Would you register your breeders?

I have been thinking of starting a website. With all the talk of the ball python market, this seems to be a good time to throw this idea out there.

Would you as a breeder, use a site where you could register your breeding snakes? This would be, for the most part, a trust based site, where you go and put in your information, and get say, 5 free registries. After the first five, you pay an annual or semi-annual fee to have more than five snakes registered.

A registered snake would have as much or as little information as you want, with a the minimum amount of info being species, explanation of genetics, and a photo.

Each user would have a profile, where all their registered snakes come up. In these profiles, people could do things such as complement you on a job well done, and a snake well made, or complain that you sold them an albino male, but they received a yellowbelly female, and you have not returned their calls.

So, by doing this you would be able to show your breeding stock in an online environment set up specifically for people who are shopping for reptiles, and want background. People could browse by morph, species, size of collection, and any other number of other catagories.

If you would be interested in this, would you be interested in paying a larger premium for a sort of insurance through the website? Such a service would work as follows;

1. Seller pays $XX for $X,XXX worth of coverage per year from Company Z.
2. Buyer buys 1.2 albinos from seller.
3. Seller sends pictures of the snakes sold to Company Z, and sends snakes to buyer, along with instructions to contact company Z, should any problems arise.
4. Buyer receives snakes only to find that they have received 2.1 albinos, which is not what they wanted at all.
5. At this point instead of the buyer contacting the seller and requesting a refund or a replacement snake, buyer contacts Company Z, and reports the problem.
6. Buyer sends their own picture of the mis-sexed snake to Company Z
7. Company matches the picture sent by buyer to the record of snakes sold to buyer from seller.
8. Company Z has buyer send in the snake(at no charge to the buyer), which Company Z confirms as mis-sexed
9. Company Z then sends buyer a replacement snake* of the same variety.
10. Company Z informs seller that a claim had been maid against them, and has been settled, and they have $XXX of coverage left for that year.
11. Company Z quarantines the animal received from buyer, and then has it for use as a later replacement or whatever they see fit.

*Company Z would find replacement snakes in one of the following ways.
1. Upon initial contact from buyer, company Z informs seller that there is a problem, and finds out if they have an acceptable replacement, if they do, company Z purchases the replacement from seller.
2. Company Z has their own large breeding stock, and is able to replace most animals with that of their own production.
3. Company Z works with several well known and respectable breeders and acquires a replacement from them
4. Company Z allows buyer to seek out a replacement snake from an outside source (i.e. someone on kingsnake, another breeder from Company Z's snake registry, etc...) and pays for buyers replacement animal(s), up to the purchase price of the original animal.

This is a general thought I have been kicking around for a few months. If you think it is a crazy idea and that you would never participate, let me know, if you think it is great and you want to sign up tomorrow... well we are not that far yet. Any feedback is appreciated.

Also, if saw Company Z took it upon them selves to go out and establish guidelines for what makes a certain animal a perfect example of it's phenotype, and started having shows/competitions at events such as reptile expos, and there were prizes (lets say cash, and being recognized as the owner as a winning animal) would you be likely to participate?

Forgot to mention one thing.

Each profile would have an easy to use way of posting what you have available, which breeders of yours are the parents and asking price, which would automatically be tied into a classifieds section which anyone could browse.

So, say you are using the "free edition" of this website, you would be able to post one clutch/snake as available. If you wanted to post more ads than one, you would pay based on how many ads you wanted to be able to post.

I dont really like this idea.


Most breeders who have their own site, already do....pretty much all the things you have listed.

Info, comment space, contact info.

Why have to go through ANOTHER middleman, when you can go directly to the source?..ie: THEIR WEBSITE.


You have been to Kingsnake.com yes?

for some reason i just dont see this taking off

So like Kingsnake, Fauna, BP.Net and iHerp all rolled into one?

I dont really see the point?

taking a look at this from a buyers point of view ....I do kind of like it. When your new to all of this there is not a whole lot of places to go to find out about breeders. For me...it was word of mouth and talking to other breeders at the show, as well as the display and speaking with the breeder. So from that perspective....I would really like it.

