We are a private hobbyist reptile breeder based in North Scotland. My name's Stacey, known as 'ladybird' on Reptile Forums UK, Captive Bred reptile forums, Scottish Exotic Reptiles forum and many others. I recently moved to Elgin, Moray with my partner Andy. I've always had a keen interest in keeping & breeding all sorts of animals, my most recent addition being reptiles. Andy has joined me in my reptile hobby and created this fabulous site. Check out the Collection page for pictures of our morphs collected so far. See below for a history of my collection!

 

Frogs
I've been keeping amphibians for a number of years. I frequently went out to frog pools to collect tadpoles during the summer. I kept the froglets for several months before letting them go back into the wild where I found them. In my late teens I discovered the reptile hobby and began buying non-native amphibians such as White's Tree Frogs. Specialist reptile shops are still infrequent in Scotland, so I got most of my things online such as live food, heating equipment, etc.

First Snake
In 2007 I got my first snake, a lovely carolina corn hatchling. I had always wanted to keep a snake, but the feeding of frozen rodents was a major put-off which delayed me actually getting one for so long. I eventually got to grips with handling snake food, and then I began looking into corn morphs and localities. Colour phases are something that has always interested me in all animals. I used to breed different colours of gerbils and guppies for fun!

First Python
In 2008 there was a big expansion of my collection. I began looking at royal pythons as a very different type of snake to a corn. I wanted a small python, easy to care for, and royals seemed to be ideal. So, I added my first royal python to the collection. Soon after, I discovered the huge variety of royal python morphs that existed!

Morphs
But I found they were much more expensive than corn morphs, which really daunted me at first - what if my new morph got sick and I lost it? But as I gained confidence in my husbandry skills, I took the plunge and bought yellowbelly as my first royal morph. A short while later, I bought a couple more yellowbellies with the intention of breeding - the ivory morph was my goal, white snakes are one of my favourites!

First Lizard
Also during that time, I looked into getting a small lizard, also featuring various colour mutations to play around with. At first, leopard geckos seemed to be appealing and cheap to buy. But I then discovered crested geckos while visiting a reptile shop and fell in love! How could anything be so cute and fantastic? Their crests made them look very cool - almost dragon-like. And they were so incredibly easy to care for!

I first bought an adult male - an established animal less susceptible to stress. After I got the hang of caring for him, I looked into getting a female or two of different colours. I also started looking into structure morphs - the bigger the crests the better, in my opinion. It became one of my goals of selective breeding - to create crowned furry crested geckos.

Alas, crested geckos were not as easy to come by as I hoped - at least not the morphs I was looking for. Most shops only had small brown unsexed juveniles - I was after more unusual colours. My collection of cresties remained small in 2009 - a few breeding adults, but mostly young babies.

 

Corn Snakes
Lots of corn snake morphs were added to the collection in 2009 - many interesting hets and possible hets to play around with including butter, okeetee, avalanche, ghost stripe, candycane, amel stripe and more.

Crested Geckos
Some more crested gecko morphs were added to the collection including blond harlequin dalmatian and lavender harlequin. It was my first year of breeding and it was very successful - almost all eggs hatched and thrived, and I kept back some very nice ones that hatched out. Some surprises have developed - including a creamsicle, a beautiful intense red bicolour and some really lovely yellow and orange tigers among a few!

Royal Pythons
Throughout 2009, I added more royal morphs to my collection including pastels and a special fire direct from Paul Angelides' pure white black eyed leucistic male, a rare animal indeed! I was limited by funds as to what morphs I could actually buy, so I created a wishlist which included pied, lesser, pinstripe, albino, clown, vanilla and some others which I planned to get in the near future.

 

Corn Snakes
This year has been a quiet one for corns. I have been focusing a lot more on crested geckos and royals this year, and mostly just growing the corns I already had.

Crested Geckos
This has been a great year for cresties. I managed to get myself a mocha flame dalmatian, a breeding pair of lavender harlequins, a partial pinstripe lavender, and a dark red and cream (creamsicle). Also some of last year's babies I bred have grown to be stunners - among a few, I got; creamsicle, freckled tiger, sulphur patternless, orange tiger, red bicolour, orange patternless, and cream-chocolate flame.

Royal Pythons
This year I bred my first royals very successfully. I got two clutches - one was het pied x normal, one was fire x normal. I also bought an albino and a pastel yellowbelly from CaptiveBred, both stunning animals. Later in the year I bought a mojave and an enchi from John Berry too!