Clay Davenport
Cerebral Nomad
That in a nutshell is the problem. One of the largest inhibitors of eliminating such undesirable mutations from the gene pool is the bottom line. If they are originating the strain, they are in a hurry to cash in. If they are entering the market early, they want to make their money before everyone is breeding them and the prices crash.
In this day and age, we as breeders can safely assume that most every snake we sell will at some point be bred, or at least the attempt be made, either by the purchaser or by someone else down the line. It seems that everyone who owns two leopard geckos feels they have to hatch some more.
This leaves it up to the breeders to do the culling, something which far too few are willing to do, especially with the valuable morphs. The fact that you see so many one eyed albinos etc. is testament to the fact.
Rather than put the snake down, many will merely discount it and sell it anyway. This almost assures that its genes will remain in the collective pool. The more valuable the morph, the higher that assurance. Someone who really wants an albino boa, but can't afford it will see the one eyed specimen as a cost effective way to get into the morph market.
To me this is simply unethical. Maybe not in the classical sense of right and wrong, but definately in the big picture of furthering our hobby.
Breeders are not responsible for just hatching eggs so the rest of the people can have a snake. They also bear a certain degree of responsibility of improving the bloodlines, or at least not degrading them, whether they accept that responsibility or not.
Snakes with physical deformities from birth, even if they will not affect the snake's ability to breed or quality of life should be culled. They should be, by some method, removed from the gene pool entirely. While all deformities are not genetic, who is to say which are and which are a result of environmental factors during incubation?
The problem is when someone is looking at a $2000 snake with one eye, they choose to price it for a grand and sell it rather than take the "loss" entirely.
Unfortunately breeding ethics are something that cannot be taught or enforced, it is up to the breeder himself to set his own standards in that area, and the consumers to choose what standards he will require from a breeder he chooses to buy a snake from.
As long as there are high dollar morphs though, there will be those with one eye, or a kinked back making up part of the breeding pool.
While my opinion matters little, I do lose respect for people I see selling such snakes. It tells me they hold little concern for the genetic integrity of the snakes they profess to love so much. If that integrity is lost though, what's the point in producing them?
