Interesting thread, I haven't read the whole thread yet so please excuse me if this has been covered already. My question is where do you draw the line?

Should I freeze this one? She seems healthy and active but she's missing an eye. Eyes on snakes are overrated so it probably shouldn't cause her any problems though I'll never be able to sell her.



Should I have tried to save this one? It was born alive, had no eyes, a deformed jaw, and quite a bit of kinking and had the belly attached back to itself in a few places. I snapped some pics and put it in the freezer.



How about this one? It's a normal male from one of my dinking around projects. This guy has some head rub from trying to test the limits of his shoe box. It'll likely disappear after several sheds, but it's going to make it very difficult to sell even though he eats well and has a great calm yet inquisitive personality. There are plenty of breeders that will stick healthy normal males in the freezer as a matter of course just because they're harder to sell and you can't make any money off of them so why waste the resources?



So what do you euthanize? What are the criteria and who makes the decisions? I'm also very active in the local reptile adoption program through our herp society. We have ball pythons coming in every month, and fortunately we've been able to find homes for all of them, but there are other species like green iguanas and Burmese pythons where we HAVE had to put down some individuals because we were not able to place them after many months. I can foresee a time where that may become necessary for ball pythons too.