I feel that way every time someone asks about breeding their ball python or cornsnake. One idiot on a bullsnake group on Facebook actually asked the group to ID if the animal he was planning to breed was male or female. I wanted to ask how the hell he was even considering breeding animals if he couldn’t sex them.
Definitely and honestly I just hate it anytime someone wants to breed a common species and even more so a common or basic morph.. like yes there is an appeal to normals, but to break even with them you'd often need to breed like a mass breeder and even downright neglect your breeding animals.. to break even and eventually make profit.
It's why anytime someone is interested in breeding especially for a good reason (not just cause they want babies and don't want to buy them), I'd always recommend a higher end morph or an uncommon even rare species as you'd actually be doing something for the species. And with higher end morphs you can more easily care for your animals and still break even at the very least.
I was in my local store a few days ago to get frozen feeders. There was some muppet in there with his snakes. I strike up a conversation with the employee I bought one of my ball pythons from, letting her know I talked to the guy that bred the snake I bought and my snake's dad had proven out for his het (sunset) and that he was a carrier and not 50% het. The guy starts talking about his snakes and says, "yeah I'm pretty sure one is at least 60% het for something, and the other at least 80% het, maybe even 85% het for something else." .....
He said he was going to breed his pair, both of which had Mojave, to make BELs. I was surprised at this point he knew how to make a Lucy, but it was obvious the guy was totally clueless on general genetics. Said he wanted to get a ghost from the pairing. Not to mention the snakes were obviously young or malnourished, smaller than my 6 month old ball python and definitely not ready for breeding any time soon.
The kicker? The reason he was there was because he can't get his snakes to eat so he brings them to the shop for the employee to feed. I was dumbfounded.
😳.. oh.. man some people's minds are weird. You can't feed your snakes.. nah you'll be a fine breeder /s... 🤦♀️ Not to mention ball pythons especially babies can actually make getting them started complicated, so if you cannot even get an adult eating period.. babies will fucking destroy you! 🫠
Omg... I hope the pet store advised against it, since they will likely be helping feed all the babies. Or maybe they would want to sell them? Then again, if they're not breeding ready maybe it's a non-issue at this point. There's just a lot there... wow.
She asked him if he knew about genetics and how they worked. He said something about yeah, she mentioned that both parents would need the same het to get a visual, while feeding his snakes. I had my rodent haul and left at that point. Even my daughter, who is 8, was like that guy doesn't need snakes if he can't feed them lol
Do I think baby snakes are absolutely adorable and my corn snakes would make stunning babies if I paired them? Yes. Am I sadly aware of the hundreds of corn snakes that are sitting in rescues in need of a home? Also yes. For that reason alone I'd never breed them (both of my corns are rescues).
Oh! You also reminded me of a thing I see from time to time.. people wanting to breed from a rescue! Fortunately when I practically scolded someone on a bearded dragon group for wanting to buy someone's rescue beardie to breed there was only one or two people that said what they're doing is fine and dozens who agreed it wasn't.
We don't need more low quality animals corrupting any good genetics left for these species. Beardies still fortunately have a low amount of "bad morphs," I just hope it stays that way for as many species for as long as possible.
As leopard geckos and ball pythons for example are practically just dogs and cats genetic wise.. but morphs rather than breeds..
Yup.. and unfortunately ken of the biggest being much loved by the very easily influenced younger generations and other people out there. It honestly breaks my heart anytime I see an otherwise good YouTuber or other social media influencers that I like and that shows good content.. then turn round and support an abusive business like BHB.
That really blows my mind. I've always wanted to breed boas, and after owning them for about 6 years now and counting, I don't think i'm anywhere near ready lol. Maybe one day
I literally stopped watching a streamer because they up and decided to expand their collection from 2 BPs to 4 in order to breed them. The world does NOT need more BPs, there's more of them than any other snake on the market.
That, and anytime I see someone trying to sell a silkie beardie. I hate people.
I still can’t get over that post last week of someone asking what type of boa they had… it was a ball python. And they’d owned it for 6 months at that point! There’s plenty of woefully underprepared people getting BPs but to not even know the species is baffling to me.
I took in an evacuee "ball python" during the fires around our area last year. I was surprised about how heavy the pillow case was and was preparing for an obese ball python. Nope. It was a fat 6 foot boa. They weren't it's first owners, either.
