Breeders and Nonbreeder please read!

I was wondering if breeders and nonbreeders would be interested in a type of a Pedigree Registry for reptiles with a small fee? If I get enough intrest in this I am going to work on getting 2 going 1 for regular normal snakes and lizards and one for morphs of snakes and lizards. This will be my way of helping and saving good bloodlines of our hobby! If I get enough hits saying yes i will support this I can have it up and going as soon as I can!! I think this will be a great thing for us and our hobby! I dont feel its fair that dogs, cats,horses, and others have this in their hobby and we dont so its time I stand up and help us!! Please vote and tell me why you voted the way you did!

Thanks,
Aaron

Sorry I seen that I forgot the poll! I know not many of you guys here know me all that well but please put your input into this!

I think that a little research will show that a similar thing was attempted about 2 or 3 years ago and didn't go well at all. There is already an established registry for animals kept in zoos (AZA registry) and beyond that it comes down to breeders keeping their own records. Since reptiles seem to be more commonly inbred than, say, cats or dogs, often for the sole purpose of highlighting a given trait then it becomes even less of an issue. Sorry, but just my opinion.

There are successful systems in place already.

American Cornsnake Registery (ACR)
http://www.herpregistry.com/acr/

Leopard Gecko Registry (LGR)
http://www.leopardgeckoregistry.com
[This one is still under construction, but I am working on it]

Of course there is room for more species. Once the LGR is complete, I plan on moving onto Bearded Dragons & Boa Constrictors. I believe Chuck is also working on a registry for Rhacodactylus Ciliatus.

I don't mean to sound like I'm squashing anyone's enthusiasm, but in the past attempts to create a reptile registry have all been failures.
The first I remember was actually free, but even with no cost to the breeder, it wound up lasting 3 or 4 years before it finally went defunct for lack of interest.

The main problem was twofold. First you have to gain the interest of people in registering animals in the first place, and not just 2% of breeders. Secondly the registry has to achieve some form of credibility to where there is some reason to prefer registered animals. These two problems work against each other, if there's no reason to prefer registered animals, then breeders have little incentive to bother with it, and even less if it costs something, while at the same time if only 2% of all breeders are involved in the registry, then there's no real reason to prefer registered animals.

The biggest roadblock to solving either of the problems was always finding a starting point and setting down the criteria. The problem with the starting point it you will have to take the word of a breeder in most all instances.
Take me for example, say I wanted to register my jungle carpets when you first started accepting registration requests. You would either have to take my word that they were pure jungles and had no diamond python blood in their history or decline my request. Considering that very few if any jungle carpets in captivity in this country can be traced back to the wild, since exportation from Australia has been banned fo rover 30 years, then you would either have to take everyone's word or refuse to register that species.
If you have to take the original registrants word that the bloodline is pure then what's the difference than taking a specific breeders word that it is. At least with the latter you are dealing directly with the person making the claim, where with the registered animals, you may be 3 generations away from the person who initially registered the bloodline.

The same scenario plays out again and again, so no one can ever be sure if the registry even started out on the right foot or had hybrids registered as pure from the very beginning. This is what results in the lack of confidence and resulting lack of preference toward registered animals.

Specialized registries such as the cornsnake registry would have a greater chance of success, and perhaps in 15 or 20 years it will actually mean something in the hobby. That sounds like I'm putting it down, I'm not, I just mean it might actually be an AKC of cornsnakes one day. For the time being though it is little more than a novelty that some hobbyists enjoy playing with but it's still not something that the vast majority of cornsnake buyers really care anything about. If I were looking to buy a cornsnake, whether it was or wasn't in the registry database would have absolutely no bearing on my purchase decision. By the admission of the registry site itself, all the information included in the registry is only as good as the individuals who supplied it, which in most cases that I have seen are actually the buyers of a certain snake, not the people who produced it.
General, all inclusive reptile registries however are almost always doomed to failure due to the logistics of the undertaking.
I think such a thing would be nice, once it was fully in place. Figuring out how to actually build it to the point it becomes valuable though is far more difficult than it initially appears.

