Views on culling

I am fairly new to breeding reptiles and so far have only bred my leos for their wonderful temperament as well as their beauty. I read an article on someones website ,that they had written, on the issue of culling offspring and was slightly shocked.

This persons view was that breeding reptiles just for sale was wrong ,which I agree with, but they said that you should only breed for the refinement of a species and that meant the culling of offspring ,and not just the sick or deformed, but any animal that is either too widely available ie normal types, or exta animals that are produced as a result of experimenting with genetics that didn't turn out as expected as far as colour and patterning is concerned.

I do agree that over breeding of certain species of animals just for monetry gain is wrong but does anyone else think that this type of culling is extreme or am I just a bit deluded!!

Please let me know you opinions.

Thanks

murphysmorph

There are plenty of people out there who buy normal, say, leopard geckos and enjoy them. Killing an animal out of fear it might end up in the hands of a newbie instead of sold to the morph-breeding elite is unecessary and seems like a waste. And breeding morphs is NOT refining a species. The species is perfectly refined when we take it out of nature. So I say if you're going to breed, be prepared to find homes for all your healthy offspring, normal or not. The culling of less than perfect animals (ie missing eyes, kinks), especially in species with a small gene pool, is another issue altogether.

Erin Benner

I'm going to assume it's my website you are referring to, considering I haven't personally seen any other online articles which discuss this subject. If that is the case, it'd be nice if you included a link to the article in question so others could read it first hand as opposed to only offering your rather lacking interpretation of what I said.
If I am incorrect and it was another article you read, then my mistake.
http://www.arbreptiles.com/culling.html

I did not suggest that all normal type offspring should be culled, nor did I suggest that we should focus on morph breeding.
Refining a species is eliminating an undesirable trait. That undesirable trait may be poor feeding response, a genetic defect, or just an imperfect pattern. It depends on the goals of the breeder.
The latter is the extreme case, some will do it most will not. If a breeder is aiming towards producing a line of perfectly striped cal kings, then yes, any specimen with a broken stripe is subject to culling if the breeder so desires.

The species is perfectly refined when we take it out of nature.

A species is perfectly refined to survive in the wild. However, this most certainly doesn't always align with what is desirable in captivity. Take for instance the preferance of many kingsnakes to feed initially on lizard prey. In the wild this is a benefit. They are more likely to locate a small lizard than they are pink mice.
In captivity however requiring lizards or lizard scented prey is undesirable, so selecting specimens for breeding that begin feeding readily on mice and culling specimens that are the most difficult to convert from scented prey is advancing in that direction, and in doing so it is strengthing the captive lineages.
Captivity and the wild are two completely different things, and what is desirable in one is often not desirable in the other.

I say if you're going to breed, be prepared to find homes for all your healthy offspring, normal or not.

The reality is this just isn't always the best thing for the hobby. Many are of the opinion that if you are responsible for bringing a snake or what have you into the world you are somehow obligated to ensure is survives and lives a long happy life.
This is shortsighted, and in some cases a detriment to the hobby.
The first thing a breeder must assume is that every snake he or she sells will be bred. This isn't always the case, but with captive breeding being such a routine occurance it's a safe bet that someone sometime will attepmt to reproduce any animal you sell.
Let's take again the example of a poor feeding kingsnake. Say I hatch a nice little Arizona mountain king that refuses to feed. No tricks work to get it going, so I resort to force feeding mouse tails for a few months and finally brumate it. After warming it up I finally get it to take a scented pink after much effort. Three or four months later it finally starts to take live pinks semi regularly. It's perfectly healthy, but was exceedingly difficult to get feeding. This particular animal should be removed from the gene pool. There is no reason to promote this tendancy in the next generation, and to do so only perpetuates the feeding problems with this species.
On the other side of the coin, any hatchlings that take an unscented pink on their first or second meal should definately be held back for breeding. It's practices such as this that refines a species to captivity, and makes it more desirable to keep and breed.
If this type of culling doesn't sit well with you, you'd definately hate the methods serious dog breeders use when they are working toward the perfection of the breed standard.

