Should there be a debate about captive bread vs. Wild caught?

[Bruce Whitehead]

How has no one pointed this out? Haha. A 16 foot argie? I find that impossible to believe. A 10 foot argie is huge for the species, let alone 16 feet.

I read that and the part about lots of research... and thought, o'tay?

Bruce

[Samara]

Most of you seem like your Breeders
The Boa’s in Question are in Argentina. My Wife is father owns these snakes and they are well above the 7-9 feet like the fact sheet says they are. I will be more than willing to upload photo’s to show these snake are between 12-16 feet long. The facts sheets are not always correct. In fact they give you estimates of normal sizes. The norm size for a grown human adult in Argentina is 5’8 ½ while there are grown adults that stand over 7 feet tall. So you can take your facts sheet and shove it.

How to get Salmonella
People become infected with salmonella by swallowing the bacterium. This can happen from eating contaminated food that has not been completely cooked, or has been contaminated after preparation. Salmonella can also be spread from person to person when an infected individual does not thoroughly wash his or her hands after using the toilet. Health care providers and food handlers who are infected with salmonella can contaminate food during preparation, or while feeding a patient, if their hands have not been washed thoroughly.
(Putting a pet python you your mouth is no different than eating out, yes I may increase chances although it is my risk I take with my PET… )


To redstormlex

I am not a breeder or a hobbyist. I do not plan to become a small business or playing with the pythons DNA by making new morphs. Snake in the wild may not live together but they do have interaction with each other. Putting them in the same cage does not harm them and yes they like being together, I am sure most of you cannot understand that.

Sahara stays in the water because she enjoys it. We have a 55 gallon tank one side is always 93-95 and the other side of the tank is about 85 degree’s which is where the water , and one of 2 hide boxes are located. She has her choices of where to go. Samara hardly ever goes in the water…

I appreciate your concern about my health. I do not see this a bash, I see this as us having 2 different opinions.

[mainbutter]

It amazes me that people are never willing to even consider the possibility that they might be wrong.

[rabernet]

Most of you seem like your Breeders

I'm not sure what your point is? But most of the membership here are not breeders, they are pet owners just like you.

Does being a breeder somehow de-legitimize our comments? Or perhaps we have far more experience with a larger control group of behaviors?

For what it's worth, I have both captive hatched (what you called WC) and captive bred animals. There's no discernable difference in behavior between the two. I've got a few CH that are smaller at the same age as some of my CBB and vice versa.

I don't breed on a large enough level that it really matters to me if the average pet owner buys from me or a pet store. What does matter to me as someone passionate about these animals is that someone get a great pet and that this site is here to help them accomplish caring for their animals successfully so that they can get to know and love their animals as I do mine.

I still want to know WHY you put your snake's head in your mouth.

[redstormlax12]

Most of you seem like your Breeders
The Boa’s in Question are in Argentina. My Wife is father owns these snakes and they are well above the 7-9 feet like the fact sheet says they are. I will be more than willing to upload photo’s to show these snake are between 12-16 feet long. The facts sheets are not always correct. In fact they give you estimates of normal sizes. The norm size for a grown human adult in Argentina is 5’8 ½ while there are grown adults that stand over 7 feet tall. So you can take your facts sheet and shove it.

How to get Salmonella
People become infected with salmonella by swallowing the bacterium. This can happen from eating contaminated food that has not been completely cooked, or has been contaminated after preparation. Salmonella can also be spread from person to person when an infected individual does not thoroughly wash his or her hands after using the toilet. Health care providers and food handlers who are infected with salmonella can contaminate food during preparation, or while feeding a patient, if their hands have not been washed thoroughly.
(Putting a pet python you your mouth is no different than eating out, yes I may increase chances although it is my risk I take with my PET… )


To redstormlex

I am not a breeder or a hobbyist. I do not plan to become a small business or playing with the pythons DNA by making new morphs. Snake in the wild may not live together but they do have interaction with each other. Putting them in the same cage does not harm them and yes they like being together, I am sure most of you cannot understand that.

