07th August 2009  Been a little busy over the last few months so haven't had time to update the site, anyway here's a brief update. Ball Pythons, we have had an 'OK' season so far, not as good as last year but should still reach 26 clutches. We hatched out a couple of firsts for us and a another UK first with our Pastel Ivory.  We also shut down our main rat breeding shed (as featured in the video) we are now just breeding a small quantity on a local farm. We have also changed our phone number, please use our new number 0843 2899284, this number transfers to where ever we are so you should easily be able to speak to me now.

16th February 2009  A few more videos added to the gallery. Also looks like we had our first ball python ovulation last week, an Albino female mated to a pewter male. Also spent this weekend setting up our crested geckos into their new room.

30th January 2009  New feature added - Video Gallery  Here you can see a video of our rat breeding facilities. We have found that when keeping a large collection of reptiles it becomes vital that you have a reliable food source and the only way of doing that is to do it yourself. the downside is the time and space that is required to produce enough rats to feed so many snakes.  All our videos are hosted on YouTube, so feel free to subscribe to our channel so you don't miss any updates

29th January 2009  Slowly adding the 'LightBox' photo features to our site, not a fast process but a pretty cool way of showing our photos.

Example here

26th January 2009  Right, nearly half way through updating the website, taking a long time due to the amount of images that were lost.

23rd January 2009  WOW....I broke my golden rule with websites...KEEP THE SITE FRESH & UPDATED but somehow I managed to skip an entire 11 months...sorry!

Well let's give a run down of last year, we ended up with 26 ball python clutches, totalling over 180 eggs, with about 175 actually hatching. We hatched 5 Blue Eyed Leucistics, 1 Super Cinnamon / Silver Bullet plus many other of the more common morphs.

 We also moved the entire collection into our new facilities, which are purpose built just for our reptile collection. We also added lots more vision racking, courtesy of EuroRep.net

The opportunity also came up to be able to add Aldabran Tortoises (Geochelone gigantea) to our collection. These are the second largest tortoises in the world and grow to over 3ft long and can weigh over 360kg. Second photo isn't one of ours, just an example of the adult size.

 Other interesting events at CaptiveBred were the hatching of a clutch of Horned Vipers, with an incubation period of just 34 days!!!

We also added another member to our family, Phoebe our chocolate and tan Doberman. She joins Chloe who is a year older and another Doberman. They are a great addition not only to our family but also to our security arrangements...so if the CCTV, Alarms & other suprises don't get you...then the dogs get to have some fun!

 We hope to be able to continue with more regular reptile blog updates...watch this space!

22nd April 2008  Our first morph female has just ovulated, she's a high contrast albino and was mated to a Bumble Bee & then an albino male. So we can expect possibly Pastels, spiders, bee's ALL het albino or pure albinos, depending on the sire.

21st April 2008  Running count so far is 4 clutches, totalling 28 eggs and no slugs (yet). We have another 3 females due any day now, then a gap of a few weeks again. We are also pleased with a few new additions to the collection, Super Pastels, G-stripe female, Pastel ghosts, Ghosts. Thanks to Dave 'The Medusan' for arranging import etc Also a big thanks to Stuart Howe for taking some more superb photos of the collection.

10th April 2008  hooray! our new incubator was delivered, all I can say is WOW...it's a superb piece of kit, it holds 40 tubs, fingers crossed I can fill it!!! Many thanks to John for delivering it so quickly.

7th April 2008  Our second clutch of eggs, we're up to 17 eggs and NO INCUBATOR to put them in...lol. So far we have got by with a poly box while we wait for our Pro-Racks incubator.

31st March 2008  My birthday & more importantly our FIRST clutch of ball python eggs this season. They were from a normal female to a male Cinnamon or a male Graziani Pastel. With many of the co-dominant males we use two to help increase the chances of fertility etc Once the eggs hatch we will obviously know "who's the daddy!"

21st March 2008  Whilst at Hamm reptile expo I came across the worlds FIRST Burmese x Ball python hybrids and have admit I was pretty taken back by them. These were accidentally produced when a male ball was housed with a breeding pair of Albino Burmese. I'm not a big fan of hybrids but just had to buy one as I was so amazed by the cross and wanted to see how they turned out. I decided to buy a female in partnership with John Berry.

Introducing the BurmBall....

4th March 2008  We have finally added the much requested Breeding Records page, this page will detail all our mating/egg laying details and show you what has actually hatched from each pairing. The results will also display incubation periods and % of hatching etc.

