Hello readers! I want to share a little more about me, the owner of Critter Farm. I am Joey Spijkers. I was born on 05/18/2002, in Venlo, the Netherlands. Ever since I was a little kid, I always had a fascination with nature and animals. I always wanted to learn about all kinds of animals. My fascination for reptiles, invertebrates and amphibians in particular started early on as well. I was always looking for bugs, frogs and lizards as a kid. My hobby of keeping exotic animals started when I was about 7 probably, when my mom told me about lizards as a pet, and how that would really be something for me. I didn't even know you could keep such animals as pets at the time, it was crazy to me. But from that moment, I wanted a lizard. And not long after, we got a bearded dragon. I didn't know everything I should have known about keeping an animal like this, and I didn't really know anything about internet (yes, believe it or not. There was a time where not every 7 year old had the newest iPhone) so unfortunately, the beardie didn't live its full life. After moving on from bearded dragons, I wanted something a little easier and more suitable for my age. I went to my local pet store and saw stick insects, the well known Carausius morosus, PSG 1. I asked the employees about how to keep them and they seemed perfect for me! After asking my mom's permission, I got two stick insects. Of course, they reproduced like crazy, I bred them for a few years. Not long after, I got more species of stick insects, and then got into millipedes and other animals, and like that, my hobby kept evolving and diversifying. Right now I have quite a lot of invertebrates, reptiles, and a few amphibians. And I still want to really expand into other species of inverebrates. Right now, I'm mainly focussing on scorpions. I have a nice selection of species already, but I still want to expand into more amazing species, and my goal is to try and breed a lot of these scorpion species. But in addition to scorpions, there are many other species of inverebrates that I'm really interested in, especially some of the more rare species of insects. And I hope to breed as many of these species as I can, because there's way too many wild caught animals in the hobby if you ask me. That is why I created this website, not only to have a platform where I can share my passion, but my goal for the future of this website is to offer captive bred invertebrates here, under the 'Critters for sale' section. Hopefully it won't take too long before there are actually animals for sale there, but until then, I hope you enjoy reading my experiences and updates regarding my hobby, that I plan to post under the 'Critter Blog' section. Enjoy!

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3 May 2019.