Desert Morph, what are your thoughts?

[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 ...