New price order?

Originally Posted by WingedWolf

Size AND age combined = maturity. And no argument is going to make me think it's ok to breed an 800 gram female.
I don't think it's right to breed large 2 year olds, either. I think the snake should be at least 3.
Boys, sure--a year old is fine if they're eating great, and are over 500 grams. But people breed these girls too young and too tiny, and then wonder why they always get 3 egg clutches from them.

Kelli, I bred leopard geckos for a couple of years. I wouldn't have my females laying that many clutches, I feel it's too hard on them. One female would produce 3 or 4 pairs of eggs, and then I would adjust the temps and light, move the male, and shut them down for the season. I had one female try to keep on going, I had a heck of a time getting her to quit laying...she just wasn't responding to the lighting changes, and wound up laying 7 clutches. That female wound up doing poorly in the long run.

But that just illustrates my point--people CAN produce a lot more leos in a year than they can generally produce ball pythons, and in a lot less space. And then those babies only take about a year to grow up. That's the reason the leo market is so much more volatile.

Yeah Donna, tell Kelli how to breed leos.

Hey, there's no way I can say it without pissing SOMEONE off. If you want to breed a 2-year-old, that's your choice. I didn't say that it was a terrible cruel thing to breed a 1500 gram 2-year-old--I said that _I_ didn't think it was right. And I wouldn't do it. I DO think it's detrimental to breed a female under 1500 grams. (Exceptions made for the occasional super-short 4-year-old with a good appetite who just might be unusually small). I think a female will produce larger clutches and withstand breeding better if she is at least three, and is over 1500 grams.
What exactly did I do in this thread to deserve that personal attack, Shrap?
It's not as though this opinion is unique to me, plenty of others share it. They certainly aren't lacking in education on reproduction (which is an amusing way of putting it anyhow).

I figured someone would feel personally threatened if I said I thought 2 year olds and females under 1500 shouldn't be bred. That doesn't change my opinion of it, and certainly doesn't make my opinion wrong. Nor does someone saying they did it and had no apparent problems. I don't think it's in the best interests of the animals.

I love how people are getting on my case here for putting the welfare of the animals before fast/high quantity reproduction. It's like, 'selective breed so you don't make ugly animals...but it's ok to breed vast quantities of pretty animals no matter how hard it might be on the females!"
Come on...lose the double standard. If you want to breed as many animals in a year as you possibly can, and breed your animals as early as conceivable, fine--I still reserve the right to think that's not in their best interests.

Donna, there is no point in even talking to you when you cant even stick to what you say. You constantly change the parameters to try and justify your stance. You are wishy washy to say the least and I personally have no desire to waste my time on people like you.

It wasn't an attack. It was a disagreement. Didn't you learn the difference in the Hell forum?

Oh and my point exactly....

Originally Posted by WingedWolf

Exceptions made for the occasional super-short 4-year-old with a good appetite who just might be unusually small)

Happens often enough.

The more you talk Donna the more you show exactly how much you do not know.

<--personal attack, and nothing more. Not a disagreement.

The hell forum has no business being brought up here, and I would have thought people were professional enough to keep such things seperate. If I wanted an argument with personal attacks and name-calling, I would have posted there. This is supposed to be a civil discussion about the market--it's wandered into the quality of animals being produced, and I thought the way some people are reproducing animals too young and treating them like waste products when they are 'just normals' was relevent to that as well. In the drive to produce lots of expensive animals, the welfare of the animals is not being put first (and in some cases, such as those show vendors, is not being considered at all). I'm aware my opinion on how soon, and at what weight, ball pythons should be bred is on the conservative side. Likewise, with the few leos I produced, it was as well. I am not saying people who don't stick with that are all horrible.

But unless you think breeding an 800 gram 2 year old ball python is A-OK, why would you take such offense to it?

Didn't take offense to anything. Don't care much for Ball Pythons as it were. Sorta girly to me. But I did disagree, and commented on what seemed like a blanket statement made by you about judging age by size.

Originally Posted by WingedWolf

I love how people are getting on my case here for putting the welfare of the animals before fast/high quantity reproduction. It's like, 'selective breed so you don't make ugly animals...but it's ok to breed vast quantities of pretty animals no matter how hard it might be on the females!"

The two aren't mutually exclusive, nobody suggested that they were except *you*. Selective breeding doesn't simply cover appearance either- it means taking the best possible animals and propagating them, while keeping animals with negative traits from adding to the gene pool.

Donna, really... are you functionally illiterate? Some kind of disorder? If you're mentally disabled, you have an excuse.

And at that point, I stop posting, yet again, and hope that the moderators will step in and deal with the fertilizer.

I really can't abide people who can't keep a debate civil.

Originally Posted by WingedWolf

And at that point, I stop posting, yet again, and hope that the moderators will step in and deal with the fertilizer.

I really can't abide people who can't keep a debate civil.

I really can't abide people who are completely incapable of even the faintest glimmer of comprehension.

Guess that makes us about even, huh Rudy?

Originally Posted by WingedWolf

I love how people are getting on my case here for putting the welfare of the animals before fast/high quantity reproduction. It's like, 'selective breed so you don't make ugly animals...but it's ok to breed vast quantities of pretty animals no matter how hard it might be on the females!"
Come on...lose the double standard. If you want to breed as many animals in a year as you possibly can, and breed your animals as early as conceivable, fine--I still reserve the right to think that's not in their best interests.

You are completely missing the point. NO ONE is getting "on your case" about the fact that you have the welfare of the animals in mind. What they ARE trying to tell you is that selective breeding has nothing to do with breeding vast quantities, nor expecting lesser specimens to be "treated like garbage". A butt-ugly pastel is just as much a living, breathing animal as a bright and beautiful one....but that certainly doesn't mean that butt-ugly snake should be bred to pass on those butt-ugly genetics. He would make a fine pet for someone...but some would insist on breeding it, just because they want babies. Isn't that greed as well?

You raise your voice against "quantity" breeders, but shouldn't QUALITY be important as well?