But then again...I have been doing this for all of 2 months...so what the heck do I know.....:rolleyes:

They have one for cornsnakes: American Cornsnake Registry. It's only been midly successful, but the idea is neat.

Sorry nothing personal, but it sounds crazzzy insane and not worth the trouble..

Nope

1# The more parties involved the more trouble. Seller and buyer should communicate with each other not through a 3rd party if there is a problem.

2# I do not really care about having a system out there where someone (who ever the someone is) knows about everything I own, produce, sell and to whom.

If someone wants to track their animals history they can with me already all my animals comes with a certificate of origin (among other things), should a buyer require more info such as pictures of the dam and sire all they have to do is ask (soon it will be available directly online from my own website).

Sorry nothing personal I just like being in control and not have someone else involved with what I do.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Deborah

Nope

1# The more parties involved the more trouble. Seller and buyer should communicate with each other not through a 3rd party if there is a problem.

2# I do not really care about having a system out there where someone (who ever the someone is) knows about everything I own, produce, sell and to whom.

If someone wants to track their animals history they can with me already all my animals comes with a certificate of origin (among other things), should a buyer require more info such as pictures of the dam and sire all they have to do is ask (soon it will be available directly online from my own website).

Sorry nothing personal I just like being in control and not have someone else involved with what I do.

---

Dang straight Skippy

Well if it is an unpopular idea, then I will ditch the idea, I will leave it at this.

When I go to a show, I take a nice binder that has pictures of all my breeders in it. I am not a big breeder, but people take more interest in my snakes than those at the big breeder across the way when they get to look at the breeding stock, and I do not know of a communal website where you really easily the animals you breed.

Nope, I wouldn't use it either.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by wRobio

Well if it is an unpopular idea, then I will ditch the idea, I will leave it at this.

When I go to a show, I take a nice binder that has pictures of all my breeders in it. I am not a big breeder, but people take more interest in my snakes than those at the big breeder across the way when they get to look at the breeding stock, and I do not know of a communal website where you really easily the animals you breed.

---

iHerp has that set-up already.

And if you set-up your own website you can easily display your collection for others to see on there. :gj:

Too many people = too many extra chances for issues

I don't really care for the idea of selling animals through a middle man and having my collection on a website other than my own (;)one day) that I, personally, don't have 100% control over.

However, the idea of a private registry (like AKC or something) might be useful for breeders who are selectivity breeding morphs. Start sort of a pedigree for BP's and buyers will know the lineage. Plus, it would show any inbreeding along the lines and maybe help keep breeders from unknowingly inbreed if they want to avoid it.

I also think showing snakes would be kind of fun. I've seen A LOT of really top notch examples of morphs and it might be neat if those breeders could get recognized officially for their animals. It might possibly help with the decline of the market along with selective breeding, animals from parents that have won a nationally recognized "ribbon" would have a higher price tag. But that could go the other way too if the general buyer doesn't give a hoot if his/her snake is from awesome parents.

Well the idea about showing snakes is that it would give people incentives to buy expensive animals, and not only be able to make their money back through breeding. I know several people who make their living showing dogs, they win between $15,000 and $30,000 a year from prizes.

That is the only reason there are $1,500 huskies, and $350 huskies (or which ever bread you fancy), there is money to be made by people who are not breeding.

That could help raise the price of a really good pastel back up to a solid $400-500, and so on.

That is an aspect of reptiles that I think has great potential, and has gotten very little attention. I would love to show some of my snakes, even if they didn't win, it would be really fun to go out and see what everyone else considers their best snake.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Deborah

Nope

1# The more parties involved the more trouble. Seller and buyer should communicate with each other not through a 3rd party if there is a problem.

2# I do not really care about having a system out there where someone (who ever the someone is) knows about everything I own, produce, sell and to whom.

If someone wants to track their animals history they can with me already all my animals comes with a certificate of origin (among other things), should a buyer require more info such as pictures of the dam and sire all they have to do is ask (soon it will be available directly online from my own website).