Sahara stays in the water because she enjoys it. We have a 55 gallon tank one side is always 93-95 and the other side of the tank is about 85 degree’s which is where the water , and one of 2 hide boxes are located. She has her choices of where to go. Samara hardly ever goes in the water…

I appreciate your concern about my health. I do not see this a bash, I see this as us having 2 different opinions

Again, so many things to comment on.

First, my information is not from just fact sheets for argies. I have owned an argie and have talked with many hobbyist and breeders that own argies. A 16 foot argie is unprecidented. Let alone 5. If they are this big it sounds like a case of over feeding. Id love to see pictures of these boas.

Now about contracting salmonella. Eating anything you run the risk of contracting some illness. But do you know why we eat? To survive. We dont need to have our herps bodies in our mouths, especially when many of them will sit in their own fecal matter or urine and urates.

Just do a search on parasites that our herps carry. Even a perfectly healthy herp can harbor dormant parasites that could possibly kill you.

And you are a hobbyist. You've joined the hobby of keeping reptiles. Whether you have 1 or 1000 your in the hobby. You make it seem like breeders who are creating new morphs are playing with genes in a bad way. These tweeks are naturally occuring. We dont feed them anything, inject anything, or do any kind of splicing to create these morphs. These morphs are there in the underlying genes.

Keeping them in the same cage can harm them! Have they been properly sexed? Do you know for sure you have 2 females? Having a male and female constantly together can have ill-effects on the female.

They do not enjoy being together. They are not social animals! Im sorry but you are completely wrong on this matter. How can you tell they enjoy it? Snuggling? Cuddling? If this is what you see, then thats competition to thermoregulate and can again have ill-effects on the snakes.

We can't understand that they enjoy being together? Why not?

Im disagreeing with it because science tells us that they dont enjoy it. I am not claiming there is any study, but the higher brain function in ball pythons is nothing compared to most mammals. They act on instinct, they do not respond to pleasure.

Now to your husbandry. Why so hot? 95 for basking is pretty high, especially when they have nowhere to cool down. Your cool side is 85? With a 95 hot side it should be 78-80. Your one is probaly in the water bowl all the time because she is trying to cool off. Also how are you measuring your temps, and how are you acheiving the temps? Glass aquariums are the worst enclosures to achieve proper husbandry in. Glass does not keep in the heat, and without cover on the top such as tinfoil or plastic wrap humidity goes out the door. How many hides do you have in the enclosure? With two snakes I would recommend 4-6 hides. And with two adult females, a 55 gallon is very small. Most hobbyist and breeders keep adult females in tubs or a cages around 3 feet long by 2 feet wide. I know a 55 gallon is no where close to that. Two females should be in a 4x2 at least.

Thats all I can think of for now. I hope you slightly change your husbandry for the sake of your herps.

[Oxylepy]

It amazes me that people are never willing to even consider the possibility that they might be wrong.

It's a group of people that Bertrand Russel describes as the "instinctive men" in "The Value of Philosophy." They only accept ideas that strengthen their own views and reject anything that goes against what they believe. As people get older, it seems, a lot of us become "instinctive" and are unwilling to accept new thoughts that go against our habitually defined beliefs. It takes a lot of effort to remind yourself that you may be wrong and to accept criticism from others.

However I believe both sides in this argument are acting dogmatically about their views, both sides are currently butting heads and neither seems willing to accept that this is currently working for the other group or that the other group isnt going to give in to their own views.

I think everyone needs to just back down and agree to disagree (even if you walk away thinking the other party is idiotic) as long as we all just step down and walk away, this isnt an argument that either side will win.

[Kyle@theHeathertoft]

Apologies if this rapidly becomes tl;dr, there is so much I wish to respond to.

When we have captive break pythons they have a weaker immune system and a higher risk of inbreeding. While wild caught pythons are less likely to be inbreeded and they have a stronger immune system.

