Where are the deserts?

First this is not a a thread if deserts can lay viable eggs or not.
Im just curious, i see a lot of desert stuff coming up for sale since eggs are hatching. But i am not seeing desert females. Are people culling the desert females that hatch? or they just holding on to them just incase someone figures out how to get a desert to lay viable eggs?
thanks
remember this is not a do deserts lay viable eggs thread:gj:

I know mike at pythonregius has some desert and tiger females for sale but hes the only one I have seen post any female deserts so far this season...

yeah i saw mikes tiger females. and I'm glad he took the time to state that deserts, seems to not produce viable eggs and will probably never produce for you but is a great pet.

They are out there, just normally not in the title. :rolleyes: Quick kingsnake search and I saw desert het pied, lemonblast desert, pinstripe desert, desert yb, desert spider, pastave desert, regular deserts......all female. Thats not even opening all the ads.

Wish they'd come down in price, though I understand that as a desert gene they were an investment at one point. But if they're just going to be pretty pets I'd love to have one... Just needs to drop under $300 before I'd get a strictly pet-only ball python

I imagine they will eventually be under $100. Once it's widely known that they are only pets. I think the breeders need to come to terms with that, and the prices will come down as people slowly lower them, as the animals don't sell at higher prices.

I saw one posted today for 400 so they are coming down for a strictly pet female.

I think everyone is waiting for some foolhardy soul to price them at what they're actually worth as a non-breeding pet instead of as an investment animal so that person can be labled as a market crasher and various other nefarious epithets. After that initial scape goat has been tarred and feathered, then everyone else will feel safe to follow suit.

I know earlier this season I saw a couple of ads that were buy a male get a female free.

I predict (and I fully reserve the right to be wrong!) that desert females will be in the $200 and under range by the end of this season.

I'm already seeing 2012 desert (single-gene) males advertised at $500, and larger (2011+) female deserts for $400. (And nobody seems to be buying those $400 larger females, either, because those ads are still there.) Plus, as Zues mentioned, there are a number of "buy a male get a free female" ads ... Perhaps those buyers are hoping to give the females away with a more expensive male rather than selling them for pet prices, just to make the sale less painful?

I'm very curious as to what the future holds for the market on this gene ... I love desert combos and I think they're some of the hottest stuff out there, and I reckon they'd be some of the most desirable right now were it not for the problems breeding females. (It's not as if it's a mediocre gene with mediocre combos and problems associated with it -- these are good-looking snakes!) As it stands, though, I sure am hesitant to invest in a male right now, and I'm sure I'm not the only one.

On the other hand, perhaps the fact that only one of the sexes can breed will keep the demand (for males) up ... I guess we'll see.

I'm with you serpent, I would live to add a desert male, but just don't want to get the risk of producing a female heavy clutch of deserts and then be stuck with them. Don't get me wrong i would love to be able to have a wall of ball python enclosures but dot have them space or Money for 10 cages that cost 300 each, when I can get a rack and house 10 adults in a smaller area.

Oh, there's no way you'd be stuck with them--you can sell them at pet prices to good pet owners, making sure they understand that the animal should never be bred or placed with another animal. Just because they don't sell for $300 doesn't meant they wouldn't sell for $50, and that makes them no 'worse' than normals.

If someone discovered a morph that only reproduced itself 25% of the time, and 3/4 of the clutch were normals, no one would even BLINK--they'd love the thing. While there are considerations in terms of informing customers with this, I don't see it as significantly different.

I think they will end up in pet stores before long. They are pretty snakes that definately look different than normals. Pet stores advertise albino ball pythons at $500, they could probably sell the female deserts at around $250 or so and uneducated people will buy them. Expect to see a lot of people coming in saying they just bought their first ball python and it will be a female desert being unloaded at a pet store.

I've said all along and I'll stick to it that people try breeding them too small. Maye when they just make weight and you breed them they are more prone to getting egg bound. But you don't ever really see the 2000g+ females out there do you? I wonder why this is? Somebody's going to get one proved if not already and just hasn't come forward to the public.

I have only heard tales about female deserts not being able to breed. I don't know the whole story( if there is one) Would someone kindly explain?? Was it the first one brought in that couldn't breed? Almost like the spider head wobble for example.
Thanks
-M

There's a HUGE long thread you can read here: http://www.reptileradio.net/reptiler...ny-Desert-News

And there have been females over 2000 grams bred who laid slugs or died a slow painful death as a result.

At this point, as much as I love the mutation, I'd never breed them - even the males. I wouldn't be able to guarantee that someone wouldn't still try to breed the resulting females, and I can't have that on my conscience.

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Originally Posted by zach_24_90

I've said all along and I'll stick to it that people try breeding them too small. Maye when they just make weight and you breed them they are more prone to getting egg bound. But you don't ever really see the 2000g+ females out there do you? I wonder why this is? Somebody's going to get one proved if not already and just hasn't come forward to the public.

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There's no reason why someone would withhold information about a successful breeding while the market on them is tanking.

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Originally Posted by rabernet

There's a HUGE long thread you can read here: http://www.reptileradio.net/reptiler...ny-Desert-News

And there have been females over 2000 grams bred who laid slugs or died a slow painful death as a result.

At this point, as much as I love the mutation, I'd never breed them - even the males. I wouldn't be able to guarantee that someone wouldn't still try to breed the resulting females, and I can't have that on my conscience.

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There's no reason why someone would withhold information about a successful breeding while the market on them is tanking.

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Thanks so much I appreciate it!!

