Hydra's Den Exotics

22/11/2025

My biggest enemy in this entire industry is hardware cloth. It draws more blood than any animal.

21/11/2025

Mira is so photogenic. In the winter we let a lot more light into the house since the sun isn't INTENSELY BAKING the front of our house. With the windows now letting in sunshine, her iridescence is showing beautifully 😍

21/11/2025

19/11/2025

Can you tell me which one of these snakes DOESN'T visually express a recessive morph? All do except 1.
Recessive genes require 2 copies to express fully (in other words, homozygous). This means both parents must provide 1 copy each to create a visual. Most morphs only require 1 copy of a gene to express. Carrying one copy of a gene is called being heterozygous. A snake that carries 1 copy of a recessive gene is often called "het" for that morph.

19/11/2025

We still have several of these beauties!!!

Aztec sunglow male (baby)
700

18/11/2025

Someone is gonna have to get Primrose here before I decide not to let her go. This beautiful lady has laid a lovely clutch for us before. I have always thought she's cool.

Red stripe fire proven female

17/11/2025

Our Ancona DUCKS laid their first egg with us. It's normal sized. I'm excited. But I'm also excited about this random giant egg?? That's from our other ducks (which are all rouen or rouen x Ancona). Did I raise an ostrich on accident???

17/11/2025

16/11/2025

I knew you'd turn up eventually... It only took a few months. But John found my snake hook 🤣
I swear these are the EASIEST thing to lose! And I'm good at losing things!

15/11/2025

Loving the way this tamuck buck is turning out. We got him earlier this year and I think it was the right decision. He's beautiful and not aggressive (though shy). He will add more heat tolerance (what this breed is known for) and genetic diversity. I'm still trying to mix in more easy going personalities from the lop and whatnot. This guy will ensure we don't go too far in the pet direction. Most pet breeds are so small. We still want larger, meaty rabbits. But the better personalities and more colors never hurt 🤷

15/11/2025

Identifying morphs is a constant learning process. No one really ever perfects it, though you learn more and more and get better at it with time and experience. Not only are there a countless number of morphs within the ball python species, but they also have different qualities of expression, which can vary even further if a snake carries certain recessive genes. Additionally, other genes added in can cause things to get even more complicated. Some genes look practically normal until combined with certain others. Some get easily swallowed up in combos and can barely be noticed. Once a snake has 4 or 5 genes in it, many combos can be hard, sometimes impossible to accurately identify without genetic testing or breeding them out to see what they produce.
The first picture is a normal ball python. The we have a pastel, a nice one. After that, every snake is some sort of pastel combo. Can you see what pastel does in each combo? Can you pick out the similarities? You really get the best feel for what a morph does by looking at it in a variety of combos (in my opinion).