Posted by:
bhb
at Thu Apr 26 15:17:40 2007 [ Email Message ] [ Show All Posts by bhb ]
I think Kim is spot on with this one. For whatever reason I do have a larger percentage of CB animals that require a little extra effort to get feeding. I have been importing in large numbers of CH babies for about ten years and when you buy them from the right exporters, set them up properly as soon as you get them and give them the proper husbandry they seem to thrive better then the CB. I really don’t have any data that would lead me to believe that down the road one is better then the other, but as far as babies go, I really think CH are a little easier to get started. That’s of course in large numbers like we work with. I would imagine that if you had one clutch of baby Balls that you would be able to get each and every animal to thrive with very little problems.
There is a different issue when it comes to the ecology of the importing. This is a touchy topic and I think for the most part it’s being managed very well. In Ghana they have to release all the females that lay back in to the wild and also a small percentage of the hatch as well. It’s not as regulated in Togo or Benine, but for the most part I think that they keep a relatively good handle on it. So I would guess if I had any problem with it at all, I would want to make sure that these animals will still be abundant in the wild fifty years from now. Will they? I really don’t know, but they does seem for now to be an endless supply of them. Maybe they said the same thing about the dodo bird?
Lastly, although it is extremely rare for new morphs to come in as a normal, it does happen on rare occasions. When we bring in 20,000 babies, we might find a few Yellow Bellies or something not too noticeable. But trust me when I tell you that they are very good at spotting things and they don’t slip through too often. There is such a small profit margin for the exporters on normal babies that for the most part they count on a few specials here and there to make their profits for the year. They don’t want to give their profits away!
I hope I shed a little light on things from my experiences. Good luck with all the babies.
www.myspace.com/bhbreptiles (for fun people)
real website coming later this century!
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RE: Pros & cons of buying captive hatched... - bhb, Thu Apr 26 15:17:40 2007