Woma Python

It's not my first choice, id rather a green anaconda, but i definately dont need 2 large snakes, and since it seems i wont have any luck locating my rufous beaked snake, i will probably settle for a woma python over the next few months. i'm not really too familiar on them, and id like to learn a bit, and see some pictures of some if anybody has any, and maybe a price i can get them for? i really dont want to spend $400. i think the cheapest i seen was $350. any help is greatly appreciated.

Pay for quality and you will be more happy in the end. If you're not too big on them I would suggest waiting and getting what you really want.

yea but i dont think ill ever find what i want lol, so ill settle on the 2nd thing i wanted. i understand about the quality but i dont know the diff between them, as long as it eats, looks healthy, and doesnt have mites i have no clue what else to look for, i think the $350 was from k&n reptiles, and its a local place.

I'm going to agree with what's been said and wait for what you really want, but that being said Woma's are great snakes. Here are some pics of our 08 female. She's a very easy keeper and has a great personality--very gentle and inquisitive.

http://i94.photobucket.com/albums/l8...eb2000/SN1.jpg

http://i94.photobucket.com/albums/l8...eb2000/sn2.jpg

i mean i wanted a woma before i found out about the rufous beaked snake, so im going to probably get one in may at the reptile show unless i can find one cheaper and in good health and not able to locate a rufous beaked snake.

but overall the womas are beautiful.

just like david said. you get what you pay for. $350 is way cheap so im not sure i'd go that route. they range from 400-700 so.....

http://i102.photobucket.com/albums/m...Picture057.jpg


http://i102.photobucket.com/albums/m...Picture055.jpg

http://i102.photobucket.com/albums/m...Picture056.jpg

this is an 08 female i paid 300$ for shes alot more calm now unless shes in her cage. they are pretty easy to take care of. you gotta keep the humidity down. they have no shedding issues, their scales are round. you also might want to consider blackhead pythons(they have a few blackhead morphs)

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Originally Posted by Neal

i mean i wanted a woma before i found out about the rufous beaked snake, so im going to probably get one in may at the reptile show unless i can find one cheaper and in good health and not able to locate a rufous beaked snake.

but overall the womas are beautiful.

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Neal:

AA Reptiles is selling red-spotted beakeds on KS.

I have womas. They are nice animals and are fairly bulletproof. Prices have come way down from where they were a year or two ago.

In terms of quality, many breeders are breeding for color. In Australia, womas are generally classified by locality and some localities tend to be more colorful than others. Just because a snake has eye-catching colors does not mean it is of superior quality than one who is more true to it's original locality.

I've been thinking about picking up a woma for a while now.

I've heard womas can be a bit nippy when young, but calm down eventually. Anybody else have any experience with this?

Also, I know they have axanthic black-heads - when are the axanthic womas coming out!?!?!?! i bet they'd look sweet. maybe i should just start saving for one of those when they eventually do come out.

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Originally Posted by scutechute

I've been thinking about picking up a woma for a while now.

I've heard womas can be a bit nippy when young, but calm down eventually. Anybody else have any experience with this?

Also, I know they have axanthic black-heads - when are the axanthic womas coming out!?!?!?! i bet they'd look sweet. maybe i should just start saving for one of those when they eventually do come out.

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mine is somewhat nippy
they also have albino blackheads

$350 isnt cheap, its about the avg price i find, and i wouldnt pay anything over that, not unless the snake talked.

well you get what you pay for.

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Originally Posted by Lucas339

well you get what you pay for.

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Please explain this Lucas.

I've recently seen a $900.00 female woma and a $400 female woma. Both were in apparent good shape and both looked relatively the same.

Some people price womas on the clarity of the banding and the intensity of the head coloration. Is this worth the extra $500.00? I guess this could be argued - however, I have seen such a wide discrepancy in woma pricing for visually similar animals that I tend to think this is not the case.

