W.C or "captive ranched"

[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.