Culling Healthy Animals

[MsPrada]

Similarly, people who love chickens or bunnies usually don't condemn those who eat them as well.

Yes they do, most of the time. I.E the horse slaughter act. People who love horses condemned eating them so much that laws are now passed that have millions of unwanted horses suffering in the US.

I do have to say however, that the rat breeder knows that the rats are being bred for food, thus the ones she/he does not keep are not being produced uselessly. Also, our disagreement with this person is not that he thinks normals are ugly or anything, but that he is producing them and culling them without giving them a chance for a life or finding a use for them. He feeds some off, but overall anything that is not pretty and does not get fed off is just killed uselessly.

As far as it being humane, I don't believe it was stated how the OP culls off animals that aren't fed. Also, it depends on the accepted def. of humane. To some it means that what happens happens for a purpose, ie killing animals for food or for a religious ceremony. Does culling animals for looks fall under humane? Thats for each and every individual to answer.

And as far as I know, coming from the dog breeding community, animals that are not suitable for the purpose (show animals etc) are found homes and papers are signed to keep breeding from happening. Thus, while this inequality does exist, there is a sort of "golden" rule on how to handle it and keep it to a minimum.

I just dont see how anyone can believe this is ok and believe we can't kill orphaned children because they are ugly and might not find a good home...

[Raptor]

;D Send me a rack and I'll take those normals off your hands.

I'm on the fence with this. I can, to a degree understand where this guy comes from. I breed goats. They're great animals. Smart, cute, and downright hilarious animals. However, I can't keep all of them and the ones that don't meet my requirements for breeding/registering has to go somewhere. Either into my freezer, or to the sale barn where they still might go to the freezer. Obviously, the animals born with defects should be culled with the idea that the issue could be passed on.

Despite how much I love my goats, if someone who owned a large snake came up to me and wanted a goat for his snake, all I'd need is the size. Chances are, I have a cull that'd fit (obviously, goat would need to be dehorned first for the safety of the snake, but that's beside the issue). I don't know. I'm fairly neutral on the issue. Like I said, I can see both sides of the argument.

[p3titexburial]

Oh dear, let me be a bit more precise. I think people are reading a little too into what the person might or might not be feeling and that's an assumption that will cause a lot of problems and twist this into something else.

As you said, with the horse slaughter act, horses that can't be sold off, are undesirable, etc, are now suffering simply because we are not allowed to eat them. It goes the same with dogs and cats--the hundreds of millions of strays/unwanted animals in shelters where they will be euthanized or dying on the street or even locked in someone's basement. Where is their justice? So what do you do? How does anyone solve this problem?

Of course it's easier to say then just don't breed them but in practice it won't ever stop.

When I said humane, I mean generally as a whole on HOW an animal is euthanized. Not whether the entire issue is ethical or not.

Yup, it's done in practice with other animals, but I find it contradictory to turn a blind eye on that and only choose the sides of the coins we want to see. We seem to think, to some degree at least, if the animal is usually used for food it's alright (but isn't in some cases, like the goats.) We feel less guilty because we think they had an original purpose--but there is little difference in technicality.

There are always exceptions and I see no reason to have anyone say whether what he's doing is "right" or "wrong" when there is no such line to begin with.

We as people place a lot of value on the fact our actions don't make us monsters, our reasons do. But when it comes down to it, the consequences end up being the same.

[West Coast Jungle]

To me beauty is in the eyes of the beholder. I know people with normals that care more for their snakes then folks with double/triple co-doms. Why? One is a pet and the other is a $.

The assumption that what does not have value to one also does not have value to others is not necessarily correct and the flaw (IMO) with the OPs perspective.

There will always be animals in captivity that are not cared for correctly. That is just a fact of life. You must also remember in their natural setting 80-90%(generous %) of these animals will starve, suffer, die and never make it to adulthood, that is also a fact of life, nature is giving them that chance and you are not even though the odds in captivity are much more in their favor.