1st March 2008  Looks like the crested gecko season has kicked off again, we collected 48 eggs from the last two weeks. We still have approx 100 eggs waiting to hatch from last year but most of these will be held back as breeders as we were unable to do this last year due to high demand.

28th February 2008  Found our first female ball python ovulations, looks we have 4 now that have actually ovulated so the count down is officially on! I guess I best get the incubator ordered and tested.

23rd February 2008  Just returned from the worlds FIRST Caribbean Ball Python convention, this took place in Cuba on the 20th Feb. All I can say is what a wonderful location for a great topic. Although attendance numbers were low (actually only Mark Mandic and myself made the event & our partners, the lovely Jayne & Marina) we still had a great time and some good discussions on the ball python business/hobby. Of course being held in Cuba perhaps didn't help with visitor numbers from the USA as they aren't actually allowed to go there! It was also great to be there when Fidel Castro announced his departure. We also found a beautiful female Cuban Iguana in our resort, she loved ham & cheese sandwiches!!! Watch out for the next Caribbean Ball Python convention in 2009!

We also stopped off in Canada for a few days and spent some time with Mark & Jayne from ballpythons.ca and also visited Craig Stewart @ TheUrbanGecko  Hopefully we will have more time on our next visit and finally get the chance to meet up with Brandon from Canadian Coldblood, who we have worked with for a good few years now.

7th January 2008  Well the breeding season for the ball pythons is going real well so far, mating from  every male, including Yellow Belly x Pastel, Bumble Bee x Pastel, Lesser x Spider, Cinnamon x Pinstripe, Clown x Enchi, G-Stripe x Pastel plus many others. Fingers crossed that all these 'lock ups' result in good fertile clutches.

Clown x Normal , Unproven x Normal, Lesser x Spider

19th December 2007 We can now announce that we have added 'Hypo' Burmese pythons to our collection. These are gorgeous looking snakes and improve with age but the best thing about them is that they are heterozygous for Leucistic, producing the same colour mutation that Michael Jackson tried buying back in the early 90's for $250'000. Ours are only this years young so are a couple of years away from breeding. We also plan to cross them into our dwarf Burmese python line.

5th December 2007 Well the new www.reptileclassifieds.co.uk website was launched on 14th November and already has 476 registered members (you need to register to place adverts) and just over 400 adverts. Remember this new service is still FREE but you can now also upload photos directly, filter adverts by category (snake / lizard etc) and also set how many adverts per page you wish to view. We also have an IP check so you can see what country the advert was posted from, this will help cut down on scammers.

Ball Pythons, so far the season has started well, Clown male has mated pastels and an enchi and also a couple of normal females (you can never have too many het clowns!) Also lesser x Mojave, Stripe x Pastel, Bumblebee x Pastel and a number of others. This season we will add full breeding details as any clutches are laid, this will show the parents used in each mating and the results ;o)

Also, the CaptiveBred Reptile Forum is just approaching 3000 members and now receives 45'000 visitors a month!

24th October 2007 More site updates and photos added, also the count down is on for our new Reptile Classifieds site to be launched, expected 'go live' date is 1st Dec 07. We also have all our new Vision Racking up and running, so far so good. We have 3 racks of the hatchling tubs and 1 of the CB70 ball python rack. Our total rack space can now house 180 baby ball pythons and 164 ADULT ball pythons. We use LP racks (from Denmark0, Pro-Racks (from the UK) and now Vision Racks (from the USA). 

17th October 2007.Time for a site change again, we are slowly phasing out most of the orange coloured text as feedback told us it was a bit too harsh on the eyes...& I have to agree...lol. We are also adding LOADS more colour photos or all our animals, hopefully this will brighten the site up a bit more.

8th October 2007 Well it's been a while....time has just flown by this year. My first year breeding ball pythons went real well with 13 clutches of eggs, totalling 100 eggs. We hatched out het pieds, Spider het pieds, Spiders, Mojaves, Graziani Pastels and some pretty normals too. Won't be too much longer now and I'll start the whole process over again, hopefully this coming season we will produce a few more nice combinations as we have some morph females now up to size.

The CaptiveBred forums have grown in traffic by 25% since March of this year, with unique visitor numbers topping 40'000 each month, with also FOUR MILLION page views since the 6th March 2007.

 1st March 2007 Slight site overhaul due to the site not displaying correctly in FireFox (probably my bad design & programming!)  Also added is a stat counter for the main website. This is set to ZERO as of 6th March 2007, although the site has had more than ONE MILLION hits since it first appeared. The CaptiveBred Forums currently receive over 30'000 unique visitors each month.

