Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I have not posted on here in a long time, but I have a " real " issue that I believe should be discussed and I am not passing judgement, I am just as guilty as anyone on this subject. I was looking at my future breeders and my potential breeders today, as I have done many times and I am trying to decide what to breed to whom and something hit me between the eyes. What am I really doing this for?? Is it really worth the stress of trying to breed thin saddle to thin saddle and faded pattern to faded pattern and so on. Am I in this " Hobby " to help benefit snakes in captivity, " knowing that there may come a day when captivity is the last place for them; or to try and breed animals that are considered marketable by todays standards or post it on here to have my EGO stroked and everyone tell me what a SCREAMER it is???" What I am saying is this: " If we continue to breed all of the traits out of these animals through selective breeding, there will be nothing else to breed for. We will have animals with no pattern, no saddles or anything and once everything starts to look the same the market will surely crumble." Some of you may think that we are way off from that happening, but you can already see in alot of the Amarali, that some of those bloodlines are only 1 or 2 generations away from having no saddles or pattern. The question I ask myself and you is; " Why do we not have some thick saddled, dark clored, no tail, speckled up boas in our collections?? Are they not also beautiful and wonderful and unique in their own way?? " So many of these " UGLY " boas are coming in and usually wind up in bad homes or in pet stores, slowly rotting away to nothing. Do they deserve it? Are they not good enough to go to an experianced breeders home and get the same love and kindness as all the " HIGH END BOAS ?? " What ARE we really doing this for? Their are very few BREEDERS that actually make a living at this, most of us are Hobbyist, so why dont we all be just a little less picky and give some ugly boas a good home? I am not saying to stop selective breeding for the traits that you love. I am just saying that: " Maybe we should ALL start breeding a little more for the number one trait and that is the trait in US that causes us to love snakes for what they are and not what we can create them to be and always hold in the marketplace??".......Thanks,.......Johnson Herp

In my opinion i think that it is great that breeders set thier standards. If we breed animals for that "ideal" look than we can further a demand on CAPTIVE BRED animals. As far as morphs and genetics go, it does bring a little more excitement into play. Although not ideal for a breed and release programs, it is interesting to see what goes on inside the blueprints of the body. You can't tell me that the first albino you ever saw wasn't the most stunning and beutiful creature you've ever seen. At least it was for me. So i say, breed your best to the best. If you make the best, give me a call!!! )

I thought was really intelligent. It was some remarks made by Phillip DeVosjoli. He was speaking of c.b. animals as "living art". That phrase really seemed to do justice to what we as breeders try to create. We are looking to make our animals "art like" each breeder is his own artist each is different. We all need to determine which animals paired with which we would like to do and what the resulting offspring will become. I personally try to breed for the best colors in the albino and hets I produce. But in thinking hmmm which pair should I breed together we are in escence creating "living art" because we are basically breeding for traits we would like to see therefore creating art out of animals colors and patterns that will thrill us everytime we see it just like an art painting on the wall. I think its an awesome term. I love talking with people who view pictures of my animals that they would like to buy in escence they are figuring out what they would like to create in the future and everyone is different in what they are looking for its fun, its up to you what you will do in the future.

Dave

If you have ever read some of my posts on this forum you will have seen that I have made a similar point. That is, that the "Surinam" boa or "South Brazilian" is in fact a poor representative of the boa you would generally find in that location. But, it is human nature to pick out a colour you like, or a certain pattern type, and try to breed more of the same. And, of course, over time, such traits become fixed and recognized.

People should now start to look to breed animals that grow well, feed immediately on defrost, make good breeders etc. The hobby is still in it's infancy and there is still alot to be done.

If you want to breed "thick saddled, dark clored, no tail, speckled up boas" then do so. You may have trouble selling babies, but even by choosing your animals you too are selecting a trait. You too are would be selectively breeding if you only selected "ugly" animals.

In an idealistic world, breeders should breed their snakes in order to avoid inbreeding and maintain "viable" popluations that are locailty specific. But this is another argument that certain people (e.g. H E Stoekl) get slated for here. He is passionate that boas shouldn't simply be bred for financial gain and especially that rare (often insular) forms are not hybridized. But inbreeding must also be avoided and this at times is difficult to do, with limited gene pools of certain boas. The great book by Ross and Marzec gives enlightening information on inbreeding that would surprise most visitors to this site. To them it may be irrelevant, and yet those low fertility clutches and high slug numbers must make them wonder? Evidence of inbreeding is everywhere and it surprises me that it is ignored so much. I am not anti-morph per se, but I am surprised that even financially motivated individuals seem to ignore the negative effects of inbreeding (and resulting financial loss).

Anyway, good luck with breeding your boas. If you want to maintain a good representative of the numerous phenotypes present from a certain locality of boas I would suggest you do the following:

1/ Think about how many boas you want to keep (to maintain viable populations that won't be inbred you will need a sizeable group. Ross and Marzec (1990) suggest a minimum group size of 50 individuals. Other authors have suggested this number should be much larger, up to 500! But remember, maybe you can form a coalition with other breeders to make up your "population."

2/ Decide whether or not you are going to buy CB or imported. For a true representation you will unfortunately have to select imported stock in almost all cases. Look around. See who deals with large numbers of quality imports. Then, simply buy random (i.e. not choosing simply by appearance) animals from him that are healthy, feeding well, and are pretty tame (and probably therefore not so stressed). This is still a form of selectve breeding, but then at least you are starting with animals that are likely to survive and be good breeders (your objective).

3/ Try and get as much documentation on your animals as possible. And remember, start keeping accurate records from the offset.

4/ Raise up your boas and breed them in a way that you avoid inbreeding. Any babies you keep should not be kept on the basis of it's colour / general appearance.

