Quality of breeding stock

[RoseyReps]

I have seen the word "Quality" used on this forum since I started lurking here. It cracks me up because all "Quality" means on this site is pretty, prettier, and prettiest. Nothing more. When you hear the word "Quality" used in other consumer references it means many things like better materials, tighter tolerances, longer performance, faster speeds, etc. Is there one breeder here who can say and back up with evidence, that their snakes eat better, live longer, lay more eggs, slither faster, use more efficiently the caloric intake of the rats consumed? No! In fact there are many of you who raise and breed animals with a known neurological disorder and talk about the "Quality" of your Bees, Spiders, etc. What they mean when they say "Quality", is they have a pretty example of a particular morph and likely have used good husbandry practices producing it.

That in mind, "Pretty" is pretty subjective. What you are supposed to look for in a quality pastel, is what the first people in the hobby decided was, in their opinion, a quality pastel and have now imposed as truth on those that followed. It is no different then what Vogue tells you is beautiful. And if Vogue were to use the same logic being applied to this thread, then heavy women and people who don't have good symmetry in their facial structure, are low quality humans and should only be regarded as "Pet Quality" and never be bred. Too bad as Stephen Hawking would be low quality.

Just my 0.02.

Well, with your assessment, we should also be selling off human babies for profit / business. It is illogical to compare humans, and vogue, to breeders and their breeding/selling animals. You are absolutely right, people breed wobbly bee's, and there are beautiful "high quality" bee's that have wobbles. Just because a word is used differently between certain aspects of life doesn't mean it's wrong to use the word. Our hobby (when talking about BREEDING STOCK) is breeding bps, to make beautiful animals. If you don't care, or think it's wrong to choose a prettier ball python over a normal looking one, that is your call, and nothing wrong with that. But please don't come to a thread titled about breeding, and tell us all how we're wrong for judging these creatures based on their looks. It's honestly, very childish, and I know you're not usually that way, so I'm a bit confused as where this came from.

We are discussing it from a breeding a business standpoint, not if it hurts the brown pastel's feelings.

Also, just because we want beautiful snakes, doesn't mean we don't love normals, or brown pastels, or think they deserve a lesser home because of that. Every snake deserves a long healthy life, whether it is brown, purple, polka-dotted, or pure white.