Culling Healthy Animals

[WingedWolfPsion]

Ok, I had a very good point here, but it was apparently lost in the noise. I'll try again.

Ball pythons are BEING IMPORTED INTO THE US IN HUGE NUMBERS. Every year. Most of them are captive-hatched babies, but you get some wild caught animals coming in as well.

The above WILL NOT change if breeders produce fewer normals. In fact, imports will naturally increase, as the value of those imports will increase, because the current demand is more than enough to account for the supply.

People like ball pythons. People routinely pay between 60 to 80 bucks for a normal male ball python, to a pet store. That ball python is usually an imported CH snake. Perhaps from where you are standing, 60 bucks is a disposable amount of money, but I think it's actually a fair chunk of pocket change, and the average person will not deliberately allow harm to come to an animal with a price tag that high. The fact these animals sell for $8 apiece wholesale doesn't mean that's what they retail for!

An increase in the production of captive bred snakes in the US MAY mean a reduction in the number of imports, as it becomes less financially sound to import them. The only way to reduce the number of imports is to make ball pythons plentifully available in the US for those who want them. Captive bred animals are generally healthier and fare better than CH babies do. By increasing the supply of CBB babies, we may be leaving more ball pythons in the wild--one can hope. If you decrease that supply, more balls will most certainly be yanked from the wild, because this entire business follows the law of supply and demand. It doesn't matter if YOU think there are too many low-priced balls on the market--the market clearly disagrees!

Yes, I do sell my normal males to the pet trade. I'll probably even wind up selling some normal females to the pet trade, eventually. I consider doing so to be beneficial to the hobby (as more people who want pets get healthy snakes rather than parasitized wild caught ones), and beneficial to ball pythons in general (while wild populations are stable, they certainly won't stay that way if they pull more of them from the wild to meet an increasing demand).

Do some people mistreat animals? Yes. Should people be prevented from having animals because some of them MIGHT mistreat them? That's exactly the mentality our hobby is battling at the moment! The right to NOT be lumped in with people who commit crimes. The solution is education, not banning, not restricting supply/access.

Those who are just starting out should have a good experience, buying an animal that is already healthy and doesn't require more than a routine checkup rather than meds and intensive care. Sick parasite-ridden animals in pet stores hurt our hobby. They make the entire industry look cruel. We should do all we can to make imports obsolete.

So, please address THIS argument--I have explained why NOT selling normal males is BAD for ball pythons, and BAD for the hobby.