W.C or "captive ranched"

[paul_le_snake]

anyone got thought on these subjects????
personally i hate ranching as much as wc
cheers
paul

[Jeff_Favelle]

At least with ranching, they are trying to make an effort. This is my preference:

CB
Captive hatched (ranched)
WC


Keep in mind that I would never go past chioce one. Ha ha.

That is, unless its necessary (Boelen's, new Jungle blood, Ball morph, etc etc).

[Edwin]

ditto. Same goes for me.

[Dom]

CB all the way unless the cb is unavailable the ch or wc..

[honduranfreekk]

I agrea cb all the way in most cases there is so much cb and cbb that there is no need 2 buy wc at all just drives up the demand 4 poching just my 2 cent,s :)

[sSNAKESs.com]

Ranching is actually great for the hobby... For example, if you read the last months reptiles magazine, the blood rancher in indonesia who is BREEDING the bloods in indonesia and exporting them can fill the countrys legal export limit by himself, which in return if done properly stop the need for collecting from the wild. Most of the snakes there are collected for their skins and not for the reptile trade at all. I think the ratio was like more then 70% of the annual export allowance was for skins and only 30% was for live animals for the pet trade. So most of the poaching that is being done is done for skins and meat and not to supply the demands for the pet trade. So in my opinion ranching is a great thing for the hobby and the longevity of the soon to be endangered species, if 1 ranch can fill a countrys live export quota by himself, thats 30% more animals that dont get plucked from the wild every year.

[honduranfreekk]

Hey now jeff I did not look at it that way.Butt now that you putt that out there i would have 2 agrea with you on the ranching.That is a very good point bud :) :)

[reverendsterlin]

seems most reptile restrictions are due to skin trade, the argentine boa Bco is CITES 1 protected because of the skin trade.

[KaHane]

For common animals, C.B all the way. Although we have to get W.C and ranched animals which are rare or need new bloodlines. Most of our Monitors had to start as W.C. ( Whitehead, Cummingi, Green trees,... etc.) There's just no other choice. Just as long as you take the time to quarantine them properly and treat them as needed, everything should be fine. Also Jeff is right, ranching is good for the hobby.

[Lisa]

I try to get CB when i can, but CH is a heck of alot better then WC. Some species have to start some where.

[eyespy]

Ranching might be good for the hobby when properly done, but unfortunately it often isn't.

Herps ain't herd animals. They don't tend to do well when overcrowded, and disease levels skyrocket. It isn't just parasites found in some ranches, there are deadly funguses and adenoviruses introduced to the US from one ranch in El Salvador that have infected a few thousand animals.

Some breeders of bearded dragons lost their entire stock in 2002 because they were trying to expand their bloodlines and brought home one of these ranched animals. Little did they know adenovirus is airborne and just caging separately is not an effective quarantine. My friends CheriS and Axe have been tracking infected animals on their website www.reptilerooms.com and the mortality rate is very high.

The day I read that a stampede of beardies ran through the streets of Adelaide is the day I will agree that ranching is a good way to produce bearded dragons. Now the scuttlebutt is that adenovirus is also being seen in mass-produced cornsnakes as well. Some of the vets I've spoken to feel that overcrowding and subsequent stress is weakening the immune systems of these animals so that they are more likely to be infected and this is why adenovirus is found in ranched animals but seldom in animals produced by breeders.

[marisa]

But even if you buy a "ranched" animal for whatever reason (or WC for that matter)......wouldn't you be able to protect your collection 100% by following proper and strict quarantine methods?? I mean if those beardie breeders had, and had kept the "dirty" ranched animals away from their collection (and by away I mean, seperate floor or building, surgical gloves, sterile hands etc) 100% (and for a FULL quarantine, not a month or two) then they could have avoided that problem while still enjoying the "benifits" they were originally looking for from a ranched animal. As much as its "airborne" it can't pass through floors, or seperate buildings. My collection is tiny, but important to me and my new pets (Wc, Or CB) all live on a seperate floor in a closed room. To me this is the least I can do to protect my collection.

marisa

[marisa]

Post was supposed to sound more like a question *LOL* Won't strict menthods prevent this from happening?