19th February 2007 Hooray!!! finally caught that rat! I had almost given up on the rat trap but thought I'd set it one last time and bingo one dead rat the next morning! Now all I need to do is re-wire 25 vivariums and some racking that he chewed.

15th February 2007 Crested Gecko season has started again, several clutches found, so far a total of 30 eggs this year. We expect to produce approx 1200 crested eggs this year & hopefully 200+ gargoyles

23rd January 2007 Albino Hognose snakes are added to our collection, I have loved these little guys for ages and when we were offered some great fresh blood from Steve Osborne in the USA we couldn't turn them down. It will be a couple of years before ours are breeding but there's no rush ;o)

3rd January 2007 Gila Monsters are safely a sleep in hibernation, temps were a little high but I have now managed to settle them at 10c-12c, hope that's not too cold!

29th December 2006 Ball python breeding has been going well, lots of mating even from 2006 hatched males. So far I have seen lock ups from Mojave x Mojave, Pin x Normal, Pin x Pastel, Pastel x Pastel, Mojave x Pastel , Mojave x Normal, Spider x Pied, Pied x Normal, Lesser x Normal, Spider x Normal, plus a few other combos. Obviously not everything will take and as its my first year I would be happy with anything...even ONE clutch...ha ha...oh well only time will tell!

14th December 2006 Still not caught that rat! It has started chewing all cables and wires all over the place, I will have a big re-wire job after I finally catch it. So far it's set the rat trap off 3 times but still escaped. He was even watching me from on to of my vivs (knowing I couldn't grab him in time before he could hide again). I decided to leave an air rifle in the room in case he was feeling brave again!

10th December 2006 Arrived home after a great December Hamm show, thanks to GC for letting me share his table. This show was very interesting as it was my first in Hamm as a VENDOR. I had some great displays made by an engineering friend, these were one off designs based on what I had seen and liked while looking at everyone else's display over the last few years. One thing I insisted on was that my displays be lockable...man I'm so glad they were as a vendor a few tables down from me had two ball pythons stolen, totalling more than 10'000 euros! So to me the cost of my display was recouped there and then!

27th November 2006 Started cooling the ball pythons for the breeding season, a little late than what I wanted but due to being so busy I had no choice, fingers crossed it has no negative effect.

21st November 2006 We have just received another shipment from MarkusJayne Ballpythons.ca. Again, absolutely fantastic quailty and sizes. Check out our available page for full details. 

15th October 2006 Dam! a live rat escaped into my reptile room. Couldn't catch the bugger before it hid behind a stack of vivs, I'll try and catch him later this week!

Sorry for gap.........Currently Updating from old site........

18th June 04 A small group of Rankins Dragons has been added to the collection, photos will be posted after the weekend. Also added to the collection are some lovely Crested Geckos, I will be slowly building a large group of these wonderful geckos. The free classifieds section now has it's own domain name, allowing visitors to go directly to that site only. The new name of the site is ReptileClassifieds.co.uk.

26th May 04 Wow...A total revamp!!! more sections added...running out of web space soon??? New FREE classifieds section, this will be heavily promoted over the next few weeks so feel free to place any adverts you may have (I was fed up of restrictions and fees for placing adverts on other site so I thought I create my own, FREE for ALL). Care sheets are also only a week or so away, these are being written by a friend with over 40 years Reptile experience and will not be extracts from existing books!. I will also be removing the annoying pop up Newsletter ad very soon but am waiting to break the 100 members barrier first (not far to go, please help though!!!).

28th May 04 8 young Red Spiny Tail Monitors added to collection. Very nice, very fast! Photos coming soon. Thanks Don

12th May 04 First leopard geckos starting to hatch, all are from Ray Hine bloodlines and are a mix of super hypo tangerines, albinos, hybinos, super hypos. 

8th May 04 I was able to make another small donation to the FBH, and hope to do so again in the future, thanks to all those who have bought animals from CaptiveBred.co.uk

5th May 04 The San Felipe rosy boas I decided to keep have been mating for the last week or so, the males have stopped feeding but the females are eating like pigs! Fingers crossed for some beautiful babies in the autumn.

Tue 4th May 04 We have another 2 Gila monsters arriving from Professional Breeders, USA. Photos will be posted ASAP

Mon 3rd May 04 Welcome to the new face of CaptiveBred.co.uk, this site is maintained and updated by myself as often as required. There is nothing more annoying than an out of date web site, I hope this will not happen to mine!! If you have any comments or questions about this site please feel free to e-mail me.

4th April 2004 First launch of CaptiveBred.co.uk