E
esmerelda
Guest
Hello all! I tend to be long winded...:main_yes: but if anyone is feeling bored or something...I have plenty of stuff to ramble about! I also tend to jump around in my thoughts and considering that this is just me rambling (and not a thesis or anything, lol) I am not going to worry about all my spelling and grammar, for those of you who are grammar police. (even if in your head, you know who you are, lol) Just so you know in advance.
Okay...lets see, I am a lucky wife and mother. My children include 3 humans, lol, 2 dogs, 3 cats, 1 fish, and now a Leo! (Plus the outdoor herps my children capture/release for study purposes...and YES we take extreme caution regarding the handling of the outdoor herps and our Leo. I have appropriate habitats for the wild ones, including thermal gradients etc. so they will be fully comfortable while in our care for study. I home school my human children so this is very important to us.) We will also be adding chickens to the list in the next year or so. Oh, and my name is Tanya...Esmerelda is our leo.
Our story...
A very close friend of mine is a vet tech and specializes in reptiles (the vet actually refers to HER for all reptile issues) Anyway, she rehabilitates all kinds of animals but has a soft spot for reptiles in particular.
A local chain pet superstore had this "sick" leo and brought it to her. (I personally think they just wanted to dump it off because it looks bad to have a sick Leo on display and not to mention hard to sell...anyone in their right mind would realize it is going to cost more for a vets office to rehab the Leo than they would sell it for) Anyway, she rehabs the Leo and surprise, surprise...they don't pick it up because they don't want to pay the bill. This is actually something that has happened to her countless times, it is actually how she got most of her personal pets, lol. I don't have a clue what was wrong with the Leo (our Esmerelda aka Ezzy btw) back then, but I can tell you she has been healthy for years now!
So, some years go by, my friend (the vet tech) has some health issues and it is getting harder and harder for her to care for the dozens of rescues she has obtained over the years. She wants to lighten her load, but is very very picky about who she would allow to take her babies. About a year ago she asked me if I would take pook pook pook (the Leos original name, lol) due to how close we are (she knows first hand that I care for my other pets very well) and that I would never take on any task without careful consideration and being SURE I could give it my all. (Not to mention that one of my children, my daughter, has wanted to be a vet since she was 4, lol, and also shares a fondness for reptiles...the things this child knows about animals never ceases to amaze me!) So over the past year, she and I have researched the heck out of Leos to make sure we were making the right choice and that we would be prepared.
Side note, JUST because I thought it was hysterical I will share this...at one point my daughter decided she would be a vet for "Animal Cops" lol (too much animal planet I guess) and my boys decided they would too. They had it all planned out. My daughter would be the vet, my older son would be the one to do the actual rescues, and my younger son would assist and be the one to arrest the people who neglected their animals, LMAO!
Anyway, now we have her...Ezzy! Okay, sometimes Ezzy pook. Normally I would not change a pets name, but she just LOOKS like an Esmerelda, lol!
We constructed a wonderful habitat for Ezzy out of a 20H tank (I would have preferred a 20L but it was free from a neighbor who no longer keeps fish soooo...) some reptile carpet (which will be slate eventually, I just kind of live out in the boonies so I have not got around to getting out to get some...I mail order most everything, lol! Plenty of people and farms...very little in the way of stores!) I made my hides out of stacked granite slabs left over from counter top installations (the drops are dirt cheap, we paid $80 for THREE trailer loads of drops to use on various projects...my mother has even found some places in her city that will give them free!)
The hides are EXTREMELY strong and safe (I designed them and my husband confirmed they are proper...he is an Engineer so I feel totally confident in their safety) Plus, I did actually stand on them myself, lol, and even wiggled all around trying to make them slip...if they can handle my 127 lbs, Ezzy will be FINE, lol. She seems to really love it! The nice thing is that is also provides that 2nd layer of surface area so it really expands her usable floor space!
She has 3 hides currently, her cool side, her warm side, and her humid hide. The dry warm and humid both look as though they are one hide with 2 entrances (due to the way I stacked the granite) but they are in fact 2. I used some organic cotton terry cloth scraps I had on hand (from making cloth diapers...yes for humans...yes I am one of THOSE crunchy kind of people, lol, I promise I don't bite though...okay well maybe sometimes :main_evilgrin
and made a little "pillow case" out of it, terry side in so her little claws don't get caught in it, then put a thin layer of moss inside it for moisture in her humid hide. She seems to love it too, her first time in the humid hide, she curled up and slept on it all day!
