Breeding Standards

[JodanOrNoDan]

The problem here is the if you sell a $300 snake at $250 then I mark mine at $200 someone else does$175.so you go $150 Now that becomes the standard price everyone starts using because someone sold one. so we have essentially cut the value in half in a few days. The price will not go back up because of the amount of people producing the same morph. It will only go down more. And this is why a exemplary example of a pastel can be bought for next to nothing. Too many people looking for the cheapest snake instead of the best example. And too many breeders willing to sell for whatever they can get. This is why I only have exceptional examples of the morphs I want to breed. And all lower quality animal will be found pet homes not sold to someone looking to breed

Yes. This is the "problem". Any fool can breed ball pythons and stuff ends up being bred that probably should not. The buyer also has a lot to do with this. I have found when the seller turns into the buyer their principles tend to change. I talk a hard line about free market, but privately I have principles. You can correlate the undercutters to Walmart. Anyone that has studied economics or runs a business knows that the way Walmart does business is detrimental to everyone but Walmart. I refuse to shop there on principle. I will go pay more somewhere else. There are not many people that will voluntarily pay more for anything. In reality how many people know a quality snake from a non quality snake? Most of even the most experienced among us cannot even tell certain combos apart. I include myself in this. Compound that with quality is individual taste when buying something on solely how it looks.

If you want to keep prices at a reasonable rates, you cannot price fix. What can be done has not been done. A quality gauge must be established that everyone can agree on. Accurate descriptions must be created for every morph and the definition of a perfect example must be written so that a quality gauge can be established for an individual animal. This would be a very difficult task in itself. Getting breeders to agree and participate would be even more difficult. Kinda like herding cats I imagine. I know this system works. I offer to create the infrastructure and coordinate it. How many want to participate? I am betting not many if any. I would bet Brian, Kevin and the other biggies would want nothing to do with this because they are used to controlling the market. Anyone want to go head to head with them? Most probably not.

Long story short, don't complain, fix, otherwise we are all just Walmart shoppers.

[Eric Alan]

If you want to keep prices at a reasonable rates, you cannot price fix. What can be done has not been done. A quality gauge must be established that everyone can agree on. Accurate descriptions must be created for every morph and the definition of a perfect example must be written so that a quality gauge can be established for an individual animal. This would be a very difficult task in itself. Getting breeders to agree and participate would be even more difficult. Kinda like herding cats I imagine. I know this system works. I offer to create the infrastructure and coordinate it. How many want to participate? I am betting not many if any. I would bet Brian, Kevin and the other biggies would want nothing to do with this because they are used to controlling the market. Anyone want to go head to head with them? Most probably not.

I'm very curious about this. How do you propose to put a quality gauge on living works of art? It's hard enough putting quality gauges on non-living art pieces!

[Unknown Subscriber]

I'm very curious about this. How do you propose to put a quality gauge on living works of art? It's hard enough putting quality gauges on non-living art pieces!

I agree. It's just like pieds. They are high priced. In demand. Everyone likes them. Personally the patchwork scales of the pied are very unappealing to me. Some people look at the snakes and the pale muted colors appeal to them so they will pay more for those. Some people look at the snakes and want the bold lines and bright poppin colors so will pay more for these. It's hard to gauge something when everyone is holding a different meter.

[Lizardlicks]

Why does it need to scale, though? We aren't talking about a snuggie or some other easily mass produced consumable. The market for animals is a different beast than the one for a factory produced product that you want to put in every house hold. I feel trying to apply the same principles is an error. Observe: as mention in a different thread, the demand of the ball python pet trade is such that even with as many animals as we produce and put on the market, suppliers still import wild caught or captive hatched wild gathered animals to meet that need. AND YET the practice of under cutting has rapidly devalued many morphs. Spider and pinstripe in particular are still wildly popular and sought out as pets, but they are nearly the same price as a breeding weight normal in direct opposition to the demand.

Now look at other animal producers outside of the reptile hobby. Dogs for example. Sure, anybody can throw out a puppy with words like OFA certification and AKC registration for $5-600 and get a buyer, but someone who selects for quality and health, and takes care of their reputation can get $1500 for the same breed of dog without any effort, often with sold out waiting lists, and no need to undercut because they put out the better product and producing the same size litters, for the same number of litters a year. In the end, you can run your business how you want to, but if you can get a better price for your animals by being patient and persistent and giving attention to detail, wouldn't that make more sense?