The main point in the article is that so many hobbyists are breeding whatever they have that happens to be the opposite sex, just so they can make some more babies to sell for $20 each. They sell everything that hatches, including non feeders and specimens with minor kinking. You see it in the classifieds all the time. One eyed albino boas are commonplace for no reason whatsoever other thar greed, plain and simple. Many of these people are merely soft hearted and try to find homes for deformed offspring without understanding what they are doing. Others just want to make another buck, so they discount undesirable specimens and sell them regardless.
The fact is, just because you have a pair of leopard geckos doesn't mean you simply have to breed them, although many seem to believe this apparently. Think of the advances we would see if only a portion of the hobbyists putting all that energy into producing a few dozen more leos would instead devote it toward a species which is still uncommon in captivity, or not as commonly bred. There are many species which people do not work with because they are not the latest fad, or they are waiting on someone else to figure them out and publish a set of step by step instructions on how to breed them.
A huge percentage of reptile "breeders" follow only the easy route of working with the common species, replicating the work done by the people who put into establishing the breeding protocols to begin with.

Keep in mind that I am an American, and that being the case, the entire article was written from that perspective and is concerned only with that part of the hobby. In Ireland, where you're from, species availability is likely much different, and there is probably a large place for additional breeders of all species including the common ones. In this country however there are many professional breeders that supply all the leopard geckos and such that we need, and that should serve to free up the experienced hobbyist to pursue work with species more in need of reproduction, or at least allow him to devote a portion of his energy to that area. Unfortunately though, many are quite content to churn out more of the same things while rarely bred species continue to be so.

just to say that it wasn't your site I saw it on I don't really want to say which site it was as I do not want the person to receive bad mail as I feel everyone is entitled to their own opinion and that I am not judging them but wondering what other people felt on the subject

just to say that it wasn't your site I saw it on

In that case just take the above as my opinion of the subject and nothing more.
I would though be interested in reading the article. No hate mail intended, but I enjoy hearing the opinions of others on various subjects, and I could then comment more accurately on it.
You can PM me the link if you are willing to share it.

I haven't read either site. I'll read Clay's later, I have to make dinner. Culling bad feeders is different again from culling for an 'imperfect pattern'.

Erin B.

It's perfectly healthy, but was exceedingly difficult to get feeding. This particular animal should be removed from the gene pool. There is no reason to promote this tendency in the next generation, and to do so only perpetuates the feeding problems with this species.

As for the quote from Clay, this might work for me if you knew that the feeding response of this snake was due to its genetic makeup. Its genes and their sets of instructions may be just fine, and it could possibly be that some other factor as environment has effected the snake causing it not to eat. I don't mean your keeper setup, but do mean environmental factors that span from within the mother snake as the eggs developed, to development within the egg, to development after birth. Such factors could include, but not necessarily be limited to: pathogens, toxin, disease, parasites and so forth. Just a thought...

As to the original sentiment in this thread: I don't think culling is wrong, I just don't see the reason for it as it as being definitely linked to genetics. As for the Leopard geckos, heck: I see nothing wrong with breeding Leos for snake food for the kind of snakes that are lizard eaters. In that case I might cull out good ones for sale. As to using them for food, plenty of House Geckos are bred to meet the same fate. I do not believe for a moment that any animal you breed must be sold to someone else as a pet, or must be allowed to prosper and lead a full and long life span. If I believed that I would not eat meat of any kind: fowl nor fish nor red meat...

Then again culling does not necessarily mean killing an animal. Selecting it and removing it from the population can also be culling. I guess I am assuming that the person in question meant killing them - but how am I to know without reading the article.

As for the reference to:

you should only breed for the refinement of a species and that meant the culling of offspring ,and not just the sick or deformed, but any animal that is either too widely available ie normal types, or extra animals that are produced as a result of experimenting with genetics that didn't turn out as expected as far as color and patterning is concerned.