marisa

[paul_le_snake]

they say that ranching is ok because it does not take reptile from the wild. how can that possibly be sustainable for a number of years. the guy in indonesia has hatched over 7000 bloods in five or six years. thats 7000 bloods that will not be growing to maturity to sustain a balanced population.
jeff, u said that ranching was good for the hobby, well for the hobby yes it may seem that way. but what about the bigger picture? what about the whole balance of nature? animals will be extinct if this carries on.
in my humble opion, only registered breeders or zoological societies should be allowed to import wc or ranched. why do we need ranched bloods, aren't there enough of us breeding them? for ppl breeding them its a nightmare y will ppl pay cb prices when they can have a ranched import for alot less. ranched animals are still given the same care as a wc. they are still kept in terrible conditions, overcrowded, underfed alot of the time exposed to the elements.
ball pythons that r ranched are sometimes held for 2 months before there are enough hatchlings to fill the shipment number. kept in a huge bin of hundreds not fed or watered, lying next to dead animals. not a great start to life.
ball pythons are offered for sale at $1.50 ea..if u buy 1000. so ok say some wholesaler buys that 1000 they work into the selling price that anywhere between 40 - 60 % will either be dead on arrival or die on their premises. and still walk off with a nice fat profit.
y are boa constrictors still being imported???? is there that much of a shortage of baby boas? i guess it comes down to, u know what!!!, MONEY. if someone can import 500 savannah monitors lose a few on the way and make a profit. then woo hoo go for it.
back to the blood ranching. ok, so 7000 babies are produced from about 450 (average of 15 living young per female) what happens to the 450 breeding females? killed and skinned.
anyone know some iguana ranches "ranch" them? in alot of cases gravid females are cut open, have thier eggs removed, crudely stiched back up and released to be cut open next year, lol as if they'd make it a week with that cut in them.
cheers
paul
ps sorry to go on.

[eyespy]

Quarantine is good for diseases transmitted via direct contact, such as a skin fungus, or the fecal-oral route, such as a parasite. For an airborne virus or fungus, it doesn't do much unless each animal stays in its own room and each room has either a HEPA air filter or its own ventilation system.

Adenovirus has been transmitted to animals in another room even when caretakers are strictly assigned to one room only and no supplies are shared. No amount of washing can scrub the virus out of the air.

[paul_le_snake]

jeff, hate to be a pain, but that guy in indonesia is NOT breeding those bloods, his collectors are finding any gravid female and all he's doing is holding them till they lay the egss then using them for their skins
cheers
paul

[V.aw]

what!!! How can you say captive hatching is a good thing!
Take savannah monitors for example. A gravid female is collected and held until she drops her eggs, then is re-released into the wild in the SAME general area that every other collected specimen is released into, and most dont survive!

WC and CH is exactly the same and are both just as destructive to the animals. and then! the eggs are hatched and the babies (mass produced) are sent to various pet stores cramped into small tanks and still the fatalities raise as quite a few reptiles have a high mortality rate as juviniles!!

I honestly believe if you feel the need to purchase a WC animal you should breed it to promote captive breeding.

I would give up all of my reptiles to see WC collecting become illegal. We dont need them as pets so badly that we have to destroy their natural life cycles for our own amusement!

just my two, well maybe sixteen cents. heheh

[paul_le_snake]

well said v.aw. it seems to me that 'ranching' is being cloaked by certain ppl as a good thing. as i said in an earlier post, and as u re-iterated, ranching still means that hundreds of hatchlings / neonates are packed into crappy conditions, shipped half way around the world and then held for a cpl of days by some wholesaler till he can get his $1.50 ea for a 1000 ball pythons.
also alot of the females are not released at all, most are killed for their precious skin (not to mention all the other 'remedies')
cheers
paul

[paul_le_snake]

so how many years can the blood python population take, i mean what happens to the natural selection? where are all the 7000 bloods that should be fighting their way to adulthood??????? some shi**y wholesalers. what happens to all the animals that depend on a healthy blood python population? mice run wild? predators die. oh but who cares, at least someone got a cheap blood python
cheers
paul

[paul_le_snake]

so no-one has any opinions for the stopping of ranching? is everyone ok with the thought that thousands of reptiles will suffer great stress and in alot of cases die, just so ppl can have a cheap import.
cheers
paul

[jason h]

I think ranches and farms may be good if done the right way,If you look at alligator farms in the states that farm for meat and the skin trade,they do this in high numbers but the government has allowed this as long as a percentage of all the offspring is released into the wild so everyone wins they get there stupid leather hand bag AND the wild population increases all at once.so i think it all depends on the situation(just a thought LOL)

[BigDan]

I am all for captive bred but too be honest if we did not make a demand for CH then there would not be such a large market for them.

Every reptile show I have been to you have people selling beautiful captive bred Ball pythons that he or she have incubated, patiently started feeding and probably put at least 6 to 10 meals in them. They are happy and healthy and will make someone a perfect pet or future breeder. They are selling them for $150 to $200 a peice.

Right beside this person or right down the hall there is someone else selling Captive Hatched Ball Pythons that have not fed or never will, thin, dehydrated and so on. They probably cost the vendor $10 and he or she is selling them for $75 or 2 for $100.

Which one do you think sells out every time?

