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Red light flashing for ghosts?

evansnakes said:
Why would you buy an adult female that is either wild caught, long term wild caught or an animal that would either not breed or produce for $500-1200 when you can get true CB USA babies for $25-50 each and raise them yourself? You have the whole life history of the animal and you know what to expect from it. The adult females I breed now I raised myself from babies and could not be happier with them. You inherit somebody else's problems trying to get a quick fix on adult females. Let's face it, nobody is going to sell any really good adult females unless they can get much more than they are worth.
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Who was this directed at? I purchased 2 females in the last week from private people who kept them as pets. Some people just arent aware of what they have. Why wouldn't I spend $50 (which is what I bought the first one for) or $175 (which I bought a 2.1 trio for that had awesome light colors) and take a chance at producing sooner and getting more for the offspring before this precipitous price drop everyone keeps warning of? Last year I spent $200 on a 1.1 normal pair on October 14th. They produced 6 beautiful babies. Did I get taken on that deal? I dont think so...
 
Jamie, my comment was in response to what Richard asked me. Mellow out. I also understand that some wc animals are interesting. If you look at my site I have many odd wc females. What I was saying in response to Richard, when he asked me if I was figuring in the cost of the females in my equation. And no, you don't figure in the cost of the females. If you want to produce baby snakes you need females. It should be understood and go without saying that when I was talking about the investment in the male and creating baby pastels that you would obviously need females to breed it to. Females are not a cost. If you are smart/thrifty you pick up good looking baby to juvenile females for $15-35 each in the spring you put $200 worth of capital in food and heat, etc., into them and they are then worth current market value of $500+, so seeing them as an expense is only if you go out and pay top dollar for a quick fix for adult females right before you need to breed them.
 
evansnakes said:
Jamie, my comment was in response to what Richard asked me. Mellow out. I also understand that some wc animals are interesting. If you look at my site I have many odd wc females. What I was saying in response to Richard, when he asked me if I was figuring in the cost of the females in my equation. And no, you don't figure in the cost of the females. If you want to produce baby snakes you need females. It should be understood and go without saying that when I was talking about the investment in the male and creating baby pastels that you would obviously need females to breed it to. Females are not a cost. If you are smart/thrifty you pick up good looking baby to juvenile females for $15-35 each in the spring you put $200 worth of capital in food and heat, etc., into them and they are then worth current market value of $500+, so seeing them as an expense is only if you go out and pay top dollar for a quick fix for adult females right before you need to breed them.
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I was never not mellow, no worries! :>poke2<:

I agree with most of your points except that I also believe there are some deals to be had out there. A lot of people just dont know what they have. As I mentioned, I have found some bargains on females from people who had them as pets and just dont want them anymore. Better believe I will jump on every one of those.
 
evansnakes said:
Why would you buy an adult female that is either wild caught, long term wild caught or an animal that would either not breed or produce for $500-1200 when you can get true CB USA babies for $25-50 each and raise them yourself? You have the whole life history of the animal and you know what to expect from it. The adult females I breed now I raised myself from babies and could not be happier with them. You inherit somebody else's problems trying to get a quick fix on adult females. Let's face it, nobody is going to sell any really good adult females unless they can get much more than they are worth.
Click to expand...
Well if you looking to get on the road with it before the market drops further waiting 3 yrs isn't for most. If you bought a male pastel at the same time he'd be ready way before your females, kind of a waste having him sit it out for a few seasons. You'd hopefully be able make your money back faster with adult females rather than waiting. You still have their up front cost to cover before you get a profit but at least your not sitting there for 3 yrs holding you a** waiting. You can make some money on pastels but just breeding pastels to normals I don't see anyone getting really rich quick with all of the expenses involved and market drops. You better have something cool to cross it to if you want to make any real money.
 
Richard, I completely agree on all counts. I have to start somewhere and a codom is the quickest route. I am also buying het pairs but as you mention it takes time. I am not too worried though. I will take my time and get r done...
 
jglass38 said:
Richard, I completely agree on all counts. I have to start somewhere and a codom is the quickest route. I am also buying het pairs but as you mention it takes time. I am not too worried though. I will take my time and get r done...
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No, it's "Git r done."
 
