They will only dilute pure lines with breeders who do not care about purity to begin with.



If purity is a concern, then breeders of pure stock should provide their stock with adequate pedigrees, because without the family tree of your snake, you really don't know if it is pure or not.



Another poster (I believe I know who but in case my memory is faulty I won't name him) in the past has pointed out that quite a few of the old big breeders did hybrid projects in the back room without telling anyone. Some of them came clean later on, but there are undoubtedly others who have not come clean.



Do you not find it odd how many Lampros out there happen to have amel morphs that happen to be allelic with Cal King amel?



If you don't know the pedigree of your snake then you can not claim it is "pure". Keep breeding records, preferably in a publicly accessible database, and buyers of your stock will know what went into the young you produce, and can continue the pedigree themselves when they breed and pass on the young.



If breeders are willing to do that, there's not a problem because you can look up the ancestry of stock and seek "pure" specimens. If breeders are not willing to do that, then they have no one but themselves to blame for the questionable status of pure looking snakes.



If I wanted four generations of pedigree for a baby kingsnake, how difficult do you think it would be for me to find a breeder that could provide that?



I bet very few breeders could, and most of those that could only could because they owned all four generations.



That's where the problem lies. Without proper record keeping, you really don't know. Period.
-----
I decided my old sig was too big.

[ Show Entire Thread ]