Sorry nothing personal I just like being in control and not have someone else involved with what I do.

---

I think you are a control freak!!! J/K;)

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by wilomn

Dang straight Skippy

---

+1

I've looked into it, more work than it's worth.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by jsmorphs2

However, the idea of a private registry (like AKC or something) might be useful for breeders who are selectivity breeding morphs. Start sort of a pedigree for BP's and buyers will know the lineage. Plus, it would show any inbreeding along the lines and maybe help keep breeders from unknowingly inbreed if they want to avoid it.

I also think showing snakes would be kind of fun. I've seen A LOT of really top notch examples of morphs and it might be neat if those breeders could get recognized officially for their animals. It might possibly help with the decline of the market along with selective breeding, animals from parents that have won a nationally recognized "ribbon" would have a higher price tag. But that could go the other way too if the general buyer doesn't give a hoot if his/her snake is from awesome parents.

---

Pedigree papers are a good idea., IMO. I bred pedigreed netherland dwarf rabbits back in the day, it was amazing how much more $$ a rabbit was if it had papers with a show champion or 2 related to it.

But IDK about shows, I personally would not want my breeding stock/any of my permanent snakes at a show with other snakes. The risk of disease and mites, etc is WAY too much for risk for a ribbon.

But if there are no shows, there is no way to have "champion" snakes in the lineage and show up in the pedigree papers, so therefore the papers won't be worth much anyway....

The health problem has some up in my mind many times. I think that like with dogs, anyone who is really serious about showing snakes, would not have a problem going to a reptile vet a few days before a show, having a basic health exam, and getting a piece of paper saying "I _______ certify that such and such animal is free of mites, and have visible signs of ______ diseases."

Or something along those lines to help put everyone at ease.

I also think that like reptile shows, you would have your own little table with your animals on it. But you would not let anyone touch your animals, except the judges that would come around and inspect each animal.

Showing any animal has its risks, that is part of it, but you can get around it. And I think it is likely that if people got into the whole thing, that they would have a seperate area where they kept their show snakes, like a quarantine area, so they could be sure they were healthy and perfect before showing them, or putting them back with their active breeders.

You can always contact Chuck Pritzel and Connie Hurley who run the Corn snake registry. See if they have any advice or would make any changes?

Here's their website.

http://cccorns.com/

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by twistedtails

I think you are a control freak!!! J/K;)

---

Guilty as charged ;), I raise and care for my own snakes, breed my own feeders to provide for my snakes, build my own racks, built my incubator, built my own website etc, the only thing I do not do is the delivery of the animals, everything else I am in charge and in control ;)

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Deborah

Guilty as charged ;), I raise and care for my own snakes, breed my own feeders to provide for my snakes, build my own racks, built my incubator, built my own website etc, the only thing I do not do is the delivery of the animals, everything else I am in charge and in control ;)

---

You forgot Shaun, you're in charge of Shaun! :P

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Deborah

Guilty as charged ;), I raise and care for my own snakes, breed my own feeders to provide for my snakes, build my own racks, built my incubator, built my own website etc, the only thing I do not do is the delivery of the animals, everything else I am in charge and in control ;)

---

We all love a bit of control! The only thing I don't have control over is my wife:8:

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by twistedtails

We all love a bit of control! The only thing I don't have control over is my wife:8:

---

:rofl::rofl::rofl::rofl:
that goes right up there with my saying there is one thing better than knowing the sheriff thats knowing his wife:D

You know what, I say go for it, you may only get a few at first to bite on it, but im gessing eventully it would take off.

Nope, I can not see this idea taking off. I know myself and a lot of other people would rather just go straight to the source (the breeders website) and talk to them and look around at their animals there. I know I really try to stay away from "the middle man" when dealing with reptiles or anything really. I'm sure as many other do, too. You can give it a try and see how people like it, but that is up to you, since we can just give you our thoughts.

I don't know if it's been mentioned, but iHerp already has a program in place for registering breeder animals, with information. Have you looked there?

I think they have it in order to make breeders easily able to contact someone with an animal they might need for thier own breeding programs.