We have a UTH but it is not enough alone in my cold tiled house at the moment (it is actually 61 degrees INSIDE right now) so I do also have a lamp and various wattage bulbs for heat in red and black light. I have a rheostat on its way (mail order, lol) because our Florida weather is going to require it...I already needed it this week but had to settle for plugging and unplugging the UTH, sigh, that was a bit annoying! I have 2 digital probes that are in place to give me constant read out of both the cool and warm hide floor temps. (I really like not having to mess with too much to have an idea of where we are at) I also have a dual humidity/temp dial for ambient air temp and...humidity obviously. I think I am going to get another probe style so I can check the upper level surface of granite when I have the lamp on...that way I don't have to move my other probes around...which would disturb her hides. Right now I am going by touch, lol.
I am ALL for living as sustainably as possible and promoting symbiotic relationships soooooooooo I came up with a little plan to include Ezzy. Okay, follow my line of logic here...
Ezzy needs live feeders. We also want chickens for eggs. Chickens also thrive on the same live feeders. (I can't fully free range my chickens, though they will have a run that is larger than the average subdivision lot, we have a LOT of chicken hawks out here AND a dog that thinks chickens are particularly tasty...if only I could get him to stop eating the neighbors chickens when they fly over here...) Anyway, they will have far more space than a lot of other chickens in this world, lol, but for a chicken to be fully sustained on the land is about 1-2 chickens per acre so I will supplement.
Mulberry trees/bushes grow VERY well in Florida...and grow very tasty berries that look like long raspberries and blackberries (they come in red, black, and white berries...all apparently very yummy) and we loooooooooooooove berries!
Soldier flies and their grubs (aka phoenix worms) make awesome compost...great for mulberry tress...Silkworms only eat mulberry leaves...
2 good, but expensive feeders for leos...silkworms and phoenix worms (aka soldier grubs, biogrubs, etc).
So we grow mulberry trees and eat the berries, feed leaves to silk worms. Feed compost scraps (no meat, which never goes in our compost anyway because the dogs get that, lol...I do have plenty of other high quality dry foods for my dogs, cats, and fish I could always add) ...including spoiled mulberries lol, to soldier grubs...use compost they make on mulberry trees. Small silkworms and soldier grubs are food for Ezzy...larger ones and both the flies and moths are good for chickens. Betting even dead ones can get mixed in with chicken feed (Waste not want not) and a little chicken feed can be given to soldier grubs too along with the fruit and veggie scraps...which a lot of people use in various gut loading mixes anyway. No actual stop and gut load due to the fact that they are raised on "gut load", haha! The scraps I don't toss to the grubs go to the chickens. This will keep us using far less chicken feed than otherwise needed...the chickens will have a far closer to free range diet and yummy tasty eggs we will eat! Oh yeah, and leo eats for free!
I am not sure I should put the chicken poop in the compost bin with my soldier grub feeders for Ezzy...but I sure can put it in my other compost outside...which will also be GREAT for the mulberry trees!
Awesome no??????? Plus if I am not spending money to buy/ship staple feeders, I can play around with more varieties of other feeders to give her a far more diverse diet than I would if I had to pay for her staple feeders too. Not to mention, free silk...though I am not sure what I will do with it yet. Make stuff I guess, lol.
Another big plus for me, it keeps me from having to raise smelly, cannibalistic, poopy, loud, escapee prone crickets in the house. LOL. If I wanna buy enough for a few meals now and again, fine...but I don't have to KEEP them. Now, I might try raising some OUTSIDE in bins in a screened enclosure or something later on...if they die, they die...still toss em to the chickens and I did not loose my staple feeders. Inside...I just don't think so. More power to you if you do, its just not for me. Yes, I realize the irony of being kind of grossed out by crickets yet willing to raise what is essentially a type of maggot. The crickets themselves do not bother me...just the whole escaping/noise/smell and eating each other thing...
The silk worms and soldier grubs should not be an issue for ME inside. Neither are too good at escape. A little more work involved with the silk worms but they have no smell and won't keep me up at night. With the grubs, well they are going to need more space than most feeders but I have plenty of that...and I know if a compost bucket is done right you get no smell. I know for fact because mine has no smell at all! You can stir and mix it and get right up on it, no smell. So I can handle some bins in the house. (Plus a few less trips lugging my compost bowl out to the yard, lol)
So anyway, I think that is about all I have to say for now, lol! I am very excited about learning and experiencing this process!
