First Colony!

It's official! I have cockroaches, and a renewed respect for everybody in the invert hobby.

To be specific, I have lobster roaches. Man are those suckers quick! But not too fast to feed them off, and we did a test feeding with Spot the leopard gecko. He was on those roaches like white on rice. As long as we feed him one at a time in the future I think they will be a great replacement feeder. Nothing against crickets, they've been the backbone feeder to the U.S. reptile hobby, but I'm so relieved to have a significantly less high upkeep food source.

I've been super excited about these for quite sometime, and not just for the reptile food aspect. Cockroaches come in countless shapes and colors, and the more I look into them the less "yuck" factor there is. I'll admit, holding my first roach nymph made my skin crawl but I was grinning the entire time! I'm looking into glow spot roaches, death head roaches, and peppered roaches next.

It is easy for me to get carried away with my "Yaaay roaches" feelings. No matter who I speak with the reactions go from disgust to surprise to "Oh, it's Erica." I could care less what other people think of it, but I have a new respect for those who keep large invert collections. Having your passion and excitement constantly shot down can't be easy, and trying to get people over the Eww threshold so they can appreciate all of the cool things about your hobby is admirable. I'm really looking forward to getting my scorpion, tarantula, beetle, cockroach, and mantis collections going. The best part? They aren't terribly expensive, and the upkeep is even easier. The roach colony is really a door way to having food supplied for those types of creatures and I don't have to worry about making pet store trips. Living 20 miles from the nearest brick and mortar source of crickets sucks. Especially when they only come in two sizes

I'll do a post later on the roach colony how-to when I am more confident that they are doing well. Here is a pic in the meantime

Herpetoculutre

Herpetoculture: the keeping of live reptiles and amphibians in captivity, whether as a hobby or as a commercial breeding operation.

I love saying my hobby is herpetoculture, or calling myself a herpetoculturist. Keeping reptiles as pets opens the door (and technically falls under the umbrella I believe) but what I love about herpetoculture is that it takes the mindset from one of the traditional pet in cage mentality and into wanting a healthy, thriving animal in your care. Maybe even develop or practice breeding routines in order to keep pressure off of the wild populations and produce captive bred animals that will do much better than their wild caught counterparts.

My dream job is running a reptile shop. I think reptiles have so much to offer in that they're relatively low maintenance as far as attention goes, but they are still docile and handleable. Snakes especially, but lizards and frogs as well. I'm excited to start gathering supplies for a blue tongue skink and bearded dragon this spring. I'm set on getting a high colored beardie from a fairly well known breeder, so that may end up waiting until next year. The blue tongue on the other hand won't require $500+ to get, on top of being cheaper in supplies, so I see that happening much sooner. Very set on a northern rather than an indo. Mostly for the size factor. I think I'm becoming a keeper who enjoys solid medium sized animals.

Holy daydream tangent. What I was originally going to touch on with dream shop thoughts is that I think it would really help people gain positive experiences with reptiles in a setting where proper care is an emphasis and there are resources to breed the animals yourself. Years ago my art teacher told the class about how she allowed her cat to have a litter of kittens in order to let her kids experience having baby animals in the house. One if my boyfriend's fondest memories is bringing home a clutch of gecko eggs and getting to watch them hatch. It seems so simple to me that public interest in reptiles would rise if it were common knowledge that they could be an easy interactive project. Anybody with a little space for a 30 gallon aquarium and a warm place to keep eggs could breed crested geckos for fun with very little difficulty. Or African house snakes, or pygmy pythons. I can't touch on frogs very confidently until I have more experience with them, but its rare to meet a kid who wouldn't love raising tadpoles.

As I get more involved with this hobby I am feeling a desire to share it that is only growing. Whether that turns into a utopia dream store or simply stays at the level of blogging, I know that I'll always be a proud herpetoculturist