Desert Morph, what are your thoughts?

[Brandon Osborne]

I love desert combos, and if you really like the look of them I don't see why it would be an issue. A lot of people are coming to terms with the fact that females are going to be "pet only" animals, but the pricing doesn't reflect it yet. You can still sell your males, and you get some pretty awesome looking snakes period

Although I love the combos Deserts make, the problem lies when the combos become indistinguishable and we are left guessing what things are. I personally think Deserts are extremely overpriced considering the maternal issues they present. Females should be $50 normals in my opinion. I'm not trying to discredit those breeding or selling them by saying so, but the evidence shows females cannot reproduce. I would be upset if down the road I picked up a nice combo female that turned out to have the desert gene in the mix.

[OhhWatALoser]

I would love to be able to look at it like this, and I do hope that down the road I feel comfortable adding a desert project. Right now, I just don't trust that the females I produced would remain pets, and not bred due to ignorance or "just to see what happens."

Moreover, I could even try to take your argument one step further and posit that the infertility of females could eventually be a good thing for the project, keeping numbers down as only 1/4 of all offspring from a desert breeding would be breed-able deserts.

IMO if you worry about what others might do, you are going to have a rough time in this world. If you educate them about the issue, you did all you are responsible for. Most people I would have to imagine after being educated would not spend the time and money to raise an animal up just to send it to it's death.

As for keeping the numbers down, something to mention is it will always be 1/4 of a clutch, since there is no way to make a homozygous. I think it makes the project that much more interesting.

[bman123]

It's not worth messing with in my eye's, even with you just trading for it I would pass

[Slashmaster]

There are a good number of people with large amounts of money tied into the desert project, and who have been growing females for breeding. I spoke to someone at Tinley who has about $100k tied into deserts, and when you have that much riding on success, I think there's eventually going to be a solution to the female problem. I certainly wouldn't advise anyone invest in the project as it currently is nor would I want to do so myself, but humans are very innovative creatures and money is a big motivator to finding solutions. All it takes is one person to unlock that secret to breeding them.

[Ridinandreptiles]

There are a good number of people with large amounts of money tied into the desert project, and who have been growing females for breeding. I spoke to someone at Tinley who has about $100k tied into deserts, and when you have that much riding on success, I think there's eventually going to be a solution to the female problem. I certainly wouldn't advise anyone invest in the project as it currently is nor would I want to do so myself, but humans are very innovative creatures and money is a big motivator to finding solutions. All it takes is one person to unlock that secret to breeding them.

+1 someone will find some (most likely stupid) trick to get females to go an BAM! well have them...maybe it will be a surgery or who knows?

[angeluscorpion]

+1 someone will find some (most likely stupid) trick to get females to go an BAM! well have them...maybe it will be a surgery or who knows?

There is a thread over on Reptile Radio where people are doing just that. Everyone has come together and pooling money trying all kinds of ideas and tests. They may end up unlocking it or proving it to be just a genetic flaw.

[Coleslaw007]

There is a thread over on Reptile Radio where people are doing just that. Everyone has come together and pooling money trying all kinds of ideas and tests. They may end up unlocking it or proving it to be just a genetic flaw.

I posted a link to in a thread somewhere, they did surgery on a desert female to remove a slug and they photographed the whole thing. There's weird strictures in the female's oviduct that nothing can pass through, several of them. So there's physical problems with their reproductive organs.

My viewpoint on deserts: they're HAWT, if they didn't have the issue they do I would be all over them. I would probably get into them at some point if it was an issue like with caramels, but being as the females can die I will not work with them at all.

I couldn't in good conscience breed a male desert bc every female desert I produced may at some point die if they fall into unknowing hands. Bp's are long lived snakes, even if the buyer intends to keep them pet only and be their forever home, things happen. That buyer could have to give up the snake at some point. Even if whoever gets the snake after that isn't trying to breed, look how many newbs try to house 2 snakes together and generally don't know their genders. Pet stores house multiple snakes together too. The possibility that that snake could be accidentally bred and die is too great imo. I don't judge anyone who IS working with them, I just personally will not be.

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[Domepiece]

Yup, decided to pass on the desert. Too much hooblah and too many variables.

[Royal Hijinx]

There are a good number of people with large amounts of money tied into the desert project, and who have been growing females for breeding. I spoke to someone at Tinley who has about $100k tied into deserts, and when you have that much riding on success, I think there's eventually going to be a solution to the female problem. I certainly wouldn't advise anyone invest in the project as it currently is nor would I want to do so myself, but humans are very innovative creatures and money is a big motivator to finding solutions. All it takes is one person to unlock that secret to breeding them.

It is thinking like this that has kept the prices artificially inflated. The market for Deserts would have crashed well before it did without the "someone HAS to figure it out" mentality. And, a lot more folks got screwed on the project. Why can people not believe the simplest answer, we HAVE figured out. Females are not capable of laying a fertile clutch, and it is in fact dangerous (possibly deadly) for the females to even try.

Also, if you think 100K is enough to get real science interested in helping figure any of it out, you are wrong. The first real step would be mapping the BP genome, and no one is willing to fund that project. Nor, are they willing to fund the other very expensive tests required to find the crux of the problem.

[Serpent_Nirvana]

IMO if you worry about what others might do, you are going to have a rough time in this world. If you educate them about the issue, you did all you are responsible for. Most people I would have to imagine after being educated would not spend the time and money to raise an animal up just to send it to it's death.

As for keeping the numbers down, something to mention is it will always be 1/4 of a clutch, since there is no way to make a homozygous. I think it makes the project that much more interesting.

Believe me, I don't blame myself for the actions of others. I make the best effort I can to place the animals that I produce into good homes, and that's the best I can do.

I accept the fact that stuff happens in people's lives, that animals get sold or given away even out of homes that originally had the best of intentions. I don't make my buyers sign contracts stating that they won't breed or trying to force them to give their animals back to me if they can no longer keep them. Could you imagine if Ball Python breeders did that? ("In the event that you can no longer keep this female Enchi, you must give it back to me. No re-homing fee will be given." Yeah right!) To me, the buyer who signs a contract like that doesn't really OWN that animal, and while I can appreciate the need for such contracts in some cases and for some species, that isn't really the way I operate.

Because of that, I view it as my responsibility as a breeder of animals to produce animals that have a good crack at life. You're right -- I can't control what other people do with the animals that I produce (not even with signed contracts), and I don't expect to. Because of that, and because I acknowledge that very few (probably almost no) snakes get a "forever home" right from birth, I have serious issues with putting babies out into the world that will likely die if bred. (Or that will propagate a serious genetic defect -- which is another debate along the same lines.)

Brandon Osborne also brought up a great point that I hadn't even thought of ... What about those super crazy combos where genes start to get hidden? I wouldn't be very happy if I purchased a combo female who had a "hidden" desert gene ... Along the same lines, do I really want to do a six-gene breeding with desert in it if I'm going to risk producing females that may have the desert gene? When you're talking super high-gene breedings where most every egg is virtually guaranteed a "good one," I could see that a desert gene in the mix might actually be a detriment, as 1/4 of the offspring will be effectively sterile ...