Richard, where are the dramatic drops in price? Do you know how many years it took pastels to get as low as they are now? DO you know how many pastels were imported and how many breeders started with them? Do you realize how much money it is to get $1200-1500 for a female pastel? So you can take the same male pastel for $600 and breed it to a hypo, a pied, a spider, a pastel, a mojave or anything else and increase your return 100-1000x's over! And why does it take 3 years to breed a female? Mine breed in under 2 years at 1200 grams and up. If you went out and bought a platinum for $25,000 it would be fine to buy adult females to breed him to 9-10 months later, but you were so concerned with your investment I found it kind of unusual that you would spend more on a normal female then a male pastel.
 
evansnakes said:
So you can take the same male pastel for $600 and breed it to a hypo, a pied, a spider, a pastel, a mojave or anything else and increase your return 100-1000x's over!
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That's what I've been saying..... :rolleyes:
 
I am doing things the long way I guess. Buying 100% het males and small sized lots of ch females. I plan to grow them up, keep the girls I like (and some back ups) and sell the rest in 2 years (probably 1/2 of the 20 I order). I do this every year and I'll have ready females every year and enough extra females and CBB babies to pay for more het males to outcross. It will take some time and patience but it won't take as much money as jumping in and buying visable morphs, and less likely that some of those nasty traits show up. 2 year old females with good weight aren't cheap either!
 
hill4803 said:
I am doing things the long way I guess. Buying 100% het males and small sized lots of ch females. I plan to grow them up, keep the girls I like (and some back ups) and sell the rest in 2 years (probably 1/2 of the 20 I order). I do this every year and I'll have ready females every year and enough extra females and CBB babies to pay for more het males to outcross. It will take some time and patience but it won't take as much money as jumping in and buying visable morphs, and less likely that some of those nasty traits show up. 2 year old females with good weight aren't cheap either!
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It works, just requires patience. :)
 
Anthony McCain is a good example of that. He puirchased a het albino male way back in the day and raised him, bred him to normal females and raised all the 50% possible het girls produced over the years, started breeding them back to dad and producing albinos. Today Anthony has a very nice collection with many mutations and it all came from that first het male.
 
Well its very encouraging that it can be done with time and patience. I have very little so of course I want to do it as quickly as possible. We'll see what the next year or two brings.
 
I won't be in-breeding...doing lots of outcrossing to prevent any troublesome problems from showing up. 4 het albino males (unrelated) is plenty for a small breeding group. I'm thinking about some het pieds to really liven things up. I am not sure why people insist on heavy inbreeding when you can get an unrelated het male for a small amount of money. Don't need any wooble heads or kinked tails!
 
hill4803 said:
I won't be in-breeding...doing lots of outcrossing to prevent any troublesome problems from showing up. 4 het albino males (unrelated) is plenty for a small breeding group. I'm thinking about some het pieds to really liven things up. I am not sure why people insist on heavy inbreeding when you can get an unrelated het male for a small amount of money. Don't need any wooble heads or kinked tails!
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Definitely worth avoiding if possible but you better get comfortable with the idea of using it when needed if you want to work with any new/unproven traits. :)
 
There would have to be a pretty EXTREME trait showing up to make me inbreed my stock just to prove out a trait. It really has nothing to do with being comfortable, been breeding other stuff too long to really get worked up about "new" stuff & know enough about genetics (2 degrees in biology) to know when to leave well enough alone. I don't knock other people who inbreed...to each his own, just prefer to play it as safe with my stock as possible. I am not in this to get rich, I'm just trying to support my own bad habits. :nuts:
 
You won't see dramatic brith defects first generation from het albino or het pied x the pos het offspring from that parent. The problems you see in morphs now that are genetic are at the very least partly just because the mutation is effecting the animal the way it is, that mutation is more prove to minor defect like the caramel and the spider for whatever reason. I have never heard of anyone getting significant re-occuring problems from pastel x pastel, or het albino x het albino, etc. The old stats in the school books for birth defects in farm animals and lab animals suggested it would take inbreeding/line breeding of several generations before you could appreciate anything significant. Think how much leopard geckos have been line bred. Eventually you start getting animals with no eyes or mis-shapen heads but it takes many generations. I really also think that most snakes can sustain inbreeding without brith defects because if you think about it, in the wild ball pythons live in small isolated pockets. Every pied ever collected came from the same small area, just as an example. So for there to be pieds in the wild you would have really had to have a bunch of inbreeding in that local population. Same with leucistics, albinos, etc. I mean what are the odds in the wild that two het animals for the same trait would breed unless they were related living in am isolated population?
 
I agree Evan, but it significantly increase the odds of a negative trait (most negative traits are recessive) showing up every time you inbreed. There are problems showing up in the leopard geckos...not enough outcrossing getting done because of the money involved. As far as the morphs showing up in nature, that occurs as well, how frequently? I don't think we will ever know...but those organisms who have those traits generally aren't as well equipped for survival (albinos & pieds aren't as well camouflaged) and those organisms that have the other problems; for example, "wobble - head", probably don't survive long enough to reproduce and pass the "bad" genes on. I would venture to guess that there are LOTS of hets for unknown morphs in Ghana, hets don't show the recessive trait and the homozygous recessive ones who are showing the trait may get picked off by predators or have some other fatal gene linked to that particular trait. Nature has a way of "weeding" out certain traits and we seem to like to breed for those particular traits. Like I said, I don't knock anyone for doing their thing, but they need to be responsible about it.
 
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