Quality of breeding stock

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Originally Posted by RoseyReps

I'll let you finish reading for my explanation :)





Or, to sum it up:
A standard won't work, as the opinions differ to greatly.
Labeling up front can help visualize for new breeders the difference.
It's not meant to STOP people from breeding pet quality, but if it makes them think about quality AT ALL, it's done it's job (for me).
This is just something *I* want to use on my personal website, I don't think everyone needs or should have to, call it an experiment :)

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HAha thanks. I caught up between listening to powerpoint training stuff for work, then saw this after. I don't think it's a -BAD- idea at all I'm just afraid that if it were to become a 'standard' in the industry, then we are faced with other issues... or a system that is too specific for the nature of the hobby, that it creates a too rigid or limiting experience down the road. Like people who insist that butters are better than lessers simply because of their line, blind to the individual animals, for example. I've had multiple people give me a 'standard' for what they say a butter is, then when they see my lesser girl, insist she is a butter (she's not)... and love how she looks.. but once they learn she's a lesser, she's suddenly less desirable. It's silly. I'd like to see more focus on the individual animal :)

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Originally Posted by Anatopism

HAha thanks. I caught up between listening to powerpoint training stuff for work, then saw this after. I don't think it's a -BAD- idea at all I'm just afraid that if it were to become a 'standard' in the industry, then we are faced with other issues... or a system that is too specific for the nature of the hobby, that it creates a too rigid or limiting experience down the road. Like people who insist that butters are better than lessers simply because of their line, blind to the individual animals, for example. I've had multiple people give me a 'standard' for what they say a butter is, then when they see my lesser girl, insist she is a butter (she's not)... and love how she looks.. but once they learn she's a lesser, she's suddenly less desirable. It's silly. I'd like to see more focus on the individual animal :)

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I agree. A morph standard just won't work.


...lessers are better anyways...:rofl:

This is all quite fascinating

Lessers are better!
http://img.tapatalk.com/d/13/02/21/ze9esape.jpg

Although I appreciate the idea of having a grading standard, there are major problems with it. Since I come from a horse background like Sorraia, that's what I can compare to. The way quality is maintained in horses is by having a studbook. Animals are inspected at certain ages by trained judges who all agree on the standard for that breed, if the animal meets the standard, they are approved for breeding and registered in the studbook. If they are not approved, they can still be bred but their offspring will not be registrable as a member of that breed and therefore not command the premium pricing that approved offspring would command. With warmbloods this can be a price difference of over $20,000, so there is an incentive to breed good quality animals.

However in horses the breed standards exist because different horses exist to do different jobs. Draft horses are bred to pull heavy loads, they cannot perform on a racetrack like a Thoroughbred because they were not selectively bred for speed, you will never see a Clydesdale win the Kentucky Derby. Unlike a horse, the visible pattern on a BP has no effect on it's ability to sit in a tub and be a snake, which is all they've been bred to do. A normal does this just as well as a banana does. There is no performance requirement that requires standardization aside from avoiding kinks and other deformities that may affect the animals quality of life.

There is also no accounting for taste. There are a few general trends that people can agree on (such as preferring axanthics that don't brown out), but as we can see even in this thread, there isn't even a consensus for what makes a good pastel. I actually prefer reduced clowns, and lower white pieds. Just because a snake may not meet the standards of what some people think a morph should look like, doesn't mean that there isn't a market for that snake.

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Originally Posted by Luke Martin

This may be the only thing I kind of disagree with. Quality animals can produce sub par animals. Line breeding takes time and you're not going to be producing amazing animals all the time only because your breeders are nice looking. Most of the time, the reason you see the sub par quality animals for sale is because the breeder held back the best quality, or it sold before most people even saw the animal. A lot of the stuff you see on the classifieds are the lesser quality animals, because the high quality gets picked up first. Not disagreeing with your premise, just offering a reason for it over blaming most breeders for selling sub par animals based on their breeding stock.

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I am actually with you on this one. I agree a lot of snakes never see the open market. Some of mine are like that.

And I fully agree you get the gamut from even the nicest parents.

You hit on a key thing here in that line breeding takes time. My point with the Pastel and Enchi comment was that I really believe there would be more fine examples than bad ones if more people had started the line breeding process early versus just breeding whatever they can get their hands on.

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Ever wonder why you cannot find a nice Enchi or Pastel (or whatever)?

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Because I snatch them before others do? :rolleyes:

http://stewartreptiles.com/wordpress...po_enchi05.jpg

Seriously though I have been preaching that for years,yet every year I see people who basically put two snakes together just because they can and because they want to hatch a certain mutation.

For the longest time it was Spider and Pastel (especially when the price made them very affordable to the masses) all of the sudden many started putting dark pastels with VERY busy pattern spiders because they wanted to hatch out a bee.

I understand how exciting it is to hatch something yourself, I don’t think there’s a better feeling however because you have that mutation and that one doesn’t always mean they should be paired, yes you might hatch the mutation you wanted to hatch “insert name here” but will it be a quality animal you will be proud of and want to hold back and breed to other animals?

