Responsible breeders, culling, and overall health (long read and questions)

[angllady2]

I am in complete agreement with you.

I do have one python which I adopted who was born without eyes. Her breeder "culled" her in a manner of speaking, and agreed to send her to me on the condition I never breed her. Now, in this instance she's only a normal and it's not tempting to breed her in the slightest. However, I do understand if she were a valuable morph, a Bee or a Pewter or something, the temptation to breed her would be great, BUT since she had clutchmates who were also born with deformities, to me that says it's highly likely to be genetic and I have no desire to produce more of any morph with deformities.

I myself would never breed a snake who had a known deformity, especially if I have reason to believe it is genetic. Even if the little eyeless girl was a quadruple co-dom, I still wouldn't run the risk of producing more babies with problems like those of her and her clutchmates.
Now, if the defect was believed to be cause by accident or improper incubation, I MIGHT under certain specific conditions, breed the snake one time to see if the defect is passed on. This is one reason why, despite the fact that spiders and their combo's are very beautiful to me, I have no desire to breed them. I simply cannot stomach the thought of being responsible for creating baby pythons who cannot live a normal life. Others may feel differently.

I can't speak for all breeders of course, but it seems to me if the breeder is responsible and wants to be respected, culling is necessary. Like you say, this does not have to mean death, but doing the utmost to ensure that the animal in question is never bred.

If I had a seemingly normal animal that produced flawed offspring in a clutch, I would in good conscience go through two clutches. If both clutches showed a tendency toward defects, I would not continue to breed that particular pair. I might under certain circumstances attempt to pinpoint the cause by breeding the two snakes to different mates to see if the source can be found, or I might just stop breeding both to be sure of no more difficulties.

Gale