The quoted statement, if it truly reflects what was in the web site seems, in my opinion, to be rather weird. If you start culling all the animals that don't meet the expectations you had, you may wind up doing a few not too good things: First of all you may cull out something that would have later produced a fabulous offspring; including what you had been expecting. You may also cull out what later may have become a true favorite among herpers. In essence what you did was stopped experimenting and that is not usually in the nature of true experimentation. Could you imagine where the hobby would be if every het had been culled (and by this I do mean killed) because the original guys who bred them expected all albinos but instead got hets.

I am not opposed to culling deformed animals. I am not even really opposed to you using culls as feeders, even if your determination of which to cull is based upon the expectations you had of what an offspring should look like subsequent to breeding endeavors (or even if you just really need the feeders). However, to get rid of them (to treat them as culls - especially if you mean as in killing and disposing of them - simply because your own experimentation did not arrive at the expectations that you yourself had set for that experimentation - would seem to me (my opinion) - to be rather pompous and arrogant. You (I mean this generically - the word you is not directed to anyone in this thread) may wind up with your head stuck up your own butt because you really got overly pompous when you decided to play god by deciding that your expectations regarding your experimentation were infallible thereby making the animals worthless to you. Hell the whole nature of doing an experiment is to see if your hypothesis was right or not - and not to definitely always arrive at what you expected - where as on the other hand a breeding venture that is not experimental would be expected justifiably to arrive at statistically variable or invariable preconceived results. Of course, without reading the article in question, I would not be able to say if this was the intent of the person in question. I hope I am getting my point across without sounding two faced, the thing is it comes down to EXPERIMENTAL versus proven for the point I am making, and to demand the results you wanted have to come about after the conclusion of your experiment is really, in my opinion, kind of whacko.

I don't really want to say which site it was as I do not want the person to receive bad mail as I feel everyone is entitled to their own opinion and that I am not judging them but wondering what other people felt on the subject

As for the thread starter who asked for our opinions of another person's policy: Why not post a link so we all can read it ourselves! Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, and if that person posted something on the internet that you read and brought up here - then aren't the rest of us entitled to see what you expect us to comment about, and isn't that person entitled to be notified of this thread so he/she can also comment. Such would have made it a whole lot easier for me to phrase my response above in a way that I was more positive that I was certain I was talking about the right thing. As it is now, you want our opinions about an issue which bothered you - but which is also an issue to which you will not make us privy. That is, in my opinion, not fair to the other users of this site, nor is it fair to the person who wrote that piece since all we have is your interpretation of what was said... I am not necessarily saying your interpretation is wrong, just that asking us to comment on someone else's policies without allowing us to actually see those policies for ourselves is very limiting and puts us in an awkward position with regards to our commenting on that policy.

Best regards,
Glenn Bartley

As for the quote from Clay, this might work for me if you knew that the feeding response of this snake was due to its genetic makeup. Its genes and their sets of instructions may be just fine, and it could possibly be that some other factor as environment has effected the snake causing it not to eat.

While this may be true, there is no way of determining one way or the other. In an instance such as this, with lack of any evidence to the contrary, I assume a worst case scenario attitude and consider it genetic to err on the side of caution.
To put hope in the idea that it's other factors which are responsible is merely reaching for justification to sell the animal.
Frankly, while anything is possible I suppose, I don't see how any of the factors you mentioned could affect the preferred prey of a neonate. The odds are highly in favor of it being a genetic predisposition.

As for the posting of the original link, even though I requested it be sent in PM, which it hasn't, in there's really no valid reason for not posting it.
The author published it on the internet, and that alone demonstrates his willingness to submit it to the opinions of others. Any hate mail that person may receive will be a result of their own actions and nothing else. I know I've received a fair amount of mail from both sides of sensitive issues I have written about, it just comes with it if you choose to post something for the world to see. He is inviting the world to comment on his opinion when he posts it for the world to see.
Considering this person placed something on the web, there is simply no basis for anyone who runs across it to feel they must protect them from potential repercussions of their own actions.

