Heterozygous traits, how much would you pay for 100% reassurance?

[A_Kendergirl]

I could see what Cathy is talking about as being very useful to a buyer, especially one who is a little wary about who they are buying from (for whatever reason...newbie, money, etc.). The only usefulness to a seller is if it helps seal the deal more often.

 

[coyote]

An example of what is available for horses.
http://www.avianbiotech.co.uk/EquineEN.htm

 

[Clay Davenport]

I know I was going to hold off posting until some sort of information was forthcoming, but now we have yet another possibility.
I have to say it, this thread blew right past pointless a long time ago. It's just forcing speculation in attempt to guess what the original post was even about.
This is like asking if you would be willing to pay someone $1000 to come work on your house without revealing what the job would be. Perhaps they're going to pull one weed from the flower bed, or maybe they're going to install an in ground pool.

Point blank question:
1. Are you talking about merely determining parentage?
2. Are you talking about actually identifying the presence of a recessive gene? (meaning we send in a sample of one snake marked "test for albino gene")
3. Is it a third and as of yet unguessed possibility?

IF you are just talking about determining parentage, like in the AKC example, then I personally would have no use for the service. It brings you right back to the original point of if you don't trust who you're buying from any more than that, why are you buying anything from them?
It would be useless to a breeder or anyone else in determining which possible hets were actual hets. If I bred my two het whatevers, I would know the parents, just not which of the offspring had the gene.

IF you ate talking about identifying whether a specific gene is present then that would be useful. However the latest hint in this scavenger hunt seems to suggest this is not the case at all. Which doesn't surprise me since I thought to begin with that this would require mapping of the snake genome which is probably fairly low on any scientists priority list.

I still haven't voted in the poll. Kind of hard to cast a vote when you don't know what it is you're voting on.
If it's number one, then I just don't forsee my ever using the service. If it's number 2 then I would be willing to pay for that.

 

[Cat_72]

IF you are just talking about determining parentage, like in the AKC example, then I personally would have no use for the service. It brings you right back to the original point of if you don't trust who you're buying from any more than that, why are you buying anything from them?

Maybe you've been around long enough to know exactly who you can buy from and who you can't, but not everyone has. (And not everyone has discovered the BOI!) And there are plenty of folks out there who may very well be selling genuine 100% hets, but people are leery of buying from them.

Pretend for a moment that you are shopping for 100% het pied Ball Pythons. Remember, this is PURELY hypothetical. You have 2 choices......buy them from "well known big breeder" for $1000, or buy them from me, with a genetic guarantee that they are indeed the offspring of my homozygous pied male, for $600. Both animals are equally healthy, and of equal value.
Saving $400 would be of no use to you?

 

[Clay Davenport]

Maybe you've been around long enough to know exactly who you can buy from and who you can't, but not everyone has. (And not everyone has discovered the BOI!) And there are plenty of folks out there who may very well be selling genuine 100% hets, but people are leery of buying from them.

Pretend for a moment that you are shopping for 100% het pied Ball Pythons. Remember, this is PURELY hypothetical. You have 2 choices......buy them from "well known big breeder" for $1000, or buy them from me, with a genetic guarantee that they are indeed the offspring of my homozygous pied male, for $600. Both animals are equally healthy, and of equal value.
Saving $400 would be of no use to you?

It still boils down to trust. How would I know the pied male you claim provided the DNA sample for the paternity test was actually the snake it came from? If we didn't know each other at all and were on opposite ends of the country, how would I know you actually had a pied male and not just a picture of one? Unless the company doing the testing took the sample and notorized it as being taken from a visually pied snake, and also took the samples from the offspring to certify everything with photographic certificates, the possibility of fraud still exists. The certificate itself would even have to be copyproof by using a notary imprint or something to prevent photo editing and using the same certificate to sell numerous snakes.
Perhaps this is how it would work, I don't know, we are still just speculating after all.

I suppose I do view the situation somewhat differently that some would have to. I do know someone who is working with pretty much anything I'd be interested in keeping. People who are really no more well known than myself but known to me to the point I have complete trust in anything I get from them.
There are many people who in all probability are selling genuine hets that I would not buy from because they are complete unknowns to me. However I do not have to worry about resorting to buying hets from someone I've never heard of so that peobably does color my opinion to a point.
Regardless, details of the procedure would have to be provided to determine if indeed it can prevent fraud. If the breeder is responsible for taking the samples of the parents and offspring then sending them to a lab, then the scammers can still sell fake hets but have the added bonus of having them certified as genuine.

 

[shrap]

Exactly Clay....

This in no way, at least in Cat's scenario, that this prevents fraud. People can make fake "genetic guarantees" from a lab just as easily as they make fake guarantees now on hets. It all comes full circle again... do you trust the person selling the hets or not.