Okay...lets see, I am a lucky wife and mother. My children include 3 humans, lol, 2 dogs, 3 cats, 1 fish, and now a Leo! (Plus the outdoor herps my children capture/release for study purposes...and YES we take extreme caution regarding the handling of the outdoor herps and our Leo. I have appropriate habitats for the wild ones, including thermal gradients etc. so they will be fully comfortable while in our care for study. I home school my human children so this is very important to us.) We will also be adding chickens to the list in the next year or so. Oh, and my name is Tanya...Esmerelda is our leo.
Our story...
A very close friend of mine is a vet tech and specializes in reptiles (the vet actually refers to HER for all reptile issues) Anyway, she rehabilitates all kinds of animals but has a soft spot for reptiles in particular.
A local chain pet superstore had this "sick" leo and brought it to her. (I personally think they just wanted to dump it off because it looks bad to have a sick Leo on display and not to mention hard to sell...anyone in their right mind would realize it is going to cost more for a vets office to rehab the Leo than they would sell it for) Anyway, she rehabs the Leo and surprise, surprise...they don't pick it up because they don't want to pay the bill. This is actually something that has happened to her countless times, it is actually how she got most of her personal pets, lol. I don't have a clue what was wrong with the Leo (our Esmerelda aka Ezzy btw) back then, but I can tell you she has been healthy for years now!
So, some years go by, my friend (the vet tech) has some health issues and it is getting harder and harder for her to care for the dozens of rescues she has obtained over the years. She wants to lighten her load, but is very very picky about who she would allow to take her babies. About a year ago she asked me if I would take pook pook pook (the Leos original name, lol) due to how close we are (she knows first hand that I care for my other pets very well) and that I would never take on any task without careful consideration and being SURE I could give it my all. (Not to mention that one of my children, my daughter, has wanted to be a vet since she was 4, lol, and also shares a fondness for reptiles...the things this child knows about animals never ceases to amaze me!) So over the past year, she and I have researched the heck out of Leos to make sure we were making the right choice and that we would be prepared.
Side note, JUST because I thought it was hysterical I will share this...at one point my daughter decided she would be a vet for "Animal Cops" lol (too much animal planet I guess) and my boys decided they would too. They had it all planned out. My daughter would be the vet, my older son would be the one to do the actual rescues, and my younger son would assist and be the one to arrest the people who neglected their animals, LMAO!
Anyway, now we have her...Ezzy! Okay, sometimes Ezzy pook. Normally I would not change a pets name, but she just LOOKS like an Esmerelda, lol!
We constructed a wonderful habitat for Ezzy out of a 20H tank (I would have preferred a 20L but it was free from a neighbor who no longer keeps fish soooo...) some reptile carpet (which will be slate eventually, I just kind of live out in the boonies so I have not got around to getting out to get some...I mail order most everything, lol! Plenty of people and farms...very little in the way of stores!) I made my hides out of stacked granite slabs left over from counter top installations (the drops are dirt cheap, we paid $80 for THREE trailer loads of drops to use on various projects...my mother has even found some places in her city that will give them free!)
The hides are EXTREMELY strong and safe (I designed them and my husband confirmed they are proper...he is an Engineer so I feel totally confident in their safety) Plus, I did actually stand on them myself, lol, and even wiggled all around trying to make them slip...if they can handle my 127 lbs, Ezzy will be FINE, lol. She seems to really love it! The nice thing is that is also provides that 2nd layer of surface area so it really expands her usable floor space!
She has 3 hides currently, her cool side, her warm side, and her humid hide. The dry warm and humid both look as though they are one hide with 2 entrances (due to the way I stacked the granite) but they are in fact 2. I used some organic cotton terry cloth scraps I had on hand (from making cloth diapers...yes for humans...yes I am one of THOSE crunchy kind of people, lol, I promise I don't bite though...okay well maybe sometimes :main_evilgrin
and made a little "pillow case" out of it, terry side in so her little claws don't get caught in it, then put a thin layer of moss inside it for moisture in her humid hide. She seems to love it too, her first time in the humid hide, she curled up and slept on it all day!We have a UTH but it is not enough alone in my cold tiled house at the moment (it is actually 61 degrees INSIDE right now) so I do also have a lamp and various wattage bulbs for heat in red and black light. I have a rheostat on its way (mail order, lol) because our Florida weather is going to require it...I already needed it this week but had to settle for plugging and unplugging the UTH, sigh, that was a bit annoying! I have 2 digital probes that are in place to give me constant read out of both the cool and warm hide floor temps. (I really like not having to mess with too much to have an idea of where we are at) I also have a dual humidity/temp dial for ambient air temp and...humidity obviously. I think I am going to get another probe style so I can check the upper level surface of granite when I have the lamp on...that way I don't have to move my other probes around...which would disturb her hides. Right now I am going by touch, lol.