Selling an animal can already take time but having below average animals will take you a lot longer to sell if they even do, you can always wholesale them but if you get into breeding why not produced the best looking animals possible.

I don’t have a huge collection I keep it very small and the main reason is that I want to breed for QUALITY and not quantity; I want to produce some outstanding animals that I am proud of myself but that my customers will also be proud to ad in their collection.

I don’t buy a mutation because I have to have it or to be able to say I have it, I buy the mutation because it is something I want to work with and I only do the day I found the perfect example that would fit in my collection.

It took me 3 years to find the perfect reduced pattern albino, 2 to 3 years to found the enchi I wanted, (the hypo enchi I was lucky :D) anyway I am picky and I take my time even if that means I am way behind on what some other people are already producing.... it is all worth it to me.

since everyone agrees, ill guess i go for it and play devils advocate. After all i guess this thread will be more interesting if you have something to rip apart ^^

i think the individual genes breeders work with, and how these are combined, are in many cases still more important. is it really so bad when a breeder works with 3 or 4 nice genes and just wants the rest of the genetics of the snake to be healthy but random, and for new genes just occasionally buys very good looking normals, from different sources so that they are unrelated?

i still see two issues:

first, i think any codom or dominant base morph can be "fixed up", or be bred to high quality, in 2 generations of line breeding, for recessive its maybe 2 maybe 4 generations. Then you have kept the relevant gene and replaced 75% of the remaining genetics with genes from exceptionally good looking normals and had plenty of choices. and when choosing from different siblings that hit the gene, different parts of the remaining genome will be replaced, giving you control over what stays and what gets replaced. 2 generations is not too much time.

Then, if breeding standards get defined, people want to 1-up these, and when adding other genes is not an option breeders might turn to excessive inbreeding. Pythons seem to be quite resilient when it comes to inbreeding, much more so than mammals, but still, it weakens the genetics.

by the way, what might undercut it.... breeding farms in africa now start working with morphs, ive seen evidence for this when it comes to pastel, calico, cinnamon/black pastel, and albino. So big time breeders that are also dealers and importers will soon order 500 normals and 500 pastels instead of 1000 normals like they used to. And of course the best ones will be sorted out and get a higher price tag, just like its today being done with normals / dinkers / oddballs. Maybe this will set certain standards in the trade no matter what we do. I guess in that environment you just need to make your own plan, define a project, and work hard. And my opinion is that you can search for months to get the best animals to start with, or you can start with the genes you want and improve over the generations just with regular outbreeding to highest quality normals.

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Originally Posted by Kurtilein

since everyone agrees, ill guess i go for it and play devils advocate. After all i guess this thread will be more interesting if you have something to rip apart ^^

i think the individual genes breeders work with, and how these are combined, are in many cases still more important. is it really so bad when a breeder works with 3 or 4 nice genes and just wants the rest of the genetics of the snake to be healthy but random, and for new genes just occasionally buys very good looking normals, from different sources so that they are unrelated?

i still see two issues:

first, i think any codom or dominant base morph can be "fixed up", or be bred to high quality, in 2 generations of line breeding, for recessive its maybe 2 maybe 4 generations. Then you have kept the relevant gene and replaced 75% of the remaining genetics with genes from exceptionally good looking normals and had plenty of choices. and when choosing from different siblings that hit the gene, different parts of the remaining genome will be replaced, giving you control over what stays and what gets replaced. 2 generations is not too much time.

Then, if breeding standards get defined, people want to 1-up these, and when adding other genes is not an option breeders might turn to excessive inbreeding. Pythons seem to be quite resilient when it comes to inbreeding, much more so than mammals, but still, it weakens the genetics.

by the way, what might undercut it.... breeding farms in africa now start working with morphs, ive seen evidence for this when it comes to pastel, calico, cinnamon/black pastel, and albino. So big time breeders that are also dealers and importers will soon order 500 normals and 500 pastels instead of 1000 normals like they used to. And of course the best ones will be sorted out and get a higher price tag, just like its today being done with normals / dinkers / oddballs. Maybe this will set certain standards in the trade no matter what we do. I guess in that environment you just need to make your own plan, define a project, and work hard. And my opinion is that you can search for months to get the best animals to start with, or you can start with the genes you want and improve over the generations just with regular outbreeding to highest quality normals.

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http://images3.wikia.nocookie.net/__...enius-meme.png

I apologize for my previous post. I've entered the portion of my day where I'm constantly only seconds from stomping around like a 2 yr old and crapping my pants out of boredom. Mostly, I feel the devil's advocate position should be played when there is a legitimately useful or insightful alternative to a commonly accepted idea. Paraphrasing a bit, but "Disregarding genetics because they all get washed out or easily corrected anyway" is for the lazy, apathetic sort who put no thought into their actions and long term plans, and are, in my opinion, a major degenerative issue in our hobby.

WHY start off with crappy animals, when you can start off with great animals, if not for an impulsive need for immediate gratification (many quotes come to mind about good things being worth working for)