 

[Cat_72]

I guess I can just hang up my business now, huh? If no one wants to buy hets from an unknown, and even something like this isn't going to help, perhaps it's pointless.

 

[Chameleon Company]

Wouldn't be so quick with that Cathy. I agree completely with Sammy and Clay. BUT !! While you may be unable to produce references of folks who have proven you to be a trustworthy seller of hets, who bought from you in years past and have proven your bloodlines, you still have references to be a quality person in other representations. Most of these scammers do not. Everyone starts at the bottom and moves up. If you are on the up-and-up, you can develop known and respected references (to include NO "bad-gal" threads here or elsewhere) quick enough, and your $600 het may have more appeal than a large breeder's $1000 het. If a genetic marker test ever becomes available and affordable, all will benefit, but until then, you may just have to compete a little harder.

 

[shrap]

I guess I can just hang up my business now, huh? If no one wants to buy hets from an unknown, and even something like this isn't going to help, perhaps it's pointless.

I would not call you an unknown Cathy. While you may not have a long track record selling animals you do have a long track record displaying what type of person you are. As Jim pointed out you have never had any type of "bad gal" posts about you as a buyer or seller and your rep is flawless. Just because you have yet to make an impact on the community with a sales history dont mean you have not made an impact with your knowledge, willingness to help others and the integrity you have shown through your posts. So dont sell yourself short, Cat.

 

[Lucille]

Cathy, I would have complete faith buying anything from you. I would need no fancy tests if you were the vendor of an animal I wanted to purchase.

 

[Clay Davenport]

They're right Cathy. I composed my response as if I didn't know you at all, and had never heard your name until I saw your ad for het pieds.
Based on the way in which you present yourself on this forum I personally wouldn't have a problem buying hets from you, and I'm sure that's true for many who are familiar with you here.
If you're breeding your visual to a het female then you'll have visual offspring for sale as well which will also add to your credibility to those who don't know you at all.

 

[The BoidSmith]

We all know that the paternity proof is pretty straight forward, right?

What would happen if a breeder sold his heterzygous animals with the DNA profile of either sire or dam (either one or both visual morphs)?

If the father is a male he can use copies of the same DNA profile to sell all the offspring of that male. All a buyer has to do is run a DNA profile on his animal and check with the DNA profile supplied by the seller.

What makes it even easier in reptiles is that sheds or scutes can be used as samples for DNA testing.

Not fool proof but nevertheless interesting. Good discussion!

Regards.

 

[Serpwidgets]

Well, there are two problems with a paternity/maternity test:

1- If I find out after the fact that it's not from the father they say it is, and they know that they could be "busted" by such a test, don't care, and still sell fraudulently, it is a ridiculous amount effort involved in trying to rectify things, and I would not trust that I'd ever see the money back even with all the effort having been expended. I appreciate Lucille's optimism in these matters, but you cannot (legally) physically force someone to pay even with a judgement against them.

2- In order to be able to run a paternity/maternity test, the seller already has to be a participant in the process, since they are (presumably) in possession of the parents. This is still easy enough for scammers to scam, since the people running the testing lab will never have physical access to the specimens in question. In cornsnakes there is a much simpler solution that is no more open to fraud, and doesn't cost $50 per animal... here's an example: http://www.herpregistry.com/acr/Registry.php?idnum=81

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As far as a genotype test, that would be many many times more valuable for breeders than a paternity test could ever be for buyers. At this point it would be stupid for me to cross a quintuple het for amel, anery, motley, hypo, and lavender to, say, a triple het for diffused motley charcoal, because I would get a bunch of hatchlings that were basically "normals and motleys, plus you gotta try to figure out which, if any, of the other 6 genes they're het for before you could even plan anything, plus you'd have to keep a bunch of them for 3 years just to figure out if any of them are even worthwhile."

(Yes, these are real-life examples, and most of my snakes are het or homo for 3-5 mutants.)

I also have a snow motley that is possible het for lavender, and possible het or homo hypo. I would like to make hypo lavender motleys with her, but I don't even know if she carries the right genes. It would be worth at least $50 to know her genotype today, so I can decide whether or not to invest another 2 years into raising her up.

It would be a great advantage to be able to use hets as breeders with the knowledge of the genotypes of their offspring. You could produce morphs based on recessive traits with the same breeding strategies used for dominant genes. That's a huge deal.

 

[Cat_72]

I apologize for seeming a bit thin-skinned in my last post, and thank those of you who left kind words. It just gets discouraging some days...the rotten scammers out there who make it difficult for someone trying to get started as a completely honest person. I guess I still have a hard time believing what lengths some of these scammers will go to just to make a few bucks.

That said, I still believe that if done properly, this could be of some aid in weeding out some of the bad guys at least, it's just a matter of closing the loopholes....which I suppose is easier said than done. And as Coyote posted, they DO have some testing already in horses for certain color genes, etc...I think it's something worth developing and working toward in the future.

