Culling Healthy Animals

[ShawnC]

Sorry for the abscence, but sometimes it's good to let a thread develop a little on it's own so that it doesn't turn into a parsing match. besides...weekends are for downtime.

This discussion was started 3 years ago at another forum ,which I now own, but didn't found. The interesting thing in the Carpet Python hobby right now is there are several new morphs. The problem with morphs, is that peole want to combine them, and in carpet pythons...they occure in different subspecies: Here is an example

Jaguar: Coastal
Zebra: Jungle
Granite: Irian Jaya
Caramel: Coastal
Tiger: Coastal
Striped: Bredli
Albino: Darwin
Axanthic: Coastal
I am sure i am forgeting 1 or two, but you get the idea.

Althought these are all carpet pythons...they are all distinct subspecies (although the arguement can, and has been made, that thay should not be, as they are not distinct enough, with the exception of Bredli)

So the problem arises when you combine these animals, you have "normal" appearing offsping as well. Spining these off to the public, labels correectly or not, muddies the gene pool for those looking for "pure" animals.

Hence, what happens is, later in their lives if they live that long, you see big, brown, obvious hybrid carpet pythons that are very, very hard to find homes for.

This is a problem that is almost unique to Carpets right now, as the morph craze has bled over into carpet pythons. As a hobbiest who see's the value on both sides (I really do enjoy crossing morphs to see what will be created) I have to spin off hybrid or "Mutt" offspring ass well. This means I am part of the problem of muddying up the gene pool when i create these. I used to just sell them off as what they were, but have learned personally, that this just doesn't work, as it's REALLY bad for the captive gene pool of carpets (which is already really messed up BTW) because many are just sold as a "jungle" or a "coastal" when they want to resell them, which is inaccurate...and sucks if you are a purist.

As we spin off lots of these siblings (remember, carpets can have up to 40 eggs per clutch, depending on the subspecies) they can do lots of damage, and may, if not most of them will have lives that will end badly (again, IMHO).

I tried to adapt this arguement for ball pythons since this is a Ball Python forum. You guys have no problems with hybridization, but you produce a TON of normals. I wondered if any of you thought along the lines that I do, that it may be better to just cull some of your offpsring. Resoundingly with you guys, that answer is no, but you respect my choice to do what I want as an idividual. No matter how well I tried to play devil's advocate. 8-) I suspect that many of you are pet owners, and have not yet crossed into the realm of breeding lots of babies, but when you do, it does create its own set of ethical challenges, and I thought it would be interesting to hear what you all thought. I have bee challenged by the position that I put myself in, and I am trying my best to do what I feel is right for my animals and my hobby daily.

Thank you all for allowing this discussion, and thanks to those of you who have been respectful in your questions and answers. All posts like this are intended for is to discuss things that may, or may not, be completely popular with everyone, and see what sorts of ideas can come from it, and see if any solutions can be suggested, if anyone has one?

Lastly, I want to say that, I am in the minority of Carpet People. Like most of you, most of the carpet python community, even if they agree that we have a problem, don't have the heart to cull a healthy animal, even if it's a hybrid. In truth, I don't either, which is why I started to feed them to something else. It's a more comgfortable solution to me than just freezing them, and just makes it "acceptable" to me on some level, though I don't like it.

Anyway thanks again for the input guys, and thanks forum Admins for allowing the discussion. It's nearly taboo on my own forums as well, but one that every year or so comes up, and always ends with an extremely interesting discussion. I am not one to block free speech on a topic just because it's uncomfotable.

I'll go back to lurking now.

S~