The (Drama FREE) Desert Thread. A different Perspective.

[wolfy-hound]

Personally I doubt many breeders would be intentionally selling sterile females. Aside from that, the price on a female desert is whatever the seller wants for it. If you want to buy a desert female for $10K and believe she won't be sterile, then you could be one of the few in two years produceing whatever the super form is... or combos with your female. Or you could bum out and it might be sterile.

If you think $10K is too much, then don't buy one. If it's proven that desert females are sterile, then in a couple years, they'll be basically worthless and might be sold for pet prices($100-200 maybe?) and you can snap up one to stare at because they're awesome cool colors.

If a breeder guarantees that HIS desert female will produce eggs, and you buy it... then you can go back and get whatever restitution when/if it doesn't produce. Otherwise, you're taking your chances with a fairly new morph just like everyone else. NERD thought there would be a "super" form of spider when they first got spider balls in, and they turned out to be wrong. So why assume that all the breeders who are trying to work with desert are deliberately concealing information, just because we aren't being told what we'd like?

Also, there is not a declaration that all breeders must give up information on their breeding projects. It's super wonderful that most breeders are extremely candid about what they are breeding and what the genetics of any given morph does/should do/is doing. But it's not as if that's required by law. Even Ralph Davis has his "Classified" projects that he doesn't inform us about, right? And he's one of the best about talking about what morphs do what, and has always seemed very honest about issues(kinking in caramels for instance).

Getting all worked up over what a single fairly new morph is or is not capable of at this time is a bit silly. If most desert females turn out to be sterile, then that'll be sad, but ball genetics is not some ironclad guarentee that you'll get what you want from breeding it later on.

I saw that Robyn from SYR said he knows of a couple breeders who have gotten reliable clutches from their desert females. As far as I'm concerned, at least some desert females are not sterile, since I trust Robyn to be telling the truth as he knows it.

**the $10K price was a random amount chosen for no particular reason, no guarentee of desert females being available for $10K or bringing $10K is being implied. Contents may have settled in shipping but are measured by weight, not volume.