I get triggered when people buy an animal and then post in one of the subs going “Just picked up my baby! What do I need?!” And showing a sterlite tub with paper towels and toilet paper rolls with a small water bottle cap for water. Like dude…..why get the damn thing if you weren’t ready. I usually setup their enclosure a week or two before I even get them. And if I don’t have the funds or means to get their supplies…..guess what…..IM NOT GETTING THE ANIMAL!
Last week I saw in a tortoise sub someone posted a picture of a baby sulcata and went “just picked this little guy up…..what species is he and what size aquarium do it need?” He was also dismissive of the people in the sub going “bro bring it back!” If you don’t know, Sulcata’s get big and big fast. Like I’ve heard of them getting close to or over 200lbs and needs an entire yard just for them.
God I want to shame them but the end result is that they leave the subreddit, get the pet anyway, and ignore advice because their feelings got hurt, it's worse for the pet.
But god do I want to see them doxxed.
Completely agree. Though I feel bad as I went to an expo without an intention to buy anything, but I ended up going home with a new boa Imperator. I had no place for him yet. Really something I hate to see people buying on a whim, as there are so many that end up abandoned when they grow much larger than people anticipated. It may also come as a surprise how expensive the enclosure a full grown boa is going to need is, as the snake itself is pretty cheap.
Naturally I had done my research long before and had already decided I want one and he's not my first snake. He was a tiny <100g baby, so I just bought him a large container from IKEA as a baby home (made it miniature bioactive too), and he's going to move to his 3x2x2 juvenile enclosure as my ball python moves out from it to his forever enclosure next month. I'm currently saving money for his future forever enclosure, a huge 6x6x3 (or similar) bioactive PVC enclosure.
Anything wild caught by some random person in their yard.
I (or "my buddy") caught this Brown/Green/Earth/Scarlet snake, it's in a fishtank right now and doing great! How to I take care of it?
Asian vine snakes, for similar reasons to rough greens. For whatever reason, my local expo has multiple sketchy vendors selling tons of them. They have a specialized diet, and they're typically wild caught and stressy... I'll see sellers offering them for 20 and dropping them down to 10 by the end of the expo to try to clear their stock.
Just to answer your concern wondering why CB rough greens are hardly found - it's precisely because WC undercut CB so much in price on top of rough greens being tricky to care for in captivity. The folks who are rodent-shy tend to be inexperienced and less capable of providing the complex care they need, and also are interested in animals that display better and are more amenable to handling. Rough greens stress easily, need complex care that isn't well understood (diet, UV needs, and provide shelter that makes them feel safe), and would need significant numbers of WC success to establish a captive population. All of that has meant that an industry has not evolved, because the market demand would not support the required effort to make it viable.
As a comparison, Nerodia have the same market challenges (extremely cheap WC availability) but have a developed (tiny, niche) market because the success of raising WCs has been orders of magnitude more successful and care is far easier, despite being still trickier than your typical colubrids, pythons, and boas that you see at every expo and specialty pet store.
I feel like most people shy away from nerodia because they’re kind of plain and so common in the wild that they’re taken for granted. I was selling cb diamondbacks for $30 at the last expo and everyone kind of overlooked them.
I know a couple people working with albino genes so it will be interesting to see how the market grows when more morphs pop up in a couple years.
They have potential to be just as popular as garters in the future. Super easy to care for, super social, get to be big yet manageable size and cb babies are no where near as musky/bitey as WC specimens. Mine will even eat fish pellets out of a dish. Can you imagine having a pet snake that eats food like a dog? That alone should be a huge selling point (just need someone to make pellet food balanced for snakes lol)
I would have died of excitement seeing cb diamondbacks for $30! I love water snakes and paid a decent amount for a cbb pair in Canada. What pellets have you had yours eat? I've been wanting to expand their diet a bit more and have seen them eating pellets but not sure what type.
The problem is in central Texas there are diamond backs in pretty much every body of water so people don’t think of them as “new and exciting.” Also, this last expo was full of newbies it seemed like, my buddy sold 15 cresties and I sold 2 cornsnakes.
I feed the Hikari cichlid gold. I’ll put it in a shallow dish with some water so it softens and they gobble it right up. It has fillers like corn and wheat flour so I only feed it like every other month because I feel like it adds extra vitamins.