I think in some instances in species that are not bred in captivity on regular basis there is no way around it. With balls, boas, bloods and many others there is no reason to bring animals in from the wild anymore. Additionally due to the small amount of money that one can get these CH animals for they tend to be looked at as something you can just throw away. You bought 100 for $1000 so if half die before you sell them its O.K. because you still make a pile of money.

I worked in the pet industry breifly when I was a teenager and going to University. This was back in the days when people would collect marine fish using cyanide. You could by a box of cyanide collected fish for the price of 2 net collected animals. I used to open the boxes and look at bag after bag of dead or dying marine fish. After a few of these sessions I had to quit. They do not use cyanide to collect ball pythons but how many thousands die before we buy what is left of them.

I do not mean to preach but this stuff happens and by buying WC or CH you are driving the market for these animals. I myself have bought these animals and have spent the time to get them eating and healthy, it takes alot of work and patience. Since that time I have become more aware of what these animals go through and what really goes on at many wholesalers facilities and have decided not to support this part of the hobby.

Just my thoughts.

Dan.

[Dom]

BTW Jason h and Dan - great posts - extremelly good points!


I HATE WC OR CH but we need it wether u like it or not! Ch is a bit better than wc but not that much .. as long as the demand is there the animals will be ripped from the wild .. all u can do is choose not to buy a wc or ch .. but sometimes its hard .. I can tell u out of all my colection, I only bought one ch directly from a wholesaler .. and personally I was impressed with the wholesaler ..

I am not namming names, but I was impressed at how clean a 75 gallon tank with over 1000 anoles was .. don't get me wrong I saw a couple of dozen of dead animals but out of the probably 15000 animals he had, the care was good..

Not encouraging the wholesaler by no means, simply stating that the wholesaler needs to be there and some are much better than ppl think .. better then what I though since I had been to one previously..


MAHHHH Freedom of choice - buy what u want to buy - theres not much else u can do.

just my 2 cents

[paul_le_snake]

dom, tell me ur joking.

"I am not namming names, but I was impressed at how clean a 75 gallon tank with over 1000 anoles was .. don't get me wrong I saw a couple of dozen of dead animals but out of the probably 15000 animals he had, the care was good.."
so u saw 24 or so dead anoles and u thought that ok, u were impressed by the way a 75 gal tank was clean with 24 dead anoles in it?
if it was that good name names
cheers
paul

[paul_le_snake]

big dan....top post fella
cheers
paul

[Gorelith]

Wow! There's a lot of passion flowing here, good to see. I'm going to have to take the naturalist approach. I have to agree with the blood situation being wrong. There are enough people breeding them in captivity to warrant a full stop on importations (in my opinion), and also with balls, and most of the more common herps seen in collections and pet shops around the world. Personally, I feel that importation should be stopped completely, except for the use of zoological education. Importing for a breeders personal profit and to expand their bloodline (a lot of people are gonna hate me for this but i'll live) is wrong, it doesn't benefit the longevity of the species and only seems to benefit the individuals pocket book. It makes more sense to me that by increasing the longevity of the species and support the herp hobby, that buying a captive bred from a different bloodline, in another state or province or even country would most likely be best for the animal. Any animal is better off being maintained and shipped properly by a carefull, careing breeder, than flying halfway across the world is the cold steel belly of a plane. So to those who feel it's ok to import, i'd urge you to put yourself in the animals scales, would you wish to be ripped out of your home, to sit scared and cold, inside a vibrating airplane with 30 or 40 of your brothers and sisters for hours on end, only to have it stop momentarily while you're transported to a car for sometimes hours on end, get to an importer only to wind up in a big room with invisible (glass) walls that won't let you out? Sounds a lot like rape to me. Or would you rather be shipped from a breeder in a heated transport pack without other lifeless bodies slamming up against you, to get to your final destination and be left alone to adjust in another one of these big invisible wall holding cells that you're already used to. This is only the beginning of this issue for me and i think i'll stop now as this post is getting long and i'm sure i've angered a lot of people.- The following post was an opinion expressed by myself and in no way reflects the opinions of ssnakess.com (had to put that in there, lol ) Thanks for the great topic guys.

[V.aw]

after working at a pet chain in scarborough i can tell you that the initial cost for CH ball pythons is ALOT less than what was stated above.

We were ordering these guys at 15$ a pop!!! I would estimate that they had a 25% chance of living after all of the shipping around they underwent. pet stores are the root of the problem!!! These stores order in such mass quantity, no wonder people ship them so cheap. My store brought in 15 ball pythons.. All CH specimens and I believe only 1-2 survived the first week. I mean we were told they were still on their yolk sacks and havent undergone their first shed!!!! Talk about pathetic!