Assuming in captivity they will suffer needlessly so kill it first is assuming quite alot (and something you cant take back). In my opinion they are much better served giving them the opportunity then culling then based on what you assume is a pre-destined fate.

I started keeping reptiles when I was just a boy in the 1970's. Back then husbandry knowledge was horrible and yes many animals died and suffered but looking back at the big picture, we learned ALOT from those mistakes. Today husbandry knowledge is WAY better, we share that knowledge online and the hobby has grown 100 fold. So what some may have percieved as senseless suffering of these poor animals in the long run was actually their salvation and a blessing to an exponetially larger amount of animals then anyone would ever have imagined.

Dont assume fate, create it!

[ShawnC]

He feeds some off, but overall anything that is not pretty and does not get fed off is just killed uselessly.

As far as it being humane, I don't believe it was stated how the OP culls off animals that aren't fed.

I have 5 mins from home to post this, then I won't be back for a while.

Please dont' mis-state what I said. When I choose to cull something, it gets fed to my Monitors lizard...A Blackthroat, or it gets fed to an arrowanna. Everything that I decide is just better to cull is used as food in my snake room. The end. I don't just stomp on things heads when i deem them useless. They have a purpose in the circle of life. Their purpose just isn't to be sold to the masses for cheap. As tends to happen, people are reading into what I am saying, but not reading WHAT I am saying.

S~

[Eventide]

I can see several different sides of this, though I agree with what most people are saying here.

Feeding snakes to other animals that eat/like to eat snakes seems fine to me. Not in the context of the OP (because they're unwanted), however. I would feel really bad about it, but that's why I'd never keep an animal that eats snakes....

I also understand the OP's argument that if something costs less, it probably isn't going to be cared as much as something that costs more. It isn't absolute--i.e. it doesn't always happen--but it's pretty common. That $300 iPhone is going to get a whole lot more protection from the rain you're running through than your $20 calculator. I would never say this is always the case, but I would say that the majority of the time, this is how people treat things. (A good example of this not always being the case is my first snake, which was a normal ball python. She is still my favorite, even though I have since paid over $500 for some of my morphs. They all get the same care no matter their price.)

Snakes and lizards are my cats and dogs. I've cried my heart out at every leopard gecko I've lost, no matter how dumb I felt for crying over a little gecko in front of my vet and everyone in the lobby. They're my family. There is no way I would ever cull a healthy, normal/ugly animal. For one, my idea of ugly is probably vastly different than anyone else's idea of ugly. Even some combo morphs I find ugly, but I'm not going to cull it just because I think it's ugly.

Also, producing "unwanted" animals (ugly, normal, whatever) is part of the hobby. If one is going to be in a hobby like this, then one needs to take full responsibility for all the little lives we create.

I've thought about this a lot ever since I decided I wanted to breed ball pythons, and here's what I came up with for dealing with the "problem" of lots of normals.

1. Selling the normals online, like the rest of my animals, increases the chance of them going to good homes. If someone is willing to spend $50 to ship a $30 male ball python, then they're probably going to take care of it. (I can also screen people I don't think will take good care of them if need be.)

2. My breeding plans include producing the fewest amount of normals possible. My first clutch will probably be a co-dom x normal, but after that, I would like to rarely (if ever) do more crosses like that. A 50% normal fraction is too high for me. If I want do reduce the amount of normals I have to sell, then I will reduce the fraction of normals I should get by crossing recessives/combos instead of base morphs crossed with normals.

[Adam_Wysocki]

It goes the same with dogs and cats--the hundreds of millions of strays/unwanted animals in shelters where they will be euthanized

Actually it's not hundreds of millions, it's about 4-5 million.

That said, I have the same problem with people who choose to kill healthy adoptable animals in shelters each year that I do with the OP.

Too many shelters are killing healthy kittens, puppies, dogs, and cats and blaming pet overpopulation and the so-called irresponsible public for doing so.