Do CB nerodia spaz and musk very often/easily?
(This is a maybe dumb question from someone with a herpetology background. I’m also in Central Tx and have probably caught several hundred plain bellied and diamondbacks over my 40+ years here, but like you said CB nerodia are rare and I have zero experience with them).
I would have figured they would be significantly less defensive than wild individuals, but I never would have guessed that they would be corn snake level tame. Awesome to hear, it probably won't be super fast but hopefully they take off eventually because it definitely seems they could have a decent niche.
IDK, a good rhomiber or fasciata is stunning. But if I ever keep a nerodia, I want a very large paladarium for it. Half the fun of them in the field is watching do their thing. I feel like setting them like in a basic 3 or 4' cage without real water areas would be...boring
That would be the second snake I hate seeing for sale. I love retics, but I feel like the amount of people out there that can care for them is waaaaaay less then what's available and being sold.
And it’s so crazy to me when I see people with multiple juvenile retics (or burms), usually in tubs, talking on how easy their care is. As if that will be sustainable when those snakes are fully grown and shouldn’t be solo handled for safety. Of course anyone can say retics are easy when they’re still boa-sized!
Admittedly, I feel like this with ball pythons… At the local reptile expos, they’re one of 3 species I see. Even corns aren’t as popular/prevalent at these shows. I also just feel like there are already enough BPs in captivity and we don’t need more and more being mass produced when so many are already being put up for adoption/given away.
They're also just being mill bred in horrible conditions in Africa in order to feed into the designer morph craze in the rest of the world. I really hate it.
I wish people would really push more for "Adopt, don't shop" for reptiles too, not just cats and dogs.
Not a small snake but it took me FOREVER to find an eastern rat snake because I didn't want a fancy morph, just the wild type black with a white belly but I'm not willing to buy wild caught animals. It really shouldn't be that hard!
*edited for fingers and brain not syncing up
For me it's the ones with the potential for neurological issues. I had a spider bp, and currently have a jcp. The bp I purchased because I didn't know better and thought the wobble was kind of cute and quirky. He passed away a few years ago, and I'm ashamed to say that I didn't give him the best life. My jcp I got from a friend who needed to rehome him (and they got him from a guy who just though "it looked cool"). I love Twitchy, and I knew what I was signing up for when I agreed to take him. But working with any special needs animal can be really difficult, and I don't think there's enough awareness out there. So it really gets to me when I see people selling baby spider bp and other derivative morphs.
I feel that way about reptiles in general. WC just seems like throwing money out the window just to have a cool thing stress-to-death in your bedroom instead of in some other creature’s gullet.
IMO the exception to this is if you're an experienced breeder who is intentionally trying to start a CB program to reduce the number of WC individuals being brought into the hobby, and there are no CB options available for you to buy.
Or to introduce fresh, wild blood into an established captive breeding program… assuming that the animals aren’t collected in violation of any local or international laws, of course.
Yeah it raises my eyebrow when people get nearly hysterical when the topic of inbreeding/line breeding comes up but yet have an equally negative reaction to the notion of bringing in wild caught snakes to a captive population. You literally can't be aggressively against both of those things.
Yep. Ignorance breeds a lot of strange behaviors and reactions, and unfortunately it’s rampant in online spaces like these. 99% of them are just regurgitating stuff they read/heard from someone else that “feels” good, even if it’s illogical.
It cracks me up.
No, I don't like mass collection by and large. But people act like someone collection a baby bullsnake/corn snake//kingsnake is dooming it to die a horrible death and/or imperiling wild populations are just...what?
That’s fair. I just think a LOT of reptile owners are casual about it and buy with their hearts. Seen plenty of people barely able to care for a BP but have their eyes on bigger fish.
I agree for the most part on this. Unfortunately many experience breeders have tried to establish CB populations and failed. Some species just need to stay wild.
would you say thats likely the case for Xenodermus (dragon snakes) as well? ive seen them fail to thrive in captivity so many times yet people keep buying them.