Originally Posted by Clay Davenport

Specialized registries such as the cornsnake registry would have a greater chance of success, and perhaps in 15 or 20 years it will actually mean something in the hobby. That sounds like I'm putting it down, I'm not, I just mean it might actually be an AKC of cornsnakes one day. For the time being though it is little more than a novelty that some hobbyists enjoy playing with but it's still not something that the vast majority of cornsnake buyers really care anything about. If I were looking to buy a cornsnake, whether it was or wasn't in the registry database would have absolutely no bearing on my purchase decision. By the admission of the registry site itself, all the information included in the registry is only as good as the individuals who supplied it, which in most cases that I have seen are actually the buyers of a certain snake, not the people who produced it.
General, all inclusive reptile registries however are almost always doomed to failure due to the logistics of the undertaking.
I think such a thing would be nice, once it was fully in place. Figuring out how to actually build it to the point it becomes valuable though is far more difficult than it initially appears.

I understand where you coming from and I love that you're willing to give your opinion!

Any of these registeries are only successful because of community support. Nothing will be successful unless it is accepted by the individuals that it is "marketed" for.

One of the problems I see with the ACR (and I do not fault Chuck for this, he's kept it pretty simple) is that the submission process is a little more involved then some people like. Instead of having the ability to submit registrations online, you have to mail them in. I've heard quite a number of complaints about it, but in my opinion, it works. It also gives both the ACR and the owner paperwork to keep on file if anything were to happen to the database (*knock on wood*).

The ACR adopted a no policing policy where the information in the registry is only as good as those that entered the information. While that does mean that information in the ACR could be inaccurate, it also provides the necessary information where individuals can judge for themselves if the information provided is correct (Example: a picture of an Amel is posted for a particular registeration, but is listed as an Anery, abviously that's BS. OR a particular snake is listed as het Bloodred but has never produced Bloodred offspring despite having produced 100's of babies). As far as honest mistakes in the registery, that can be avoided if the paperwork for a pre-registered hatchling is completed before it is received by the buyer. I provide a completed pre-registration form to all buyers with all information except for the Registered Name & Applicant Information listed.

You have to admit though, it's cool to be able to look up a particular snake and see it's pictorial parentage and the genetics behind it!

Trusting people to be honest where money is on the line is akin to jumping off a cliff and expecting to float gracefully to the earth landing without a hair out of place.

Most will be honest but it only takes a few to ruin the whole thing.

That's the main reason I haven't registered any of my corns even though I am 10 generations into some of them.

Originally Posted by TripleMoonsExotic

Any of these registeries are only successful because of community support. Nothing will be successful unless it is accepted by the individuals that it is "marketed" for.

That's what I meant by specialized registries. The ACR is marketed toward cornsnake owners, some of which are very involved with their chosen species.
However, only a small percentage of cornsnake owners are currently using the registry. Hopefully this interest will increase at a steady enough rate to keep the ACR alive and growing, time will tell.
The sort of thing the original post alludes to is more of an all inclusive reptile registry, not only for snakes but lizards as well. This is marketed toward the entire reptile keeping hobby, and the percentage of users as compared to the overall number of hobbyists will be even smaller than it si with the ACR.
Any of these registries have the potential of becoming a viable part of the hobby, but specialized registries dealing with individual species will have a much better chance of success, especially when you factor in the relative dedication of the keepers to that species. For instance a green tree python registry would have much more possibility of success than a burmese python registry.
I'd like to see the ACR become the AKC of cornsnakes, and I'd like to see other reptile registries come into play as well. The fact is the odds are against them in the long run, and the more general the registry attempts to be the more difficult it will be to bring to that level.

Originally Posted by Wilomn

Trusting people to be honest where money is on the line is akin to jumping off a cliff and expecting to float gracefully to the earth landing without a hair out of place.

Most will be honest but it only takes a few to ruin the whole thing.

That's the main reason I haven't registered any of my corns even though I am 10 generations into some of them.

Wes, I don't understand what/who you are referencing this too. Do you mean about trusting the people who are running the ACR with money?

I also 100% agree with the bolded quote. Not just in reference to sending money somewhere either.

No moons, I mean the people registering their snakes.

There is NO way to verify that what they are saying is the truth.