First 2007 CH shipment a few fancies....More "Lottery" debate split

[elevatethis]

Rampert,

The first one is a male, I don't know why but of the fancies that come in each year they are always male high. There are many more male abberants and male ringers than females. I don't know why but I've seen it year after year...

I don't think we give enough credit to the guys over in Africa - they can go on the internet and see the massive amount of captive breeding being done over here...so if we can do it...so can they...and since females are the ones that lay eggs, wouldn't YOU want to keep all the female aberrants as well?

Call me a skeptic, but I would put money on the notion of so-called 'wild caught' or 'captive hatched' babies that are exported to the US and other places are actually CBB from Ghana.

Sorry for the digression...we're all entitled to our opinions on the lottery...I personally feel like the lottery mentality takes advantage of some hoping for a morph...and Neil you've defended your position well and it is a very creative way to move a lot of normals, maybe such that it might be worth it to miss a few aberrants here and there ... its not like the aberrants/fancies are selling for that much more than the normals anyway...best of luck!

[neilgolli]

Brad, there is absolutely no doubt that some africans are breeding balls over there. Noha is breeding hundreds of animals and he has been grabing all kinds of cool stuff for a few years. However keep in mind that 100,000 animals a year come to the US from africa and in the US there are very very very few breeders even producing 1000 animals. 99.9% are farmed babies and a lot of things are grabbed and sold for more however to think that they grab everything is being over optomistic. Think of looking at thousands and thousands of snakes after awhile they all look alike. Now imagin half of them are deep in shed. Things slip in.

[elevatethis]

Think of looking at thousands and thousands of snakes after awhile they all look alike. Now imagin half of them are deep in shed. Things slip in.

I always thought the exact opposite to be true. After I'd looked at hundreds of thousands of snakes, I would like to think I'd be pretty good at picking out the good stuff...even deep in shed.

Put a normal and a fancy next to each other and ask a person on the street if they can tell a difference...probably not...its our seasoned eyes that let us see the difference between normals and aberrants.

Those guys in africa know what they're doing. To think anything less at this point in the game is foolish and naive. These are businessmen, not a bunch of natives beating on drums and pulling snakes out of the ground...

[neilgolli]

Brad, over time and looking at thousands of snakes does make you better at pulling things out, at finding the little things that make a difference however look at anyone thing for 8, 10, 12 hours over and over and over again. you miss things....... you get bored, you don't flip the snake over and look at its belly as one snake become the next and you just start counting to 10 to get them all bagged up. An albino pops up you see it, a yb pops up you catch 9 out of 10 but not all of them.

Africa is not what you think it is, there are several big farms but most babies do come from a guy beating a drum picking snakes out of the ground and tossing them in a pit in their backyard. They grab up the eggs 400 or so at a time, toss them in what can only be decribed as a coffin in the house and they wait for them to hatch. These guys don't have computers or cell phones. They hatch the eggs, take them to an exporter and sell them to him (6 or 7 exporters total in all of ghana). These exports have trappers from all over bringing them thousands of snakes as the entire quota has to go out threw these 6 or 7 guys. The exporters have cell phones and computers and know what is what for the most part. They go to Kingsnake and see what we sell snakes for. They try to pull what they can but I think that the get it all is a bit over optimistic of thier abilities.

I don't mean any disrepect at all and please don't take this post or any other as that way, I'm simply trying to help all understand what and how things work a bit.

[NextWorldExotics]

I always thought the exact opposite to be true. After I'd looked at hundreds of thousands of snakes, I would like to think I'd be pretty good at picking out the good stuff...even deep in shed.

Put a normal and a fancy next to each other and ask a person on the street if they can tell a difference...probably not...its our seasoned eyes that let us see the difference between normals and aberrants.

Those guys in africa know what they're doing. To think anything less at this point in the game is foolish and naive. These are businessmen, not a bunch of natives beating on drums and pulling snakes out of the ground...

Hey,
As you know i write the "Hunters Guide" series and obviously know what to pick out in shipments...

Well, after about 400 balls THEY ALL LOOK THE SAME! lol
Its true, you have no idea how many times i come home and cant figure out why i picked one out... Yesturday almost all the ones i went through were in shed and im looking for bad calicos and shatters that slip in, so i start off being really picky as to what im taking then about halfway through the 1000 i start adding more and more... i get home yesturday and laugh since i have 5 snakes that "looked" like Calicos at the time, but now that i have looked at them again they are completely normal.

The same thing happens in reverse to...
At some places i pick out everything that is cool and then go through them again so i can have a kind of "second opinion" and keep the best of the group. Last week (the first shipment i went through) when i first started, i found a Sable, put it in the bucket with the rest of what i was picking out thinking i would easily spot it again when i went through them the second time. Well 4 hours later and 700 balls, i forgot about the sable and didnt notice it the second time... by the time i remembered i was over halfway home and it wasnt worth going back through the 700 to see if i could re-find it ... since they all look the same in the end

[Sputnik]

I always thought the exact opposite to be true. After I'd looked at hundreds of thousands of snakes, I would like to think I'd be pretty good at picking out the good stuff...even deep in shed.

.

I agree, the fancy stuff catches your eye straight away... in shed or not.

[elevatethis]

Hey,
As you know i write the "Hunters Guide" series and obviously know what to pick out in shipments...

So on one hand you say you write the hunter's guide, but on the other hand:

Well, after about 400 balls THEY ALL LOOK THE SAME! lol
Its true, you have no idea how many times i come home and cant figure out why i picked one out... ... since they all look the same in the end

So you know what to look for and then again you pick stuff out that doesn't turn out to be anything but completely normal?

You might want to clarify here...Anyone else confused?

[wolfy-hound]

I think when he has time, he can spot them easily. But when you're working hard and going through a thousand snakes, things start to blue.
It's like a factory inspector in a marble factory. Spotting white marbles is easy in the mess of blue ones. But finding the sort of blue/green ones... might be easy at the start of the day, but as it wears on, you miss a lot more of those slightly different colored ones, and you also probaly grab quite a few blue ones to toss out too.
Wolfy

[jotay]

Good example is walk thru your house and look at the walls for dirt, spots, holes etc. Do that for about 30 mins or so and tell me your not what I call "snow blind " I would think the same would be true trying to spot something that is a little askew in a ball python. Your eyes "get use " to what it's seeing. Now an albino or a something of that nature sure your gonna spot it but slight differences not so much.

[Rapture]

I have some experience with looking at large numbers of CH babies... I used to work at a pet store that purchased a few hundred every season, and we would quickly choose the few hundred that were purchased out of however many the importer brought in, then we would go back through them to find fancies or favorites... and I will say that after a good amount of time of sorting through a large number of the same animal, they start to look alike. First you think one of them is crazy cool, then after a while you find another and have to compare it to the first because you can't remember what the first one looked like.

Although, I do realise that what the pet store aquired had already been sorted through by however many people before us, so a lot of ours were bound to look more alike than all the initial animals.