Funny, but from the limited number of wild caught/captive hatched snakes versus captive bred snakes I've known, the opposite is true. I had a wild caught snake in college, and the poor thing arrived massively dehydrated and totally infested with those awful flat-bodied reptile ticks. He also had mites from being housed with infested animals. Later on, he required regular de-worming for a recurring issue of internal parasites. I have probably spent more on his vet care in the three years I owned him (before finally selling him) than I have in the last year with ALL OF MY CONSTRICTORS COMBINED, all of whom might I add are bred by reputable breeders.

Secondly, why is inbreeding a problem? Inbreeding and linebreeding do not cause issues...they merely accentuate the traits of the animal(s) in question. If the animal has a recessive or minor flaw, the flaw becomes much greater and in starker contrast in the offspring...whereas if the animal is really spectacular somehow, it accentuates all those good traits in the offspring. Crappy breeders who don't know how to cull their breeding stock perpetuate the myth than inbreeding somehow harms animals. In fact, well-used, inbreeding/linebreeding can create a strain of utterly perfect animals.

My wild caught python will let me cover her head and put her head in my mouth.

And here I thought I was a risk-taker by allowing my constrictors to sit on my shoulders or even coil around my neck. HOLY CRAP. Why would you DO that??? Cuteness factor versus SALMONELLA, dude. I don't care if your pythons look like legless persian kittens, no ammount of cute would ever get my snakes near much less IN my mouth!!!!

The Wild caught will never miss a meal while my captive breed is very picky.

My wild caught python was a terrible eater. He would prey-reject for MONTHS ON END and then he'd only eat, say...a single live mouse, never pre-killed or f/t, and if it was a mouse of the wrong colour (seriously, he wouldn't touch tan mice, only brown or white!) he'd ignore it. One mouse every few months for a three-and-a-half foot long python is not enough, and I hated feeding live. Everyone I've known who has wild caught OR captive hatched had the same kind of issues.

In contrast, all my pythons I own now are bred by responsible breeders (on that note, I can't say enough good things about Russ Lawson's snakes!) and ALL of them are great eaters, they all eat f/t and they eat with a will. All I have to do is show them a mouse or rat (depending on the size of the snake of course) and they go nuts, strike-constrict-NOM. They are all at such a nicer weight than my wild boy EVER was, too. Not too fat but nice and chunky like a real Ball should be.

P.S. Why would you want to put your snakes head in your mouth??? You know they eats rats with that mouth right?

................dang, I hadn't even been thinking about that. EW. Salmonella + rat = VILE.

These are not social creatures and when people think they are "cuddling" or "snuggling" they are actually competing for the same spot to thermoregulate.

Far too many people anthropomorphosize their pets, assigning them emotions and thoughts they never actually have. People see them "cuddling" and since humans like and need close physical contact once in a while, we assume our snakes do too. Unless of course we have the ability to research the specifics of the species we're keeping and realize they are not social animals and not actually "cuddling" at all.

Putting them in the same cage does not harm them

Constant stress can drop an animal's immune system. It can also lead to prey rejection and if one snake gets too pushy, they can indeed harm each other. Just because they haven't been too overly harmed YET doesn't mean it isn't a potential disaster.

Glass aquariums are the worst enclosures to achieve proper husbandry in. Glass does not keep in the heat, and without cover on the top such as tinfoil or plastic wrap humidity goes out the door.

AMEN. I switched to tubs and have never looked back. No more stuck sheds from fluctuating humidity, no more temperature gradients beyond stupidity, and sooooooo so so much easier to clean. The latter is especially nice since one of my pythons like to turn his tub into a poo-smeared swamp on a regular basis.

I think everyone needs to just back down and agree to disagree (even if you walk away thinking the other party is idiotic) as long as we all just step down and walk away, this isnt an argument that either side will win.

Ironically I haven't seen much open hostility or name-calling, or anything over-the-top...unless you count the rather understandable tide of "OMG SNAKES IN YOUR MOUTH???? ". Which...yeah, okay, that's just vile. Sorry.