Or is it that some people are in a time warp? Two years ago or so they paid $2500.00 for their pair and no one sent them the memo informing them that prices have plummeted as more and more of these animals are flooding the market.

Or do you have another theory? I'm still curious why some people are paying a lot of money for womas when good examples can be had for much less.

well it is all in the color. bright colors and good banding makes a good woma. darker colors and banding that is mushed together is not so good. its like any type of snake....the more that area available the less expensive they will be. black heads are a great example of this. they are up there right now but im sure the price will drop.

here is a site of a breeder who breeds womas and others. look at the coloring and banding on these. his average prices are like i said 400-800 dollars depending on the qualit of the animal. http://www.millerreptiles.com/Womas/Womas.html

i don't have a womas yet but i will be getting some as soon as i can. will i pay the extra hundy for a brighter, better patterned animal......you bet i will!!

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Originally Posted by Lucas339

well it is all in the color. bright colors and good banding makes a good woma. darker colors and banding that is mushed together is not so good. its like any type of snake....the more that area available the less expensive they will be. black heads are a great example of this. they are up there right now but im sure the price will drop.

here is a site of a breeder who breeds womas and others. look at the coloring and banding on these. his average prices are like i said 400-800 dollars depending on the qualit of the animal. http://www.millerreptiles.com/Womas/Womas.html

i don't have a womas yet but i will be getting some as soon as i can. will i pay the extra hundy for a brighter, better patterned animal......you bet i will!!

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Blackheads are harder to breed than womas - so the prices should stay up longer.

It's funny that you mention banding and color. Some people take great care with various species to maintain locality purity - central american locality boas are a good example of this - as are some locality bullsnakes, ratsnakes and.................womas.

Yes - there are several different woma localities. In some cases, these localities can be identified by the lack of color, drabness in banding, etc.

When I was in Australia 18 months ago, I spoke to breeders who were being very careful to breed by locality - not color. Ulurus, Tennant Creeks, Tanamis, Boodarie, Rockhampton Downs, etc. - all were being bred true to locality. Specific emphasis was put on documenting that the animals actually could be traced to the locality in question as people were misrepresenting localities to push prices up.

I saw several drab or muddy banded animals fetching good money because they came from specific localities.

So in the States, we are apparently pricing our womas for aesthetic reasons or by who bred them. We have no concept of the differences in locality and we don't care. We are paying top dolllar for brightly colored animals with no pedigree other than that of the person who put two attractively colored animals in a bin together.

I remember when people were freely interbreeding the antaresia species here. Now we are very careful to not mix our children's, spotted, stimson's and anthills. We are also now paying attention to locality differences within the species instead of blindingly interbreeding them for looks.

I'm sure that woma breeders are very knowledgeable about what markings and colors are more desireable than others. I'm with Neal on this one - I wouldn't pay double the price just because a couple of breeders decided a bright orange head makes the animal worth more.

also here is one place i found that has some good reads on womas

pics of different womas together: http://www.southernxreptiles.com/WOMAGALLERY.htm

nice article on womas:
http://www.southernxreptiles.com/Art...Fs/woma_lr.pdf

Nixer:

Good find on the pdf!

i agree. that is a great article.

skiploder im going to relate what you said to GTP. you can still find GTPs advertised as local speicmens but the ones that are most sought after are the outcrosses that produce the best colors. i see no difference in wanting a highly colored GTP to having a highly colored woma. some people like locals and good for them. me, i prefer color and thats what ill buy. i don't plan on buying from a broker. i plan on buying form someone that breeds them so i can get pictures of the parents.

its your money....spend it on what you want. if you want local then go local. but can you really prove that it is truly that local.

outcrosses and all that mean anything to me though, i dont plan on breeding them, so im satisfied with the normal phase, but im not gonna pay more then $350, i doubt id even spend $350, on any snake unless i can pay to get a black cobra without owning a permit. then id spend the $350.

i guess i can see why some people pay alot for some snakes if they like the way they look, but im not that type of person. i want a rufous beaked really bad, i have since november, but im not gonna pay over $120 for a wc, ill pay $150 around there for a CB. the reason i say this is because aa reptiles has r. rubopunctatas for like $300, they were $400, and i wouldnt pay that, i think the regular r. rostratus look better.

i suggest you hold out for the rufous then. or go with something different thats less money. i have only seen the beaked snakes from AA. never have seen them elsewhere so im not sure about that price.

buy what makes you happy. check kingsnake. i use it as a refernce and then ask around for breeders. there are some really cool looking animals out there that are cheaper than $350. just look around.

