Question about genetics guarantee

Reputable breeders offer genetics guarantee on their animals especially hets. My question is how is guarantee enforced? What if your customer has really bad odds with a het? How many clutches/eggs does it take to disprove a het?

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Originally Posted by Gerardo

Reputable breeders offer genetics guarantee on their animals especially hets. My question is how is guarantee enforced? What if your customer has really bad odds with a het? How many clutches/eggs does it take to disprove a het?

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Well, several years ago the five top breeder families got together and formed a organization called Herper Inc. whose job it is to whack any breeders who authorized unsanctioned hets.



Just kidding. There is no enforcement and to make a slight correction, a lot of breeders, not just reputable ones, will offer a genetics guarantee on their animals but only a reputable one will stand behind it. If you browse the BOI on Fauna, you'll see some cases where some supposedly good guys, who have been around for many many years, failed to back the guarantee or offered, in my opinion, very little compared to the damage done.

Trust the breeder, not the guarantee itself, because it is worthless if the breeder doesn't stand behind it. There is no set number of clutches or eggs. It'll be until the breeder feels its enough, and even then, may want the snake back to cross himself if it's a high dollar snake.

To give you a ballpark, I think there was a recent case where a het was declared as disproved after 36 eggs? I can't remember if it was crossed with a visual or het. Personally, I would never accept a claim if a het was crossed with a het because you can't control the legitimacy of the other het... should only be visuals to disprove.

Tell you the truth the Het guarantee is basically the breeders word. If your a reputable breeder your word is on the line so it is a pretty good chance that they are giving you what they say. The only way to be 100% sure would be to breed the het with a visual animal ie 100%het pied X pied this would get you (theoretically) 50% hets and 50% visuals. Of course you can have really bad luck and get no visuals so i would think to breed it a few more years to prove out. I would guess after 3 breedings (I guess that would depend on egg count also) with a visual and no results then it can be disproved. if it is a grown animal this is 3 years if it is a hatchling 5+. After all that time you would then have to prove to the breeder that it is actually the animal they sold you (long shot) and then have to somehow convince then to reimburse you. this is a lot of headache and you most likely wont get anything out of it. I would just go through a reputable breeder and be done with it.

I do buy from reputable breeder. Especially hets. I was more asking about the breeder's point of view. I plan on doing some pied breedings that will likely produce hets. Since I don't have a reputation I would hate for an impatient customer to question the legitimacy of the genetics in the animals I produce and making it that much harder to sell any hets.

I would say 3 clutches minimum preferably with a visual OR one of the breeders known hets.
Anything that isn't a visual will always be a gamble.
Makes dealing with recessives fun. :gj:

In order to prove it's the same animal, a photo ID is useful for both parties. BP markings are pretty distinct.

Otherwise, if a breeder is certain the animal is a het and a buyer wants their money back after several clutches(2?3?) and he takes it back, he should be getting an adult het ready to breed. After all, the breeder is sure it's a het, right?

One of the issues comes when you're now faced with what the buyer is entitled to. Original purchase price doesn't take into account the 3-5 years the buyer has wasted feeding and raising and breeding it. So should they get more? What about price drop? What if a adult het is only worth what a hatchling was worth when it was sold?

There is also the possibility that even a 100% het(bred from visuals, etc) could end up glitching and NOT carrying the gene. No fault of the breeder, because it can happen to anyone, without ill intent. But the reputation of the breeder would be at risk.

Hets are a big knot of possibilities, both good and bad. They're a great way to get awesome genes, but also a risk.

So are genetics guarantees worthless and more designed to make the customer feel better about the purchase? Has anybody dealt with a situation where the guarantee came into play?

No. Its as good as the seller.

Technically speaking a genetics guarantee is just the seller's word in writing. So it serves as a contract in writing that states the genetics for the animal. I prefer to have a photo ID on each paper if possible just so the snakes can't be accidentally mixed up(or deliberately swapped) at any point.

How does a new breeder can gain reputation if people keeps getting their animals from Reputable breeders?

i.e. How does a new breeder sell their hatchlings if nobody wants to deal with him/her because he/she doesnt have reputation or is well known?