In this way, you wil maintain a diverse and representative population. You'll have some screamers, and plenty of "ugly" babies. And you'll also have a population of boas that could potentially be released into the wild.

Alas, few people give a damn about breeding like this. Most want the brightest, funkiest snake around. And when you look at what is about, who can blame them? Think about YOUR objectives, and do what you want to do.

Very educated response. Herman has gotten it bad on here over the years and I use to get rimmed good too and alot of times maybe I was a little harsh on people and asked for it. It all just came to me at once and just feel that maybe, just maybe, alot of us are truly missing the " Big Picture. " The takers of this earth are raping it for everything it is worth and these animals like so many others may only have one place left at that is captivity one day. I look to the day when maybe we sell enough animals to help take care of them and then give the rest away to other " TRUE " breeders that want to keep bloodlines diverse and see these animals represented in their true light. I really feel ashamed in a way, how over the years I have allowed a bull sh*t market to determine what I need to be breeding, instead of doing it to watch GOD create life, no matter what their color or pattern may be.As I said before; " When is the last time you walked into a nasy, mite infested pet store and seen " High End Boas " being treated badly? " It does not happen often. The "ugly" boas that nobody wants are the ones getting the short end off the stick.I will now leave this subject alone before it turns into a p*ssing contest, and I am sure you guys are probably thinking; " Shut up and go buy some ugly boas!! " Guess what? Thats what I am going to do.........Johnson Herp...." A new Revelation "

others related to it... I'd love to see some more opinions and a few discussions on the subject!
Thanks for starting the thread, let's keep it rolling :-D
jb
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Jonathan Brady
My Kingsnake Photo Gallery

When someone buys animals with the money they have worked for..do what you want with em. That is, as long as your keeping the animals healthy.clean cages,proper heat.......ect.
There are "local" breeders.
"Morphers "
"Cross breeding"
" Hybrids"
I breed local, crosses & morphs. Everyone has their own taste & I beleive this makes breeding ( to your own taste) have such wonderful diversity
When I breed my Hog Isle to a Hypo boa, BCI to BCI......alot of people liked em, alot didn't.To each his own.
Dave @ East TN Reptiles
* pic * Hypo x Hog Isle boa - A naturalist hypo (bci)Hog Isle breed to a Hypo Colombian boa (bci)

Awsome looking boa Dave. I would love to add that one to my collection...wow

with some of the THINEST saddles ever? Now you are complaining about people doing the same ? I think you are being a bit of a HYPOCRIT . Yes, the majority of the boas out there are less then desireable in the eyes of alot of collectors, but not every boa from the jungle is gonna be speckled with a short tail. Some of the nicest BCC I've ever seen came right out of the jungle and thus are also a representation of the wild type. Everybody has their own opinion on what a beautiful boa is , boas appealing to me are not so to others. Not every breeder out there is trying to produce boas with thin saddles or big tails. If you are gonna cry wolf maybe you should stop and think about the litter you produced...
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Got Bats?

i dont know anything about litters he has produced but i DO know of quite a few SUPER screamers in collections of forum members that are pure wild blood. selective breeding is a wonderful thing, but i havent seen any that match some of the f1 wild blood animals that are posted here on a regular basis.

will selective breeding of boas create dalmations and poodles,... animals so far removed from the wild type that you would never know they came from the same animal? i doubt it.

but it will create the finest boas anyone could want. weather you want thin or thick saddles, high peaks, or no peaks. by breeding like localities, surinameXsuriname, peruvianXperuvian, hogXhog, etcXetc.... you ARE representing WILD type animals. what male comes across what female in the wild is a complete crap shoot.... perfectly random. the beauty of random pairing IS any pairing is just as random as any other. so i want a pink female and a clean male with no speckles.... well thats JUST as likley to happen in the wild as a dark muddy boa breeding one thats super speckly with no tail. just like black 4 is just as likley to come up on a roulette wheel as double ot.
you can say its not random because i picked them.... well that is true... but the odds of them mating in the wild are just as good as any other pairing. by picking, your not diluting the wild type. youre putting your own signature on what your ideal boa is.... its still a wild type, odds are.

the above is just my opinion, and its worth what you paid for it.
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recycle your pets

Calm down. Seems to me that all he did was ask for others thoughts. He didn't say anything to make him a hypocrite.
He acknowledged his breeding for selective traits and he had an epiphany and posted his thoughts.
By the way he stated he wasn't passing judgement..

You are right, Charles. I am the one who produced them and as the gentleman said: " I am only giving food for thought, so do not get on my case! " If you guys will read CAREFULLY what I posted, there was no judgement made toward anyone. I just feel that maybe all of us; " THAT INCLUDES ME " should stop worrying so much about the perfect boa and love them all for their own individual beauty, including the ugly ones that are usually cast aside and used for fertilizer.........GOOD DAY

In the past every now and again the theory came up here that even locality breeders perform a kind of creating "artificial boas" by selecting boas with a special appearence for their breeding projects.

There is truth in it. Every breeder is tempted to do so by the people who are visiting him/her and standing awestruck in front of the vivarium with a certain boa (with a certain characteristics). Of course the money thing also plays a major part in this decisions.

To avoid such a selective breeding it would be necessary to pick out the animals for future breeding project in a random way. But as soon as one stands in front of a plastic container with a litter of boas who had just their first shed one is in danger to yield the temptation to pick out animals that one would regard as particularly nice.

The only way would be to bind a scarf around the eyes and pick out blindy.

Being aware of that problem I started to administer different criterions when I chose my keepers. I took the strongest ones or the ones who started to feed first.

But I am not always able to yield the temptation, I must admit.

Thank you for your post, John. I hope to read more of your thoughts here in the future.
Boa constrictor

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Beware of Commies and Mutts!