[paul_le_snake]

its sick what ppl will do for a quick easy buck. some ppl that buy ranched maybe don't know the whole process involved, but there are many more that do. thats the scary part. all these ppl saying how much they care for reptiles! yeah right

[Dom]

hey Paul..

I was simply stating that the care of the animal ws much much better than I though .. by no means am I saying it OK or that it was proper care .. If you had 15000 animals and abou 200 cages.. how welll could you care for them? And if a quarter of your animals changes each week - how well could you care for them then..

I find this whole thing discusting although I state it again - yes i was impressed.. the conditions were way way way better than i would of expected although they were still way under my standarts..

[V.aw]

Hey dom, I know you;re not defending anyones actions here, BUT.. Think about it, the ratio of 15000 animals to 200 cages.

Someone is in WAY over their head. DO we really need more herps that badly? Personally id be alot more proud knowing that my animal wasnt mass produced in this way.

[Dom]

I agree v.aw.. but wholesalers are a fact of life.. and theres not much u can do about it but choose not to buy a wc specimen ..

[V.aw]

And you can also protest against others doing the same, by not commending anything wholesalers do!

[Grant vg]

I have mixed feelings about this whole situation, In reality, if everyone was concerned about the animals in general, u wouldn't be in the hobby. If there was no demand in captivity, there would be no demand for the WC trade. Sure you bought a Cb baby, but somewhere down the line, it came from a WC animal, and it wont ever stop unless it becomes illegal to import or keep them.
You can try to justify your points, but truthfully, keeping any animal in Captivity that is not endangered, and is not for zoological or scientific researh rather just for pure "enjoyment", holds weight in the root of the problem.
How much different are you from the guy in who-knows-where, taking gravid females or breeding them for a "livng" to support the pet trade, where as we for "enjoyment" breed our animals to sell and make a buck or two.
At least hes doing it for a livelyhood to support his family and at least hes taking an animal that would otherwise be slaughtered and giving us the babies. Just maybe, guys like that, are giving us a few more snake years.

In reality, many ppls goals in this hobby is to "Breed" each species we choose to work with, not many ppl here breed the one time to "experience" it and move on. Rather, they breed the animal every year, and if a male or female shows no interest one will simply sell it off. Because, in most cases, ppl dont want to keep an animal who wont breed, or they dont want to wait any longer for it to reach an adult size to breed, so they sell it for an adult of another species.
True, Cb can be seen better then WC's in some respects, but without Wc's ,somewhere down the line, no matter how far it is, for many species or locales, there will be way to much imbreeding, more then whats already going on. Eventually, two unrelated wc adults die, but all there offspring from all those years (with the same genes) will be floating around, and as all those original adults die off, some from age, but most from sicknesses, the gene pool suddenly becomes smaller and smaller and smaller and smaller and so on.
So prices for unrelated animals sky rocket, no one can afford them, so its either get some defects or get out of the hobby. and sooner or later. theres nothing left of the hobby. So not only is the population in the wild gone, (because we all know the skin trade wont stop) but the population in captivity is totally imbredded and the animals left are dying younger and cant fight a simple winter "cold".
No one can honestly tell me, that the amount of blood pythons in Canada, minus all the ones who wont get proper care and die earlier then later, as well as those dying from old age, can addequately sustain everyones wants.
Anyone checked the classifieds lately? Theres what, a total of 1 maybe 2 ppl selling CB bloods in Canada in the past year?
Dont forget to minus all those ones at the shows and in the pet stores, because those wont be there if the WC trade ceases. So basically, will end up with only a few blood breeders trying to fulfill the wants of many canadians with so little animals.
One of the best purchases i have made were my bangka island locality blood pythons and yes they were WC, but how many other ppl out there that u know of are working with them??
Not many. So like the boelens, etc... does that make it ok for me to import these because there are minute amounts of them in captivity?
So we can import rare animals like the boelens etc... but when it comes to ball pythons, and bloods, we shouldn't because there are said to be enough of them.
So basically were saying we can import the ones we dont have here to fill that void of enjoyment, but the ones we do have are enough. So the whole slogan of "save the natural species" goes out the door for these particular "animals". ???
I think the key is in moderation. You cant sustain small populations with no outside help.
I am for the WC trade to a certain extent, as new "morphs" and "bloodlines" are what fuels this hobby as well as its longevity.

So taking it out of the equation, would be covering up a problem which we started.
If anything, maybe we should rethink the underlying reasons many iof us are in the hobby and how we go about our enjoyment.

Small rubbermaids and tanks, breed em every year, powerfeeding, line breeding, hybrids, swapping, etc...etc...
I think the Wc trade is the least of our problems.

just some ramblings at we hours in the morning.
To bad i didn't check this thread earlier.
good topic. :D
Gvg