I just saw a female desert on fauna last week going for like $1700. Sorry, but that is WAY more than I would pay for a pet.

Actually my personal preference is to just leave the desert gene to someone else.

The price will come down with inventory going up. If the desert projects drop off it is less likely the females will hit the low price people would like for a pet. Few produced will keep them scarce and with the female desert news more people don't want males either. Prices will probably hit the lowest they will ever be by the end of the year. If the prices drop very low people may just stop breeding them.

I just read a very interesting bit that was posted on the Reptile Report (can't remember which forum it originated on). Someone had a female desert that, of course, became egg bound, so he got snapshots of the surgery to remove the eggs. As it turns out, she had extremely tight strictures in her ovaducts, and that's what prevented the eggs from passing. They could not be manipulated out, surgery was the only option. Said they couldn't even fit a catheter through the strictures.

So, NO, this is not a matter of breeding deserts that are too small. It is not going to magically resolve itself if you change the temperatures, or the feeding schedule, or whatever. These female deserts have physical defects in their ovaducts, and that is why they are dying.

The infertility problem is probably in addition to that, not caused by it, as obviously not all female deserts die right away, and they are able to pass some slugs, so some of their ovaducts don't have strictures.

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Originally Posted by WingedWolfPsion

I just read a very interesting bit that was posted on the Reptile Report (can't remember which forum it originated on). Someone had a female desert that, of course, became egg bound, so he got snapshots of the surgery to remove the eggs.

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Bush league breeders club
http://thereptilereport.com/amazing-desert-surgery/

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Originally Posted by Dragoon

Bush league breeders club
http://thereptilereport.com/amazing-desert-surgery/

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Yup, that's at the end of the thread I posted above.
:)

Sent from my ADR6400L using Tapatalk 2

Quote:

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Originally Posted by WingedWolfPsion

I just read a very interesting bit that was posted on the Reptile Report (can't remember which forum it originated on). Someone had a female desert that, of course, became egg bound, so he got snapshots of the surgery to remove the eggs. As it turns out, she had extremely tight strictures in her ovaducts, and that's what prevented the eggs from passing. They could not be manipulated out, surgery was the only option. Said they couldn't even fit a catheter through the strictures.

So, NO, this is not a matter of breeding deserts that are too small. It is not going to magically resolve itself if you change the temperatures, or the feeding schedule, or whatever. These female deserts have physical defects in their ovaducts, and that is why they are dying.

The infertility problem is probably in addition to that, not caused by it, as obviously not all female deserts die right away, and they are able to pass some slugs, so some of their ovaducts don't have strictures.

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good stuff to know, nearly all pictures I've seen of eggs coming from deserts had streaks that looked like blood on them so I figured it was something that was tearing up their insides, thats also probably why they die. I don't see that as something that will magically go away once they get bigger.

The other interesting point that this surgery brings up (huge thanks to AMCRoyals whose animal it was and who posted the whole story on BLBC) is that this is also something that won't resolve with hormone therapy, which was, in my mind, the last faint hope that Desert females ever had of being even somewhat reproductively viable. While it does seem a bit like a "chicken or the egg" question (did she form strictures because she was being manually manipulated to try to pass the slugs, or did she fail to pass the slugs because she already had the strictures?) I suspect it's the latter -- that the strictures are a component of this syndrome of reproductive failure that the females of this morph seem to exhibit.

I fear that right now, I fall into the same camp as Rabernet -- I think they are absolutely gorgeous, but I wouldn't want to risk putting animals in the population that had that high a likelihood of dying of dystocia after she changes hands six or seven times (as Ball Pythons are wont to do). Perhaps if our community demonstrates that we are capable of keeping this information as widely distributed as possible and informing every Ball Python newbie we come across (who may well have a pet Desert girl) ... But I am just not counting on that.

Better to avoid buying a Desert now that I don't already have one, than to get one and struggle with the ethics of it ... Like I do with my current spider projects. :rolleyes:

I'd still be VERY interested to see histopathology on the full reproductive tract of a Desert female.

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Originally Posted by Dragoon

The price will come down with inventory going up. If the desert projects drop off it is less likely the females will hit the low price people would like for a pet. Few produced will keep them scarce and with the female desert news more people don't want males either. Prices will probably hit the lowest they will ever be by the end of the year. If the prices drop very low people may just stop breeding them.

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I don't know about that. While the female prices may drop off, the desert gene is an amazing addition to combos. I'm willing to bet many people will be hands off with the desert gene. But with only 25% of the clutch being "valuable" to breeding projects, it may maintain its value-- or, if enough people throw in the towel, the prices could go up if the demand for this gene in morphs stayed the same level as supply went down. The gene is as difficult to produce as recessives are at that 25% probability rate.

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Originally Posted by PsychD_Student

I don't know about that. While the female prices may drop off, the desert gene is an amazing addition to combos. I'm willing to bet many people will be hands off with the desert gene. But with only 25% of the clutch being "valuable" to breeding projects, it may maintain its value-- or, if enough people throw in the towel, the prices could go up if the demand for this gene in morphs stayed the same level as supply went down. The gene is as difficult to produce as recessives are at that 25% probability rate.

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The deserts are already taking a plunge. Yeah some people are still trying to get $1500-$2000 for them. They aren't selling to many, if any at all at that price. I have seen pairs recently for as low as 1k and females for $400. The prices will not go back up unless somehow the deformaties/problems are bred out.

I still question people who sell desert females as 'ready to breed'

http://www.faunaclassifieds.com/foru...d.php?t=334506