[JodanOrNoDan]

I'm very curious about this. How do you propose to put a quality gauge on living works of art? It's hard enough putting quality gauges on non-living art pieces!

Eric, if you are really interested, I will attempt to put my jumbled thought processes into something coherent. I do not pretend to have all the answers by any means, I also am not by any means the most experienced person with these animals on this board, and everything would be up for productive discussion. What I do know for sure is that this has been done before. In my business there are known patterns to apply to problems. This is not a new problem therefore there is an existing pattern to solve it even if it requires a little tweaking.

[Lizardlicks]

I definitely agree on creating a quality standard though. Nearly every pet trade hobby has an association of breeders and a breed standard. While we don't have breeds, we do have morphs, and you might not be able to ascribe a value judgement to an animal based one whether someone likes it or not - as pointed out, some people like different things, and to return to the dog allegory for a second, I love a well bred, straight-back German Shepard and loathe toy breeds - it may be reasonably doable to create a morph standard based on traits that morph should have. It could possibly revitalized interest in single gene morphs even, if breeder start a focus on selecting one or two single gene morphs to improve the quality of.

[JodanOrNoDan]

I agree. It's just like pieds. They are high priced. In demand. Everyone likes them. Personally the patchwork scales of the pied are very unappealing to me. Some people look at the snakes and the pale muted colors appeal to them so they will pay more for those. Some people look at the snakes and want the bold lines and bright poppin colors so will pay more for these. It's hard to gauge something when everyone is holding a different meter.

I don't care for pieds either. I don't like hypos. That doesn't matter in order to rate them. I, unlike most men I know, do not have a facination with blondes. I prefer asians. This does not keep me from rating Bo Derek as a perfect 10 even if I am personally not interested. I picked her as an example because I actually physically ran right into her at a horse show. Nice lady. LOL

[Zincubus]

I agree. It's just like pieds. They are high priced. In demand. Everyone likes them. Personally the patchwork scales of the pied are very unappealing to me. Some people look at the snakes and the pale muted colors appeal to them so they will pay more for those. Some people look at the snakes and want the bold lines and bright poppin colors so will pay more for these. It's hard to gauge something when everyone is holding a different meter.

It's a minefield really . So many of the popular new faded ( ghost ?) morphs leave me cold as they just look like normals in the shed mode !?

[JodanOrNoDan]

I definitely agree on creating a quality standard though. Nearly every pet trade hobby has an association of breeders and a breed standard. While we don't have breeds, we do have morphs, and you might not be able to ascribe a value judgement to an animal based one whether someone likes it or not - as pointed out, some people like different things, and to return to the dog allegory for a second, I love a well bred, straight-back German Shepard and loathe toy breeds - it may be reasonably doable to create a morph standard based on traits that morph should have. It could possibly revitalized interest in single gene morphs even, if breeder start a focus on selecting one or two single gene morphs to improve the quality of.

This is exactly the mindset I believe required to accomplish something like this. You are very, very close to where I am in thought on this matter.

[Kcl]

To be fair, there are these types of evaluations for all types of animals - dog shows, rat shows, mouse shows, chinchilla shows, cat shows etc. All breeds and 'morphs' of these animals do have specific written standards they are evaluated against and the 'best' one gets the prize.

Now is this a good thing? It's been both good and bad for many of these species. Some of the breeding for these standards have improved the quality and then some have introduced and increased some very serious genetic health problems. Overall I personally wouldn't be thrilled to have the same thing for snakes. But it's certainly possible to do. Each morph very much could have a written description of the generally desired traits. It won't be to everyone's preference, but the same is true for all the other animals that have these standards.

E.g. Pastels: must be bright with no browning out and distinct 'flames' Pieds: must have 60-75% white and good contrast BELs: must be as clean white as possible with no yellowing or browning

Overall I don't have the same kind of strong feeling about morphs in general as many people and was actually originally looking for a normal for my first. I like some of the morphs and would consider getting something like a BEL some day, but it's not that important to me. But if you look at the example of many other animals for how do you get a higher price for the "same" snake, the easiest answer looks like establishing a show circuit. The other, less simple answer, is more educated buyers. Ribbons are more concrete and easier for people to understand than pastel vs lemon pastel vs citrus pastel or what have you. Basically all of the dogs that are going from sold out waiting lists are from breeders that show their dogs, or have show dog lines. I believe it's difficult to establish credibility as a breeder from outside the show circuit entirely and understandably so.