The reality is that 17 million households will bring home new dogs and/or cats next year and 4-5 million healthy dogs and cats will be killed in shelters. Killed because most shelters are only open from 9-5 when people are at work. Closed on holidays and Sundays and only open a handful of hours on Saturdays when people are available to come adopt. They have requirements for adoption that exclude many families such as fenced in yards, no apartments, all family members present before they'll adopt animals out, and fees that are sometimes on par with or higher than local breeders. Many shelters refuse to work with rescues, limit volunteer responsibilities, and run minimal foster programs if even at all. They run 1 or 2 off-site adoption events per month while at they same time they are often located in the worst parts of town or remote locations away from where people shop and commute.

The point is that animals deserve life and it's much easier to point a finger and make an excuse for giving that animal the hot needle or feeding it off to a lizard than it is to actually do the work necessary to preserve that life. Because there's no doubt about it, it takes work to not kill ... killing is the easy way out. But I believe that anything less than doing that work and ensuring 100% that those animals live versus dying for some arbitrary excuse is morally corrupt.

Blessings,

-adam

[ShawnC]

Actually it's not hundreds of millions, it's about 4-5 million.

The point is that animals deserve life and it's much easier to point a finger and make an excuse for giving that animal the hot needle or feeding it off to a lizard than it is to actually do the work necessary to preserve that life. Because there's no doubt about it, it takes work to not kill ... killing is the easy way out. But I believe that anything less than doing that work and ensuring 100% that those animals live versus dying for some arbitrary excuse is morally corrupt.

Blessings,

-adam

And for most of us as breeders, the work part comes when we take all of our undesirable animals and wholesale them in a lot to jobber for a tidy profit correct? Thats what most...not all..but most of us do with them.

Doesn't that make us alot like a puppy mill? We are the guys who are providing tons of new animals each year, when there are already more out there than thier needs to be. Thats kinda my point.

You are making it sound like we are all this noble group who makes sure our less than valuable animals find great homes...but thats not what we do. We blow them out the door, and it's no longer our problem. I think thats the part we needs to work on. We either stop breeding...which we probably wont' do because we love it, or we find other ways to deal with those offspring. I feed mine off, and I think thats a perfectly natural, ethical way to deal with it.

S~

[mechnut450]

I not read the entire topic (all the post) but I canunderstand the point in the main post ) some animals will end up dying do to the fact that asome people consider the snake a thorw away pet. The same can me said about cats and dogs. It can be a more humane to kill a snake ( mutli snakes) if the chance is htey gonig ot end up in a wholeseller price sheet for the places like petco and such that don't givea rat's rear if the snake makes it past their 7 day ganutee(spelling?? ) I should know how easy some people toss the snakes, My collection of 21 snakes I have only purchased 7 of the snakes the rest have come into my keep by people that lost interest in them.

I know that some never make it to a better provider( caregiver)and end up dying by the old farm way of a shovel to the head( sorry for the sicking image). I also get request to take in about 100 iguanas in a given year from people that no longer want them. I have found homes for some some have died in my care due to the fact they were too far gone by the time I gotten them.

I seen people that were given up their snake to me, in all kinds of shape from nice and healthy ( just lost th interest in them ) all the way ot some of the horror story we all ready about ( mutli sheds, large pool amounts (out weighting the snakes) and all kinds of other issues.

[p3titexburial]

Unfortunately though, not everyone wants a shelter animal and an older one at that--including the fact that many of those 4-5 mil (whoops, I was going with hundreds of thousands and realized that was wrong and put in million. Brain fart.) will be grown animals--the ones that aren't adopted (or euthanized) will add onto the next year and the next year and so on. What happens then?

I'd prefer they screen potential owners as well. I do agree that yes, while killing is the easy way out and it isn't the only way out but what about people who adopt animals without caring properly for them, where they die of neglect more than anything else? We're digressing, but the point is there's no easy solution no matter what the plan is.

Everyone has their own reasons and their own set of values, and it's really not up to us to say that anyone is sick or morally corrupt. What we think is acceptable for one thing may be taboo for someone else.