian's character...all I see is conjecture and baseless assumptions. Yes, he makes his living this way, but I still completely reject any notion that he's only in it for the money. I'm fine with people hashing out their issues/concerns with husbandry and whatnot, and I do realize I'm not an expert and others may well know better than me. But I really have a hard time not saying anything about the claims of greed, 'whining like a petulant child', etc. I'm still a relative newb and complete nobody that has yet to breed a single snake, but Brian has been one of the nicest and most helpful people I've met in the hobby by far. I really have a hard time believing that someone as bad as some people are insinuating would even bother with me. After all, I'm not buying thousands of dollars in snakes from him. I've spent a grand total of $60 with BHB, and was still treated extremely kindly before I did.
 
Sorry Rob, I forgot, I am not going to address those other issues. I have known Brian for 20 some years now and we have had excellent business dealings as well as bad ones and I have no wish to get back into that or rehash old crap. I just want to be clear that the mite thing is so blown out of proportion and misunderstood by people on internet forums, not so much to defend Brian, he can take care of himself. E
 
Xaila said:
I think this thread has become a bit of an unnecessary dogpile and rehashing of old grudges, little of which has to do with OP's inquiry.

I have no idea what the mystery black flecks are. I have an albino that gets bits of crap/mulch on her all the time. I don't think you can reliably tell from a few seconds of video, and believe me, I was looking on a rather large monitor.

As to other claims about Brian's character...all I see is conjecture and baseless assumptions. Yes, he makes his living this way, but I still completely reject any notion that he's only in it for the money. I'm fine with people hashing out their issues/concerns with husbandry and whatnot, and I do realize I'm not an expert and others may well know better than me. But I really have a hard time not saying anything about the claims of greed, 'whining like a petulant child', etc. I'm still a relative newb and complete nobody that has yet to breed a single snake, but Brian has been one of the nicest and most helpful people I've met in the hobby by far. I really have a hard time believing that someone as bad as some people are insinuating would even bother with me. After all, I'm not buying thousands of dollars in snakes from him. I've spent a grand total of $60 with BHB, and was still treated extremely kindly before I did.
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Since you quoted something I said I feel I must respond.
All I know is I didn't like what I saw in that video I posted. Cutting with a Rusted razor, acting like 2 normals is akin to the world ending, etc. That isn't someone I want to give my money to and support. Plus the bad het thread. It's great to hear that you had a good experience but that doesn't mean everyone else has.
 
Seriously, folks, hasn't anyone here ever engaged in genetic breeding plans and been disappointed when the odds were not in your favor? Yeah, it SUCKS. Been there and done that MANY times myself. And it's not really entirely focused on money, but if you are in BUSINESS, it will be a factor. It's mostly about HOPING that you get lucky with the statistical odds favoring you with combo genetic types, and having those hopes rudely shattered when the eggs hatch and disappointing reality is staring you in the face.

And truth be known a LOT of people in BUSINESS are interested in money. They HAVE to be. Otherwise, what the heck are they in business for? To spend all that time effort and their own money just to try to make friends?

Take a look at Brian's videos and think about what sort of overhead he may have keeping that large operation running. Do you really think those people work there for free? Have YOU ever had employees and had to do the paperwork involved? Ever had to hire an accountant for what you are doing? What do you suppose his monthly utility bills are like? What about the expense of feeding all of those animals? Just the time and labor effort is unimaginable to most people.

This is a VERY expensive business to be in. Overhead can eat you alive if you are not careful, so you are darn right that if you are in this business, you HAVE to be aware of the money situation. A bad run with the statistical odds or piss poor fertility just for one year alone could bankrupt some breeders depending on that income to put food on the table for their family.

So quit it with acting like some sort of socialist hippies living in a commune thinking that someone trying to make a good living for themselves doing something they enjoy doing is somehow dirty and disgusting. I'll bet that most of you really wish you could make some decent MONEY doing the same darn thing.

But you know what? The odds are extremely, EXTREMELY long for anyone to reach a level that Brian and just a handful few others have been able to reach in this business. It takes an incredible amount of dedication, and many times a real large dose of luck, and most will not be willing to make that effort, nor have Lady Luck on their side to reach that plateau.

And I would be willing to wager that even the most successful breeders, every now and again, no matter how much they really love what they are doing, catch themselves wishing that they had done something else with their lives that wasn't nearly as stressful and life sapping as breeding reptiles for a living.
 
evansnakes said:
Rich, what did you have at your house? 20-30 snakes? Get off your damn high horse. It sucks to get mites but they are a fact of life for real business' in this industry. Do you even have a clue how much time and work it takes for somebody like Brian to care for probably a 100,000+ adult animals and then the insane amount of babies he produces??? No. you have no idea. It is not a dig on you but you are a small time, part time, hobbiest who bailed on the hobby posting all over the net that the tiny collection you had was too much for you!
.
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Never have i ever posted it was too much for me to handle EVER. I had 75 adult snakes plus 60 hatchlings this past season that i sold. Small to some, but was not more than i could handle a lone.

