So, I have been out of ball pythons for nearly 15 years and recently came back for some egg hatching fun. In recent months I have taken myself off all boa related facebook pages (I am primarily a CA boa guy), but have joined a couple of ball python ones for fun. Yesterday I saw one of the most concerning posts I have seen in a long time, and one that really epitomized the ball python hobby I feel. It was a clutch or two of eggs from a morph, and a note to state that that they were waiting on 5 more females to lay that had all been bred by that male. That morph was nothing special. Nice, but not a multiple thousand dollar animal, yet it was slammed to everything they could put it to. Looking at the sales being made at shows and looking at peoples tables, I find that mentality really epitomizes the hobby right now - Breed what you have to absolutely everything you have. Make as many babies as possible, sell a few, struggle to sell the rest, drop the price, complain that people are dropping prices on other morphs you want or invested in, repeat the following year. I personally got back into ball pythons for the fun of it. Make some select pairings that will produce cool animals that I want. Sell any surplus I make from those clutches. This is not a financial driven hobby for me. It is purely fun. I see many others sadly getting into it with dollar signs in their eyes and that is it. Sad times.
Thanks for hearing my concerns/opinions
Flaming being in 3, 2, 1, go.
Warren