Grow Faster, Breed Sooner? (NOT POWER FEEDING)

[bns]

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?

I'm unsure what you disagree with...I completely understand what different reasons are involved and I know what the motivating factors are. I know exactly what money does... Money blurs the truth, the goals, the results, the give a damns and all the 'ifs'.

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.

He can't see any negative effects of what will happen in the future...Since we don't know the future long term results, there is no answer to the ifs.

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.

This experiment does not have anything to do with giving a damn about the long term affects on the snakes. The goal was to find a way to make money faster and even if it kills the snakes after year 5 there is no downside as the breeder will have a viable male almost immediately... The motivation is known, the goal has been met and the long term results (ifs) will only carry as much weight as the ethics of the human involved. -And nothing against the breeder (I've never heard of him before this) but when money, ethics and humans are combined... I know how I'd place my bet.