You sure should get off your high horse and move on. No one attacked you one :censored: bit.

Regardless of size of collection, to not have QT practice and to have mites and think its common is just pathetic.
 
Rich Z, I hate to shock you but well said and I agree.

Rich, you posted on this very site as you reduced the "FIRM" price of your ball pythons 20 times, that you were done with ball pythons because you could not handle the work and being in this hobby. If the posts are not deleted they document you saying that in varied ways quite well.

I am not attacking you, again, you have no knowledge or understanding of what people like Brian do. You are ignorant. You judge him based on stupid criteria and flawed logic. You in fact are attacking him. If you are not able to put on your big boy pants and take some heat for posting stupid things on this board then keep your keyboard locked up somewhere.

This reminds me of when you lied and said some mysterious person was pretending to be you (after all you are super rich, glamorous and special, right?). Then for whatever reason you had to drag me into your BS even though I have never paid 1 second of attention to me in any way and have no interest in ever dealing with you in any way, and say that you thought it could be me because I lived where the IP address was, even though I live an hour away from there. You were full of crap then and you are now. And now you are out of the hobby after saying how much you hated the hobby and the people in it, in your posts on this site, so if you dont like it why dont you just go away?
 
evansnakes said:
Rich Z, I hate to shock you but well said and I agree.

Rich, you posted on this very site as you reduced the "FIRM" price of your ball pythons 20 times, that you were done with ball pythons because you could not handle the work and being in this hobby. If the posts are not deleted they document you saying that in varied ways quite well.

I am not attacking you, again, you have no knowledge or understanding of what people like Brian do. You are ignorant. You judge him based on stupid criteria and flawed logic. You in fact are attacking him. If you are not able to put on your big boy pants and take some heat for posting stupid things on this board then keep your keyboard locked up somewhere.

This reminds me of when you lied and said some mysterious person was pretending to be you (after all you are super rich, glamorous and special, right?). Then for whatever reason you had to drag me into your BS even though I have never paid 1 second of attention to me in any way and have no interest in ever dealing with you in any way, and say that you thought it could be me because I lived where the IP address was, even though I live an hour away from there. You were full of crap then and you are now. And now you are out of the hobby after saying how much you hated the hobby and the people in it, in your posts on this site, so if you dont like it why dont you just go away?
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:rofl::rofl:

Keep on big dog..
 
ryoverde said:
Hi. I have used the Search engine to search the thread, and cannot find BHB Reptiles. Which I take as a good sign. But in my paranoia, I would like to inquire if anyone whom has hand business with BHB Reptiles would be willing to come forth to encourage/discourage this initial impression.

Thank you very very much in advance.

______________________
Cara Beserra, SA TX (USA)
Fournsake & iHerpe User ID's "Ryoverde".
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DO NOT do business w/ BHB! I got 2 "female", "well-started" CB'12 Albino nelsoni. One probed male and is doing fine but I told them implicitly I needed 2 females. The other never did eat (live or FT pinks), I tried every trick in the book except force feeding and it croaked of course, about a month of getting it. I DO NOT recommend them to ANYONE.
 
evansnakes said:
For all of you with small collections, mites suck, but they are part of keeping reptiles. If your kids go to school and get head lice from other people and your neighbors tell everyone what trash you are and how disgusting your house is you just tell them that you will do better at quarentining them next time. It is not a big deal, it is just life. Cats and dogs get fleas, same deal, they get them from other animals.
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I think that's the part you are missing. When a child gets lice, you do not let them be around other children that do not have lice. That's what us small breeders call quarantine. On the other hand, my child can just as easily go to school and catch a respiratory infection or other sickness that could kill them. Of course, I don't treat my snakes like my children, whom I would let be around other children whose health I am aware of.

I understand your point and I've seen accidents happen to good people, but that's no need to justify a lack of quarantine just because you are overwhelmed with snakes. There are reasons people have to stay small breeders; one could be ensuring time to uphold the highest standards. I like Brian, but if its a problem, maybe it's time to throttle down.
 
Sharpens his Pencil tip and adds a couple to the 'list.' Not you Mr. Carl, some posts above warranted this... Thank you for those that posted, I used to 'shop' your ads, boom, done with that. Whew!
 
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