Morals and ethics of snake as feeders (what do you do with your normal spin-off)

[Skyrivers]

Now that would be disastrous for our hobby. It would spread like wildfire through social media.

I agree but is it unethical compared to throwing them away?

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[Alter-Echo]

Now that would be disastrous for our hobby. It would spread like wildfire through social media.

It's happened a few times, thankfully other than pissing off a lot of people not much became of it, but the way the current social climate is, it I wouldn't want it to happen to many more times.

[Reinz]

(oops, forgot to add Skyrivers post #31. Don’t know how to add after the fact)

Try convincing millions of animal lovers that.

‘Many people tend to get very emotional about animals with fur yet have a “could care less” attitude toward reptiles. Now combine those two attitudes to reptiles eating fur babies and all common sense is thrown out the window.

[AbsoluteApril]

Just going to share some links so this thread doesn't turn into specifically about euthanasia but I thought it should be brought up:

Actually it's not humane to freeze any animal to death, if an animal rights group catches you they can confiscate all your animals, I've seen articles about it. If you want to euthanize a snake it's best to use CO2 until you knock them out, then decapitate them (CO2 won't kill them, just put them to sleep).

debatable.
Another thread from 2016 with the same topic: https://ball-pythons.net/forums/show...ormal-Spinoff)

Lots to read on this subject if people want to learn more:
https://www.sciencedaily.com/release...cienceDaily%29

https://www.avma.org/KB/Policies/Doc...euthanasia.pdf

http://bio.biologists.org/content/ea.../18/bio.012179


https://academic.oup.com/bioscience/...7/1/53/2641243


https://www.awrc.org.au/uploads/5/8/...3/simpson2.pdf


https://staff.unimelb.edu.au/__data/...iles-FINAL.pdf

[Skyrivers]

(oops, forgot to add Skyrivers post #31. Don’t know how to add after the fact)

Try convincing millions of animal lovers that.

‘Many people tend to get very emotional about animals with fur yet have a “could care less” attitude toward reptiles. Now combine those two attitudes to reptiles eating fur babies and all common sense is thrown out the window.

I agree. Guess we need to leave cannibalism off the list?

[bcr229]

Its the same with horses. I would NEVER eat horse meat unless it was from a horse that was raised for slaughter. Its not just that I love horses, but I know what goes into a horse on regular basis. Horse people are crazy when it comes to going above and beyond to make their animal comfortable. There are many drugs and pesticides given regularly to any horse. Not to mention the many meds and shots they are on, for various problems and issues.

Yep. Horse meat is excellent but you do not want meat from a show horse, racehorse, etc. because they are pumped to the gills with wormers and medications to keep them going.

Easter was just a few days ago. More than a few bunnies bought for the holiday as pets are going to end up snake food after the kids lose interest.

[Spiritserpents]

I actually have another really old snake, it's hard to get it to eat and it looks like it has really bad arthritis. I won't put her down until she starts falling apart though, poor snake.

As a vet tech, let me say that your snake is likely already falling apart. If it is not wanting to eat and appears to have arthritis, your snake is probably sick and in pain and it's might kinder to euthanise now than let it fail on is own.

[Pengil]

In my opinion, I would rather unwanted snakes be fed to other snakes as opposed to being neglected or abused. Some snakes are just naturally built to eat other snakes, and so long as the food snakes are treated humanely and euthed humanely if they're not being fed live, I see no problem with it.

If I ever ended up breeding snakes and ended up with normals though, I would probably end up keeping them forever unless I could find them good homes, simply due to personal attachment to them. I would be a terrible farmer or feeder breeder for the same reason.

[artgecko]

This is a very interesting topic to me. In my research for breeding (my plans are to start with a couple clutches in about 2-3 years), I have read many accounts of people keeping snake-eating snakes or other reptiles (tegu / monitors) to dispose of their still borns, dud eggs, or severely deformed hatchlings. I actually began looking into this as I would like a humane way to dispose of animals that needed to be euthanized, without having to crush their skull. I had read that some people keep the same animals and also feed normal hatchlings to them as well.

Honestly, I'd feel better about giving a snake a humane death with a good use / purpose (feeding them off) then selling to a re-seller wholesale... That said, I'm assuming that if you are breeding in enough quantity to be able to wholesale to someone, then you have high expenses to cover and any amount of money you could get would help, so I won't judge lol.

Personally, I think my game plan is to breed so that I do not produce any normals (recessive x recessive).

I think normals are still great animals, but as others have noted, the market is just so crowded and it is hard to convince someone to buy a normal when they can have a "prettier" morph easily.

[OhhWatALoser]

Can someone tell me what breeders cull any perfectly healthy snake. I see it brought up all the time but never have actually heard of anyone admit doing this, yet it seems to be common knowledge "breeders" do this all the time. If your small time like me, normals go fast at shows, few meals in em and an easy 20 bucks. Any large breeder I've talked to, wholesales them out to stores or anyone looking for big quantities. Again easy money. It seems illogical to cull a healthy animal even purely thinking of the money.