Culling Healthy Animals

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Originally Posted by wilomn

Maybe his "pea" is bigger?

No doubt I shamed him in the past and he's got issues.

Not the first, doubtful he's the last.

Your logic is flawed shawnc. You base much on assumptions that others have proven are wrong. You ignore facts that point out you are in error.

There's no debate. You wanted to argue, you got an argument.

Now you just look like a sore loser as well as a bit of an ass.

And no, I haven't changed. I'm still calling them like I see them. My integrity is still intact. I'm still glad I'm not you.

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Look. Debate me, or go away. Please, I encourage anyone to go back and read my exchanges with this person and let me know if I am being unreasonable. I asked, several times, to point something out that we could discuss. Rather than do that, he uses phrases like "you are wrong, therefor, your arguement is invalid...." Um...what? Debate me, or go away. I already showed you to be not up to the task.

And no, you never did anything to me, so I have nothing against you. But, as I have said, I have been around for a long while, and I remember people like you. People who pontificate a position with no substance to back it. You crack me up, and have built a reputation for yourself that stuck in my brain. Thats a goo dthing. 8-)

I a not the only person who has noticed this BTW. Would you like me to send you the PMs that I have gotten since the thread started thanking me for putting you in your place?

S~

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Originally Posted by Hulihzack

I happen to work in a store that gets our local breeders normal balls, normal corns etc. And guess what, they get more than adequate care and we educate our customers to ensure the snake lives a healthy life. I know we aren't the only ones who do this, and the fact that the breeder sold them to us for 15 bucks is irrelevent, they're still going to perfectly deserving keepers. Of course there are some bad stores out there, but to say ALL cheap snakes are better off dead is absurd. For someone who's been around as long as you, you should at least have seen some evidence of this.

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I have. But also having worked in similar stores...it's ussually not the store that is a problem. It's the customers. As I said...its' not abuse that happens right away...its the abuse that comes from apathy, after the whole "new pet snake" thing wears off. I used to see alot of that, and we used to take alot of animals back because of it. But for every one we got back, there were ten we dind't get back, and I bet more than have of those ended badly. Can I prove it? no, it's just a gut feeling. Like I said, maybe I just lost faith in humanity at some level?

S~

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Originally Posted by waltah!

I can see why you would want to "debate" this on a site where most don't have a clue who you are. I don't know anyone who would purchase anything from you after reading your comments in this thread.....luckily you're not in it for the money;) yeah, right.
When I have used the word "you" I mean YOU. Not the "collective" you. But just you.

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Actually I debated it on my own site, several times, over the last three years. I posted here because I like the forum, and I'd like some fresh perspectives because in person, I meet all sorts of people who agree with me, but from behind a keyboard, I am very often one of the few to admit to it. I was hoping I'd find it a little different here, but I didn't, and thats not a surprise.

I said I am not culling for money. Again...read what I write, not whatyou think you read. That doesn't make sense to cull for money in th eshort term. Of couse I make some cash from my snakes. Thats part of the fun of it. So do alot of you. Nothing wrong with that. Too bad they eat so much!

S~

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Originally Posted by ShawnC

Look. Debate me, or go away.

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Sorry but this is killing me, you don't debate someone, you debate with someone! And they don't debate you, they debate with you. So don't say "Debate me, or go away" say "Have a debate with me, or go away." Use the word properly or please don't use it at all! :colbert:

ok honestly i did not read every persons comments... i do however agree if i was a falconer and my falcon only ate ball pythons for whatever reason i dont see it being wrong to feed them ball pythons if it was what it wanted and also cost effective. and on that note .... when i post a youtube feeding vid, u know how many rat lovers post negitive stuff and rate my vid 1 star? i honestly cant be a hippocrate and say dont feed your animals ball pythons when i get the same damn thing from the rat lovers

What I don't understand is what the OP thinks he is saving the animal from when he throws it into an aquarium with a carnivorous fish and allows it to be torn to pieces in front of him. There's something genuinely creepy about that to me, especially when people normally own them because they love them. It's not really the same as feeders, because there was no personal attachment to those in the first place. Animals are not all just pieces of meat in my opinion, and I don't believe anybody in their right mind can say that with real conviction. From an objective point of view yes, but a person making that argument still wouldn't throw a puppy in with a burmese, and if not, then they couldn't really believe it to be true. What further confuses me is that the OP can then turn around, get on the computer, and pretend like his motives are not related to finances or business at all; try to pitch it as a morally responsible husbandry practice to a community who is fanatical about how beautiful and wonderful these animals are. What kind of reaction would you expect?

Anyway, one argument I think you've been making since the beginning that I haven't seen anybody bring up yet is that somehow, by destroying the ugly snakes early on, you're preventing inexperienced keepers from breeding them and polluting the gene pool. Is that what you mean by "it's for the good of the hobby"? With regard to that, I honestly believe that anybody who knows what they're doing pertaining to genetics and breeding would be able to spot a poor investment animal a mile away; they wouldn't allow their high-end breeding stock to be contaminated with something that had serious problems, and those are the kinds of people that deserve to be successful in this business in the first place. Only the get-rich quick types and irresponsible kids who don't care enough to do real research would buy into an 'ugly' snake with intent to breed, which in the end would make the high-end, selectively bred stuff coming from responsible people all the more valuable. A market saturated with "defective" stock might, in the end, be GOOD for the hobby, especially for those people who actually care about, and put effort into what they're producing. It would make beautiful, well-bred reptiles a rare and valuable thing, and make good keepers really stand out.

