Grow Faster, Breed Sooner? (NOT POWER FEEDING)

[Hugsplox]

You can't agree 100% and then say it's ok because...

Respect is the same as trust for me...its earned not given.



This cuts to the heart of the matter in a way folks may have missed IMO. You're skeptical because you haven't observed it. I have and I apply it...if they told you how few meals it takes to keep an adult in proper form without breeding it would be even less.

These things can only be observed if the goal is about understanding the critter...as soon as money, a specific gene, a combination of genes, an appearance, recognition, a desire for being first, a desire to be among a group and so much more become the goal; understanding through observation with a desire for knowledge is lost.

I'm not trying to take some ethics high road or say I'm better than someone else because I don't breed for money...This started in the 70's for me...it was about fascination/understanding at first and it still is today.

I disagree, I think we can be understanding of an issue from multiple viewpoints. I'm trying to look at this from a hobbyist and a business standpoint. I agree that the animal comes first, BUT Wilbanks is running a business and has found a way, that he claims, works for him to get his males up to breeding size faster than normal. Now, that is the one and only benefit of the method he described. There's no claim by him or anyone else that this is beneficial to the animal in any way whatsoever, this method is only beneficial to him as a business owner. That being said, is if he's found a way to safety (with supporting data to show it's safe) grow his snakes faster, is there anything inherently wrong with it. It may not be beneficial to the snake, but if it doesn't hurt the snake is there an issue.

Couple of things to remember here. First, we're not talking him giving a snake who would typically eat say, a 30g rat every week, a 30g rat every day. He's giving them 30 grams of rat in a week. Meaning I'm feeding multiple smaller rats. So we're not power feeding in a traditional sense, we're turning one big meal into a bunch of small meals. Second, this was coupled with a university study, it wasn't a breeder just doing something with absolutely no data to go off of. The argument here is not overfeeding, in my opinion, because calorie intake is the same just spread out over a week vs all in one feeding, the argument is, is it safe to keep a snake's digestive process turned on and running at this pace non-stop for the first few months of it's life?

My answer to that question is I don't know. Again we have to look at it from both points of view. To you and I, it's not worth it, we're not interested in getting a snake breeding faster, it doesn't benefit the snake, so to us there's no point. To a big breeder who makes a living off snakes though, if he isn't seeing any negative effects, and he can boost productivity, I get why he would be willing to try it especially if based on his experience there's no negative impact.

All of that being said, all of you guys have a metric ton more experience than I do keeping, breeding, discussing, anything to do with reptiles I'm sure of this. I take no offense to any of you telling me I'm wrong about something, and I may be wrong here and Mike may be setting his snakes up for failure. In this scenario though, I think we have to be able to look at this from both directions and not just disagree because we think Wilbanks is breeding for a different reason than we would.