Just going to point out real quick- there's no point in owning a snake in the first place, much less breeding them. We only do it simply because we want to.Originally Posted by sho220
That all said, here's my quick take on producing normals. I don't see too much wrong with it or why anyone does it, although breeding for "practice" doesn't come off as ethical to me, nor is it necessarily rocket science. It just matters how you go about doing it and how well you plan it out. Most important is that all the surviving babies have somewhere to live at the end of it all. Worst case scenario just means you have to keep all the babies, at least for an extended period of time. Keeping that in mind, not everyone is into genetics and not everyone actively participates or wants to participate in the morph market, and it's not up to everyone to be utter snake nazis and determine what exactly everyone should be allowed to breed. If someone wants to produce just normals or even line breed normals (something I'm heavily considering) then so be it. As long as they can take care of everything in the end.
Also just to note, normals can't be the hardest thing in the world to sell. It just depends on which niche you take up. Normals without morph genes won't have a strong presence and won't sell real well at something like a reptile expo or well known reptile classifieds (ex. kingsnake) which is highly populated by hobby breeders and big league breeders, but they appear to be easier to sell locally and on classifieds such as craigslist (people try- and have- to sold them for as high as $300 here in San Antonio; a $20 normal would be a bargain for the unaware local) as well as wholesale as there is always a demand for someone's first or second cheap pet snake. Essentially the difference between selling ice cream in the summer vs the winter. Again, it's just down to planning and having a good understanding on how well certain things sell and where to sell them. You get all that down and you shouldn't experience problems. There isn't really a need to force someone to keep or breed something like morphs if that isn't what they want to do.
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