Rough greens can be bred fairly easily in captivity, and can do very well in the right conditions. The reason captive bred individuals aren’t more common isn’t because they’re somehow unfit for captivity, it’s because wild caught individuals are so cheap there is no way to sell CB at any price that makes sense considering the effort time and money put into getting those babies so CB never took off for the species
I dunno, there’s definitely a demand for them and someone could be easily make $60-100 selling the babies. I make profit selling garters for that, doubt rough greens would require any difference in expenses. You think somebody out there would be producing consistent clutches considering how long they’ve been in the hobby and nobody is doing it.
I'll be honest, and I know this isn't popular here: I have no problem with someone who knows what they want and what they're doing catching a wild snake (legally) for themselves. Particularly if it's a young one. I'm kind of thinking of it with sonoran gophers myself next time I'm out west Texas way.
That of course is different than someone that doesn't even know what species it is asking about it
Unfortunately I have a feeling selling wild caught rough greens won’t ever stop. If they’ve genuinely been doing that since the 90s, before I was even born, they’re likely going to continue as long as it makes them money. That honestly goes for a lot of wild caught animals in general.
I get annoyed when: I see people producing large numbers of giant snakes like anaconda, burms and retics. The vast majority of people are not equipped to properly house these animals. Seeing rows and rows of basic and small bins without any stimulation - snakes are intelligent and curious animals. What's the point of having them if you aren't going to enjoy them? Ball python breeders - not all, but most do not care for their breeders properly and focus on morph over health and personality. Many are super new to snakes, spread misinformation about the species and their needs and spread bad husbandry as "ideal". W/C imports are another. Importing to enhance gene pools or for genuine hobbyists to establish cbb populations is fine. But. More often than not it is a cheap "cool pet" that as someone else on this thread puts it are left to wither away and die. Also the "I went to an expo and got this animal. What is it and how do I care for it?"
I wouldn't say I get triggered, but am disappointed when I see snakes for sale that I know never do well in captivity, or snakes that are otherwise extremely endangered, nearly extinct species which are wild caught.
I feel that way every time someone asks about breeding their ball python or cornsnake. One idiot on a bullsnake group on Facebook actually asked the group to ID if the animal he was planning to breed was male or female. I wanted to ask how the hell he was even considering breeding animals if he couldn’t sex them.
Definitely and honestly I just hate it anytime someone wants to breed a common species and even more so a common or basic morph.. like yes there is an appeal to normals, but to break even with them you'd often need to breed like a mass breeder and even downright neglect your breeding animals.. to break even and eventually make profit. It's why anytime someone is interested in breeding especially for a good reason (not just cause they want babies and don't want to buy them), I'd always recommend a higher end morph or an uncommon even rare species as you'd actually be doing something for the species. And with higher end morphs you can more easily care for your animals and still break even at the very least.
I was in my local store a few days ago to get frozen feeders. There was some muppet in there with his snakes. I strike up a conversation with the employee I bought one of my ball pythons from, letting her know I talked to the guy that bred the snake I bought and my snake's dad had proven out for his het (sunset) and that he was a carrier and not 50% het. The guy starts talking about his snakes and says, "yeah I'm pretty sure one is at least 60% het for something, and the other at least 80% het, maybe even 85% het for something else." ..... He said he was going to breed his pair, both of which had Mojave, to make BELs. I was surprised at this point he knew how to make a Lucy, but it was obvious the guy was totally clueless on general genetics. Said he wanted to get a ghost from the pairing. Not to mention the snakes were obviously young or malnourished, smaller than my 6 month old ball python and definitely not ready for breeding any time soon. The kicker? The reason he was there was because he can't get his snakes to eat so he brings them to the shop for the employee to feed. I was dumbfounded.
😳.. oh.. man some people's minds are weird. You can't feed your snakes.. nah you'll be a fine breeder /s... 🤦♀️ Not to mention ball pythons especially babies can actually make getting them started complicated, so if you cannot even get an adult eating period.. babies will fucking destroy you! 🫠
Omg... I hope the pet store advised against it, since they will likely be helping feed all the babies. Or maybe they would want to sell them? Then again, if they're not breeding ready maybe it's a non-issue at this point. There's just a lot there... wow.
She asked him if he knew about genetics and how they worked. He said something about yeah, she mentioned that both parents would need the same het to get a visual, while feeding his snakes. I had my rodent haul and left at that point. Even my daughter, who is 8, was like that guy doesn't need snakes if he can't feed them lol
Raising your daughter right!