I am ALL for living as sustainably as possible and promoting symbiotic relationships soooooooooo I came up with a little plan to include Ezzy. Okay, follow my line of logic here...
Ezzy needs live feeders. We also want chickens for eggs. Chickens also thrive on the same live feeders. (I can't fully free range my chickens, though they will have a run that is larger than the average subdivision lot, we have a LOT of chicken hawks out here AND a dog that thinks chickens are particularly tasty...if only I could get him to stop eating the neighbors chickens when they fly over here...) Anyway, they will have far more space than a lot of other chickens in this world, lol, but for a chicken to be fully sustained on the land is about 1-2 chickens per acre so I will supplement.
Mulberry trees/bushes grow VERY well in Florida...and grow very tasty berries that look like long raspberries and blackberries (they come in red, black, and white berries...all apparently very yummy) and we loooooooooooooove berries!
Soldier flies and their grubs (aka phoenix worms) make awesome compost...great for mulberry tress...Silkworms only eat mulberry leaves...
2 good, but expensive feeders for leos...silkworms and phoenix worms (aka soldier grubs, biogrubs, etc).
So we grow mulberry trees and eat the berries, feed leaves to silk worms. Feed compost scraps (no meat, which never goes in our compost anyway because the dogs get that, lol...I do have plenty of other high quality dry foods for my dogs, cats, and fish I could always add) ...including spoiled mulberries lol, to soldier grubs...use compost they make on mulberry trees. Small silkworms and soldier grubs are food for Ezzy...larger ones and both the flies and moths are good for chickens. Betting even dead ones can get mixed in with chicken feed (Waste not want not) and a little chicken feed can be given to soldier grubs too along with the fruit and veggie scraps...which a lot of people use in various gut loading mixes anyway. No actual stop and gut load due to the fact that they are raised on "gut load", haha! The scraps I don't toss to the grubs go to the chickens. This will keep us using far less chicken feed than otherwise needed...the chickens will have a far closer to free range diet and yummy tasty eggs we will eat! Oh yeah, and leo eats for free!
I am not sure I should put the chicken poop in the compost bin with my soldier grub feeders for Ezzy...but I sure can put it in my other compost outside...which will also be GREAT for the mulberry trees!
Awesome no??????? Plus if I am not spending money to buy/ship staple feeders, I can play around with more varieties of other feeders to give her a far more diverse diet than I would if I had to pay for her staple feeders too. Not to mention, free silk...though I am not sure what I will do with it yet. Make stuff I guess, lol.
Another big plus for me, it keeps me from having to raise smelly, cannibalistic, poopy, loud, escapee prone crickets in the house. LOL. If I wanna buy enough for a few meals now and again, fine...but I don't have to KEEP them. Now, I might try raising some OUTSIDE in bins in a screened enclosure or something later on...if they die, they die...still toss em to the chickens and I did not loose my staple feeders. Inside...I just don't think so. More power to you if you do, its just not for me. Yes, I realize the irony of being kind of grossed out by crickets yet willing to raise what is essentially a type of maggot. The crickets themselves do not bother me...just the whole escaping/noise/smell and eating each other thing...
The silk worms and soldier grubs should not be an issue for ME inside. Neither are too good at escape. A little more work involved with the silk worms but they have no smell and won't keep me up at night. With the grubs, well they are going to need more space than most feeders but I have plenty of that...and I know if a compost bucket is done right you get no smell. I know for fact because mine has no smell at all! You can stir and mix it and get right up on it, no smell. So I can handle some bins in the house. (Plus a few less trips lugging my compost bowl out to the yard, lol)
So anyway, I think that is about all I have to say for now, lol! I am very excited about learning and experiencing this process!