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Originally Posted by Lucas339

i agree. that is a great article.

skiploder im going to relate what you said to GTP. you can still find GTPs advertised as local speicmens but the ones that are most sought after are the outcrosses that produce the best colors. i see no difference in wanting a highly colored GTP to having a highly colored woma. some people like locals and good for them. me, i prefer color and thats what ill buy. i don't plan on buying from a broker. i plan on buying form someone that breeds them so i can get pictures of the parents.

its your money....spend it on what you want. if you want local then go local. but can you really prove that it is truly that local.

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Lucas:

I'll take it a step farther and let's look at ball pythons. What's the difference between a $10,000.00 morph and a normal? Just because a snake is more colorful or visually unique doesn't mean it's a better quality animal.

If you want to pay more for an outcross or an animal bred for high color - there is nothing wrong with that. However, somehow equating that color to quality is where I don't agree.

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Originally Posted by Skiploder

Lucas:

I'll take it a step farther and let's look at ball pythons. What's the difference between a $10,000.00 morph and a normal? Just because a snake is more colorful or visually unique doesn't mean it's a better quality animal.

If you want to pay more for an outcross or an animal bred for high color - there is nothing wrong with that. However, somehow equating that color to quality is where I don't agree.

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unless of course to him/her dont member who your talking to.... quality means looks and color of the snake.
kinda like a quality car to you might not be a quality car to someone else

well the rufous they have are over priced, glades herp gets those same snakes and sells them for $200. then the regular rufous are brown with the black by the eye, those are r. rostratus, those go for $120. and mitch from diamond reptile gets those in, as well as ben siegel & exoticsrus also, they just have those babies over priced by $100. if they went down to $200 id purchase one. i check kingsnake everyday no luck on my rufous. only other snake i really want is a cobra, but i dont have a permit and nobody will sell to me without a permit, ive kept venomous snakes before so im not stupid on how to treat them, just its not worth the hassle of getting the permit because they i have to lie about 500 hour sof experience.

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Originally Posted by azpythons

unless of course to him/her dont member who your talking to.... quality means looks and color of the snake.
kinda like a quality car to you might not be a quality car to someone else

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Can you run this by me one more time?

I'm having a hard time figuring out what the first part of your statement means.

Thanks in advance.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by azpythons

unless of course to him/her dont member who your talking to.... quality means looks and color of the snake.
kinda like a quality car to you might not be a quality car to someone else

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me too.

and skip if it sounds like i meant that the snake would be subpar as an animal becasue of the price then you misunderstood me. i do see how it would sound like that. to me, if im buying a snake, i want one that is going to look great and be healthy.

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Originally Posted by Lucas339

me too.

and skip if it sounds like i meant that the snake would be subpar as an animal becasue of the price then you misunderstood me. i do see how it would sound like that. to me, if im buying a snake, i want one that is going to look great and be healthy.

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Lucas:

I understand where you're coming from. A quality animal is first and foremost a healthy animal that is a good representative of its species.

The aesthetics of the animal can be broken down into two variants - (Mandatory) those essential and/or expected of the species and (Discretionary) those pleasing to the ideals of the prospective owner.

The value of the animal is ideally based on a combination of both. If the going price for a standard healthy woma is $400, then an $800 high-color variant isn't a better animal quality-wise. It's just an animal that someone may be willing to pay a few more bucks for.

atleast skip sees my point.