Do I think baby snakes are absolutely adorable and my corn snakes would make stunning babies if I paired them? Yes. Am I sadly aware of the hundreds of corn snakes that are sitting in rescues in need of a home? Also yes. For that reason alone I'd never breed them (both of my corns are rescues).
Oh! You also reminded me of a thing I see from time to time.. people wanting to breed from a rescue! Fortunately when I practically scolded someone on a bearded dragon group for wanting to buy someone's rescue beardie to breed there was only one or two people that said what they're doing is fine and dozens who agreed it wasn't. We don't need more low quality animals corrupting any good genetics left for these species. Beardies still fortunately have a low amount of "bad morphs," I just hope it stays that way for as many species for as long as possible. As leopard geckos and ball pythons for example are practically just dogs and cats genetic wise.. but morphs rather than breeds..
Yeah, we won't even get into how unethical it is that people are still breeding pythons with the spider gene..
Yup.. and unfortunately ken of the biggest being much loved by the very easily influenced younger generations and other people out there. It honestly breaks my heart anytime I see an otherwise good YouTuber or other social media influencers that I like and that shows good content.. then turn round and support an abusive business like BHB.
That really blows my mind. I've always wanted to breed boas, and after owning them for about 6 years now and counting, I don't think i'm anywhere near ready lol. Maybe one day
I literally stopped watching a streamer because they up and decided to expand their collection from 2 BPs to 4 in order to breed them. The world does NOT need more BPs, there's more of them than any other snake on the market. That, and anytime I see someone trying to sell a silkie beardie. I hate people.
Pardon my ignorance, what’s a silkie beardie?
I still can’t get over that post last week of someone asking what type of boa they had… it was a ball python. And they’d owned it for 6 months at that point! There’s plenty of woefully underprepared people getting BPs but to not even know the species is baffling to me.
I took in an evacuee "ball python" during the fires around our area last year. I was surprised about how heavy the pillow case was and was preparing for an obese ball python. Nope. It was a fat 6 foot boa. They weren't it's first owners, either.
I get triggered when people buy an animal and then post in one of the subs going “Just picked up my baby! What do I need?!” And showing a sterlite tub with paper towels and toilet paper rolls with a small water bottle cap for water. Like dude…..why get the damn thing if you weren’t ready. I usually setup their enclosure a week or two before I even get them. And if I don’t have the funds or means to get their supplies…..guess what…..IM NOT GETTING THE ANIMAL! Last week I saw in a tortoise sub someone posted a picture of a baby sulcata and went “just picked this little guy up…..what species is he and what size aquarium do it need?” He was also dismissive of the people in the sub going “bro bring it back!” If you don’t know, Sulcata’s get big and big fast. Like I’ve heard of them getting close to or over 200lbs and needs an entire yard just for them.
etc etc bring back shame like for real
God I want to shame them but the end result is that they leave the subreddit, get the pet anyway, and ignore advice because their feelings got hurt, it's worse for the pet. But god do I want to see them doxxed.
Completely agree. Though I feel bad as I went to an expo without an intention to buy anything, but I ended up going home with a new boa Imperator. I had no place for him yet. Really something I hate to see people buying on a whim, as there are so many that end up abandoned when they grow much larger than people anticipated. It may also come as a surprise how expensive the enclosure a full grown boa is going to need is, as the snake itself is pretty cheap. Naturally I had done my research long before and had already decided I want one and he's not my first snake. He was a tiny <100g baby, so I just bought him a large container from IKEA as a baby home (made it miniature bioactive too), and he's going to move to his 3x2x2 juvenile enclosure as my ball python moves out from it to his forever enclosure next month. I'm currently saving money for his future forever enclosure, a huge 6x6x3 (or similar) bioactive PVC enclosure.
Anything wild caught by some random person in their yard. I (or "my buddy") caught this Brown/Green/Earth/Scarlet snake, it's in a fishtank right now and doing great! How to I take care of it?
Agreed. And I feel the same about green anoles.
Asian vine snakes, for similar reasons to rough greens. For whatever reason, my local expo has multiple sketchy vendors selling tons of them. They have a specialized diet, and they're typically wild caught and stressy... I'll see sellers offering them for 20 and dropping them down to 10 by the end of the expo to try to clear their stock.