Clay,

I went back and reread your initial post. I had thought that your last reply had made sense and some of it does; but I am bothered by something you wrote in that initial post:

In captivity however requiring lizards or lizard scented prey is undesirable, so selecting specimens for breeding that begin feeding readily on mice and culling specimens that are the most difficult to convert from scented prey is advancing in that direction, and in doing so it is strengthening the captive lineage.

I would think that scenting prey is mostly very undesirable to a big time breeder who is out to make bucks. For a hobbyist, scenting may be a challenge that is welcomed. Then again, having a snake eat its natural prey of lizards where no scenting of pinkies would be involved, may be someone else's cup of tea - for example a purist type of keeper. I guess what I am getting at is that culling for such reasons, in my opinion, does little if anything to strengthen a captive's lineage, but is doing a more to strengthen a breeder's business. This is a common occurrence in ranching. Yes it may make the animal more desirable to a breeder, or to some buyers, I just don't see that as making the animal's captive lines any stronger genetically. I realize that from a bigtime breeders point of view, such may be a strength of the species in question; but to me it translates to a selling point or sales enhancer not a species enhancer. Heck, a new trend may arise where snake keepers decide to feed snakes more natural prey (stranger things have happened in the herp world). Where would that leave the ones that were switched to pinkies by way of selective breeding?

Oh well, I am not trying to sway you or others. As I said I do believe in culling. I just find the topic rather curious and interesting, and found your views to be the best expressed and most interesting of all, and worth discussing even if I don't necessarily agree with every point. As to other points you made, I think we are pretty much in agreement on quite a few.

Best regards,

Glenn B.

I would think that scenting prey is mostly very undesirable to a big time breeder who is out to make bucks. For a hobbyist, scenting may be a challenge that is welcomed. Then again, having a snake eat its natural prey of lizards where no scenting of pinkies would be involved, may be someone else's cup of tea - for example a purist type of keeper.

Scenting prey is definately a negative to anyone who produces a number of hatchlings every year, and there may be some hobbyists that do welcome the challenge of scenting to get a neonate started, I just have never met one.
No matter what organism is being cultivated in a domestic situation, there will always be a few that don't adhere to what is commonly accepted as desirable. Most often these are the miority by far however.
In my opinion overall, the vast majority of snake keepers of all experience levels prefer snakes that feed readily on rodent prey. Otherwise why would you see ads specifying that a hatchling is taking unscented pinks? It makes that specimen more desirable to all potential keepers because if the increased chances that it will thrive in their collection.
This is particularly true of less experienced keepers, whose numbers today are greater than ever before. There's a far better chance of fueling their interest in mountain kings if their little hatchling takes pinks rather than spending weeks worrying about how to get it to feed, and potentially losing the animal at some point.
The occasional personal preferance aside, I would feel safe in saying there are few people who would choose a snake on the basis it is difficult to feed.

Yes it may make the animal more desirable to a breeder, or to some buyers, I just don't see that as making the animal's captive lines any stronger genetically.

It strengthens the lineage in respect to captivity and the road to domestcation. It does not mean they are stronger in comparison to their wild counterparts and what is needed to survive in that environment. The two situations cannot be compared equally.
To selectively breed for specimens that initially take rodent prey makes the species better equipped to thrive in captivity, this is what I was referring to as strengthening the lineage.
There's a portion of the community that are hesitant to work with certain species due to the fact the neonates are difficult to start feeding. If these problems begin to be solved by people who are willing to work on them, then interest in those species will increase to a degree.
In the big picture, at this point in time at least, such selective breeding is not having a great effect on captive lines because so few are participating in the process. One breeder may have refined his group to the point that a problem feeder is relatively rare, but unless the people he provides offspring to continue the process, it will be interupted in the next generation.
I still see it as an important part of captive breeding, and I believe it will gain acceptance as time goes on.