I also suspect that rather than really caring about the animal's well-being, you'd just rather kill a "ten foot, muddied up, ugly brown carpet python" than sell it to somebody, for the fear that if you did, they would only later realize what an unpleasant thing it is and then associate the negative experience with your good name. So, what I think you're doing is a business practice, driven by the profit-machine. Killing it means you don't have to clean it, feed it, advertise it, or ever think about it again. It also means you spend less money on real food for whatever you feed them off to. Are you sure things like that have nothing to do with your decision to kill your snakes?

But see, what a lot of people here are trying to say is that breeding snakes for the sole purpose of feeders is okay, but breeding snakes to sell and then using the unwanted/ugly ones as feeders is completely different and not okay. Chickens, pigs, cows--all those fall under the "bred for food" category, like feeder mice or feeder snakes. However, a lot of people here (myself included) feel that breeding snakes to sell and then culling the less desirable (but healthy!) ones is wrong.

The key here is purpose. If all the snakes are going to be feeders, then they all suffer the same fate. If some are feeders and some are not, then things get fuzzy. We start playing God: this snake lives because it's worth a decent amount of money (whatever we define "decent" to be), but this snake doesn't because it's not worth enough (again, whatever we define "enough" to be) or because it might suffer terribly depending on who gets it. To those of us who truly love snakes, killing one for either of these reasons is wrong. It's not the snake's fault it was born a normal--it was pure chance. A roll of the proverbial dice. Why should the snake not have a chance to live a long, healthy life just because it's a normal?

The point is not whether using a snake as a feeder is right or wrong; the point is the reason behind using the snake as a feeder.

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Originally Posted by ShawnC

I a not the only person who has noticed this BTW. Would you like me to send you the PMs that I have gotten since the thread started thanking me for putting you in your place?

S~

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Yes. Both of them if you could.

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Originally Posted by Ash

What I don't understand is what the OP thinks he is saving the animal from when he throws it into an aquarium with a carnivorous fish and allows it to be torn to pieces in front of him. There's something genuinely creepy about that to me, especially when people normally own them because they love them.

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I have a problem with this statement. Regardless of what the OP does with his animals this seems to imply that by feeding off an animal that is traditionally thought of as a pet there is something creepy about you. I used to keep gold fish as a child, in my teenage years I owned red ear sliders and part of their diet was, in fact, goldfish. And yes I admit I enjoyed watching them chase down and eat the fish, the turtles were my pet and the fish was their food.

That said I know people who keep large snakes, retic, burms, african rocks, etc. They also happen to breed guinea pigs and rabbits. Both of these animals are selectively bred and sold but sometimes those animals don't exhibit the traits that people are looking for when buying those animals. Most of those guinea pigs and rabbits are fed off to their large snakes, and the remaining "feeder" animals are frozen and sold to local pet shops. Does that put them in the wrong?

I personally keep a pet guinea pig, his name is Toby, and I love him to death. But in the future if I acquired a large snake that needed guinea pigs for food, I have no qualms acquiring the food that animal needs to thrive. Does that mean I will feed off Toby? No but I have no issues with feeding off animals that are traditionally kept as pets (Within legal limits...you can't exactly buy a guinea pig from Petco and legally feed it to a snake...you actually sign a form that says you WON'T do that).

I'm not defending what the OP does with his animals, frankly they're his and I have no control over what he does with them. But in the same breathe I don't want people to demonize those who feed off animals traditionally thought of as pets.


Besides...no one would feed a puppy to a burm.....a Burm wouldn't touch a puppy!


Okay that was in poor taste, but seriously it's illegal anyway, I'm pretty sure that's considered animal cruelty.

Too many pages...eyes hurt....

My opinion for what little it's worth...

Feeding off your hybrids/unwanteds to save the hobby is a load of crap.
Feeding them off because they double as feeders is fair.
Feeding them off because they're not morphs or the result you wanted is jacked up.
Killing them and taking lives for no purpose other than saving yourself operating costs...wrong on all accounts and borderline cruel.

See, my whole thing with this is that he actually has animals that eat snakes, and he doesn't just kill his "unwanteds", he feeds them off.
Breeding for morphs in his business, he creates snakes he can sell and snakes he needs to put more effort into selling. "Fortunately" for him, he has animals that are snake eaters and he can save money on buying food for these animals by feeding his snakes that he feels arent worth his effort. Now, that may be wrong, but it makes sense. I think Id have an issue with this if he just took up all his normals/hybrids and stuck them in the freezer and then disposed of them because they require too much effort to house and feed.

So, short version....he breeds snakes, creates snakes to sell and some to breed, and feeds off the rest. Love of the hobby is BS, love of the animals is BS, the intention behind the breeding is blatanly obvious...$.

And to put it in the perspective I see it through:
In terms of ASF rats that I breed:
Undesirables (males, females of a color I already have) are sentenced to death by snake.
Desirables(females of varying colors from what I already have) are kept and found new housing away from general population.
I relate to the OP based off of that.

And for the record, I could never feed a snake to anything.

KUDOS to all for not taking this and getting it sentenced to QT btw.