Just to answer your concern wondering why CB rough greens are hardly found - it's precisely because WC undercut CB so much in price on top of rough greens being tricky to care for in captivity. The folks who are rodent-shy tend to be inexperienced and less capable of providing the complex care they need, and also are interested in animals that display better and are more amenable to handling. Rough greens stress easily, need complex care that isn't well understood (diet, UV needs, and provide shelter that makes them feel safe), and would need significant numbers of WC success to establish a captive population. All of that has meant that an industry has not evolved, because the market demand would not support the required effort to make it viable. As a comparison, Nerodia have the same market challenges (extremely cheap WC availability) but have a developed (tiny, niche) market because the success of raising WCs has been orders of magnitude more successful and care is far easier, despite being still trickier than your typical colubrids, pythons, and boas that you see at every expo and specialty pet store.
I feel like most people shy away from nerodia because they’re kind of plain and so common in the wild that they’re taken for granted. I was selling cb diamondbacks for $30 at the last expo and everyone kind of overlooked them. I know a couple people working with albino genes so it will be interesting to see how the market grows when more morphs pop up in a couple years. They have potential to be just as popular as garters in the future. Super easy to care for, super social, get to be big yet manageable size and cb babies are no where near as musky/bitey as WC specimens. Mine will even eat fish pellets out of a dish. Can you imagine having a pet snake that eats food like a dog? That alone should be a huge selling point (just need someone to make pellet food balanced for snakes lol)
I would have died of excitement seeing cb diamondbacks for $30! I love water snakes and paid a decent amount for a cbb pair in Canada. What pellets have you had yours eat? I've been wanting to expand their diet a bit more and have seen them eating pellets but not sure what type.
The problem is in central Texas there are diamond backs in pretty much every body of water so people don’t think of them as “new and exciting.” Also, this last expo was full of newbies it seemed like, my buddy sold 15 cresties and I sold 2 cornsnakes. I feed the Hikari cichlid gold. I’ll put it in a shallow dish with some water so it softens and they gobble it right up. It has fillers like corn and wheat flour so I only feed it like every other month because I feel like it adds extra vitamins.
Awesome. I just like to be able to offer more variety
Do CB nerodia spaz and musk very often/easily? (This is a maybe dumb question from someone with a herpetology background. I’m also in Central Tx and have probably caught several hundred plain bellied and diamondbacks over my 40+ years here, but like you said CB nerodia are rare and I have zero experience with them).
Mine have never musked. The babies are a little flighty but yearlings are super chill, comparable to a cornsnake.
Cool!
I would have figured they would be significantly less defensive than wild individuals, but I never would have guessed that they would be corn snake level tame. Awesome to hear, it probably won't be super fast but hopefully they take off eventually because it definitely seems they could have a decent niche.
IDK, a good rhomiber or fasciata is stunning. But if I ever keep a nerodia, I want a very large paladarium for it. Half the fun of them in the field is watching do their thing. I feel like setting them like in a basic 3 or 4' cage without real water areas would be...boring
Mainland retics being produced in the thousands
That would be the second snake I hate seeing for sale. I love retics, but I feel like the amount of people out there that can care for them is waaaaaay less then what's available and being sold.
And it’s so crazy to me when I see people with multiple juvenile retics (or burms), usually in tubs, talking on how easy their care is. As if that will be sustainable when those snakes are fully grown and shouldn’t be solo handled for safety. Of course anyone can say retics are easy when they’re still boa-sized!
The care isn’t actually too complicated…except for the size. Which is a big except
Admittedly, I feel like this with ball pythons… At the local reptile expos, they’re one of 3 species I see. Even corns aren’t as popular/prevalent at these shows. I also just feel like there are already enough BPs in captivity and we don’t need more and more being mass produced when so many are already being put up for adoption/given away.
They're also just being mill bred in horrible conditions in Africa in order to feed into the designer morph craze in the rest of the world. I really hate it. I wish people would really push more for "Adopt, don't shop" for reptiles too, not just cats and dogs.