 

[Eden's Exotic Haven]

This is a very interesting topic! I am a bit confused about what exactly I am supposed to be placing my vote on.

I agree with some of you though, I'd pay $100 to $150 to be sure my hets really carried the gene they're het for, but I'm not sure if that's actually what's being proposed. I'm very new to ball pythons (bought my first about a year ago) and I do plan on breeding morphs. I have two hets, I bought them from a well known breeder, but I prefer to build friendly relationships with people I buy my animals from, which is why I prefer to buy from the little guys. With all the scammers that are out there it's very hard to trust anyone, so some kind of genetic proof would be great, if that is what's being proposed.

If we're talking about parental testing, I see no real use for it with breeders, and since nonbreeders probably aren't buying hets, I doubt that's what's being proposed.




Jennifer and Dereck

 

[The BoidSmith]

In my opinion we are not that far away from having something like this being a reality. It's only a matter of getting the right testing company involved, and an interest by a few progressive breeders. The picture ID was proposed for the first time right here in Faunaclassifieds. Although it started slowly it's use is now widespread. It was a huge step forward in the right direction but, as we have seen lately, far from being fool proof. Again the paternity would not be fool proof either, but I would feel far more confident in purchasing an heterozygous animal that comes with a picture ID, its DNA profile and that of the sire and/or dam.

Regards.

 

[crotalusadamanteus]

I voted $150. I feel if you are just not 100% sure, but want it, and the $150 makes you feel more secure than do it.

I personally agree with clays point. if i don't trust, i don't buy.

 

[AmariPhotography]

If you get a judgement in court, the court gives you a piece of paper that states Mr/Mrs. X owes you $$$ My friend was recently embezzled from by her bookkeeper. over 40k over one yr. it took her TWO more years and disgustingly large amounts of her personal time to recover just 25k ( the amt of the bond) and she pd the lawyer about 8k...net recovery 17k....when we figured her hrs spent on this....22 dollars an hr....thats what she recovered of her own money that she earned. bleeping sick(and the person is still free)....

Sooooo... if i scrape and save and invest 3 5 or even 10k to get started breeding some cool high dollar morphs and get taken by some corrupt breeder.... i as an average ( or even above average) hobbyist/breeder/enthusiast am not going to be able to afford to goto court. even with concrete evidence....oh and by the way the $$$ recovered by my friend was from the bond...not the free crook...ponder that and think about self regulation....document EVERYTHING you purchase...and if you get taken by someone...tell the world so that person goes belly up...but back it up w/copies of the ad, all correspondence etc etc...we don't need slandering...we need to regulate our own industry and the joke courts be damned

 

[The BoidSmith]

Aaron,

Point well taken. Every now and then we hear people saying they are going to sue someone over $500. Caution is still the best approach and if in spite of it you become the victim of a scam juts let the rest know. You may not recover what you lost, but at least you will be helping others. As far as the topic of this thread goes there was not much interest of the company to work on this. We are probably just a drop in the bucket compared to other, more traditional, pets.

Regards.

 

[bcherps]

Hi All,

I wish I had gotten in on this thread earlier.

I work at the University of Florida as a Biological Scientist in the Molecular Genetics Department. Genotyping is 50-60 percent of my job. I am tinkering with some genotyping of reptiles now. I am working with several species of snakes, and I will be working with a couple of large scale producers that have multiple generations of the same mutation plus het and wildtype siblings available. Of course we will be ball focused in the end, but I am looking at corns as the template becuase it is easier to ask for a scale clip from an albino motley corn than it is from a snow spider ball.

I am also working out if sheds are viable instead of scale clips.

Genotyping is a very easy procedure and I could teach a ten year old to do it, and it only takes a couple of minutes of work and a few hours in a cycler. What is difficult is locating the location, and dna sequence of the mutation. Also is it a single mutation in one spot, or is it a shift over lots of modifier genes-and if modifier genes which ones are needed and which ones are not for the mutation to be expressed. All these need to be worked out before we can say that what we see on the agorose gel at the end of the day is indeed what we were really looking for.

We are a ways away and like I said I am just tinkering with it in my spare time. However, there are other services that require genotyping over at the vet school and I believe the charge is right in the $130 range.

However, the problem, still lies with the validity of the seller.

For example, I could genotype 10 balls for someone and come out with 5 hets. What is there to say that he doesn't take the results, duplicate the het documents and fabricate the norms into het documents? Or if I am recieving packages of sheds or scale clips, how do I know that breeder x has not sent me 10 clips from the same het whatever snake, and then uses the documents to represent 10 ch norms?

If people can forge drivers licenses, money, and paintings, they sure as heck can forge a validation certificate from a lab.

Thanks
ben