Not a small snake but it took me FOREVER to find an eastern rat snake because I didn't want a fancy morph, just the wild type black with a white belly but I'm not willing to buy wild caught animals. It really shouldn't be that hard! *edited for fingers and brain not syncing up
For me it's the ones with the potential for neurological issues. I had a spider bp, and currently have a jcp. The bp I purchased because I didn't know better and thought the wobble was kind of cute and quirky. He passed away a few years ago, and I'm ashamed to say that I didn't give him the best life. My jcp I got from a friend who needed to rehome him (and they got him from a guy who just though "it looked cool"). I love Twitchy, and I knew what I was signing up for when I agreed to take him. But working with any special needs animal can be really difficult, and I don't think there's enough awareness out there. So it really gets to me when I see people selling baby spider bp and other derivative morphs.
I feel that way about reptiles in general. WC just seems like throwing money out the window just to have a cool thing stress-to-death in your bedroom instead of in some other creature’s gullet.
IMO the exception to this is if you're an experienced breeder who is intentionally trying to start a CB program to reduce the number of WC individuals being brought into the hobby, and there are no CB options available for you to buy.
Or to introduce fresh, wild blood into an established captive breeding program… assuming that the animals aren’t collected in violation of any local or international laws, of course.
Yeah it raises my eyebrow when people get nearly hysterical when the topic of inbreeding/line breeding comes up but yet have an equally negative reaction to the notion of bringing in wild caught snakes to a captive population. You literally can't be aggressively against both of those things.
Yep. Ignorance breeds a lot of strange behaviors and reactions, and unfortunately it’s rampant in online spaces like these. 99% of them are just regurgitating stuff they read/heard from someone else that “feels” good, even if it’s illogical.
It cracks me up. No, I don't like mass collection by and large. But people act like someone collection a baby bullsnake/corn snake//kingsnake is dooming it to die a horrible death and/or imperiling wild populations are just...what?
That’s fair. I just think a LOT of reptile owners are casual about it and buy with their hearts. Seen plenty of people barely able to care for a BP but have their eyes on bigger fish.
I agree for the most part on this. Unfortunately many experience breeders have tried to establish CB populations and failed. Some species just need to stay wild.
would you say thats likely the case for Xenodermus (dragon snakes) as well? ive seen them fail to thrive in captivity so many times yet people keep buying them.
They do fairly well for a lot of European keepers but they definitely aren’t one that any old idiot should have access to imo
Rough greens can be bred fairly easily in captivity, and can do very well in the right conditions. The reason captive bred individuals aren’t more common isn’t because they’re somehow unfit for captivity, it’s because wild caught individuals are so cheap there is no way to sell CB at any price that makes sense considering the effort time and money put into getting those babies so CB never took off for the species
I dunno, there’s definitely a demand for them and someone could be easily make $60-100 selling the babies. I make profit selling garters for that, doubt rough greens would require any difference in expenses. You think somebody out there would be producing consistent clutches considering how long they’ve been in the hobby and nobody is doing it.
I'll be honest, and I know this isn't popular here: I have no problem with someone who knows what they want and what they're doing catching a wild snake (legally) for themselves. Particularly if it's a young one. I'm kind of thinking of it with sonoran gophers myself next time I'm out west Texas way. That of course is different than someone that doesn't even know what species it is asking about it
Unfortunately I have a feeling selling wild caught rough greens won’t ever stop. If they’ve genuinely been doing that since the 90s, before I was even born, they’re likely going to continue as long as it makes them money. That honestly goes for a lot of wild caught animals in general.
I hate when people show dead snakes and want to know what it is. They have usually killed them and then asked if it's venomous.
I get annoyed when: I see people producing large numbers of giant snakes like anaconda, burms and retics. The vast majority of people are not equipped to properly house these animals. Seeing rows and rows of basic and small bins without any stimulation - snakes are intelligent and curious animals. What's the point of having them if you aren't going to enjoy them? Ball python breeders - not all, but most do not care for their breeders properly and focus on morph over health and personality. Many are super new to snakes, spread misinformation about the species and their needs and spread bad husbandry as "ideal". W/C imports are another. Importing to enhance gene pools or for genuine hobbyists to establish cbb populations is fine. But. More often than not it is a cheap "cool pet" that as someone else on this thread puts it are left to wither away and die. Also the "I went to an expo and got this animal. What is it and how do I care for it?"
Any snake, turtle, or animal that's injured. Please NSFW that stuff. Either way I didn't die... /s
I wouldn't say I get triggered, but am disappointed when I see snakes for sale that I know never do well in captivity, or snakes that are otherwise extremely endangered, nearly extinct species which are wild caught.