Reptile & Amphibian Forums

any of you ever think we would be better off if we could end wild caught and wild hatched market?i know lots of morphs hgave started that way. aren't there enough captive breeders to provide ball pythons for pet trade and other sale areas. seems so wrong to keep stealing wild snakes from the wild, plus they dont always survive. we should keep nature where it belongs -especially once a captive piopulation is large enough to keep breeding. i mean less than $10 a hatchling thats rediculous.

in theory that is a great idea, however with all the snakes produced in captivity there is still a "need" in the market for the thousands of babies imported each year. Perhaps in the next 10 years there will be a suitable captive base of animals that we won't need to import as many but there will always be a need to some degree. You have to remember, the burm breeders that have 20 breeding females produce alot of babies. The ball breeder that has 20 breeding females only produces the equivalent to maybe 2 female burms. So the person that has a really good sized operation of say 200 female balls, 66% of those breed each year, of those 80% take and produce babies you are looking at only 650ish babies. That is enough to supply the pet market for about 2-3 days I would think at most. A perfect example of this is my local fish store. Their main source of income is fish and a few puppies but they always have a few baby ball pythons. Last year I counted they sold over 100 and that is a small pet store in a small town in south florida. There are 3 other pet stores in the city where I live and those are larger and go through more animals so it would be fair to say that my small city would go through one large breeders production in a year. there is a huge need for ball pythons and we as a community cannot keep up with it, just wait till some of the lower priced morphs get down to the wholesale price of $150, we won't be able to produce enough of those by far.
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Josh Hutto
JKReptiles

2.3 het pied (RDR, alan bosch x 2, BHB x 2)
1.0 Spider Ball python (Ballroom pythons south)
0.1 High Contrast Albino (Gulf Coast)
1.1 het albino (ben siegel, Gulf Coast)
1.2 het citrus ghost(Gulf Coast line)
1.0 citrus ghost (Gulf Coast line)
1.1 graz pastel female
1.6 05 normal bp's
0.6 04 normal bp's
2.5 adult normal bp's (some need breeding to see if norm)
4 various corns
0.1 brazilian rainbow boa (alan bosch)
1.0 american pit bull terrior
1.1 taco dogs (ankle biters)
1.0 grey cat
0.1 bearded dragons

a BAD dog is MADE not bred, support the American Pit Bull Terrior as the greatest breed of dogs on Earth!!!!!

But don't forget that demand, supply, and price are all tied together in balance. Sure a huge number of normal import ball pythons are consumed every year ... at a very low price. If that supply where to dry up the price would raise to the point where the supply balanced the demand at some new price. That higher price would also stimulate more cb production. As it is normal cb ball pythons are mainly a byproduct of morph projects and aren't very profitable to produce in competition with wild collected eggs.

I also wonder how much the wild produced normal hatchlings are a byproduct of the search for wild produced morphs. The diversity of ball python morphs we have available today is a natural outcome out of the huge number of animals removed from the wild (like 150,000 a year). Out of that big of a sample they are bound to find a few freaks.

And consider that the income from wild collection is no doubt important to some number of African collectors.

Regardless, it's probably not going to stop any time soon.

people are too cheap and too dumb to actually buy a good captive born and bred ball baby .......they go to shows and see the $10 crap balls with no body weight at all and that is what they buy...........

I wish Africa would close down.......period.....

......ok.....you say "what if they find a NEW morph""....well...for one thing there cannot be too many color or pattern mutations left out there...we have all colors from white to black to purple and yellow.......we don't need any more...and we can mix what we have,.........also......IF they find something that good......they can smuggle it here......smuggling happens every day......

........anyways,.............
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JYReptiles

Scales-N-Tails Reptiles ltd........Pa

It will be interesting to see if with cb production ramping up in Europe if they will put a tariff on imported balls to protect internal production (or maybe they already do). Can't say I'm in favor of such things but a good $20 a head import tariff would probably change things (and promote smuggling of course). Africa would probably still collect the 150,000 looking for the few hundred morphs and oddities worth the tariff but who knows what would happen with the normals.

don't know how many are imported now.I know it's down.............used to be 800,000........

.....it's just a shame that the babies are so bad looking usually........at least this year I know they are alot of skinny ones.........

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JYReptiles

Scales-N-Tails Reptiles ltd........Pa

i guess its nice to know im not the only one that thinks we should stop importing

I read an article a little while ago in a herp-related news release discussing the importation of reptiles, mainly green iguanas, but touched on the ball python issue over in Ghana/Togo. The article stated that ball pythons populations are booming due to clearing land for farming and overall conservation policy that Ghana was noted for. So yeah, its not hurting ball pythons on a grand scale, but it sucks to be a captive hatched export baby ending up in a 10 gallon tank with a 100w flood bulb overhead, that's for sure.

Randy- I'm not sure a tariff would be the answer to the ball pythons exportation issue. Private breeders would not be able to meet the demand for normal baby ball pythons and people who don't give a rip about morphs aren't going to pay $100 for a baby normal ball python at a show. When you talked about supply/demand economics, you forgot something in your armchair analysis: availability of substitutes. Everyday hobbyists will buy corns, kings, and ratsnakes for $25 each before they buy a baby ball at that price.

In short, I don't particular feel great about exporting any wild animals from their native habitat, but can't complain too much because it is, after all, how the hobby I love so much got started in the first place. Ghana has a good strategy in place to protect existing populations, and with that being my primary grievance with the issue, I don't see it as a "problem" so much as just an "issue."

I'm certainly not in favor of tariffs but it wouldn't surprise me to see somewhere use one eventually.

Good point about the alternatives. So if the week demand for normals over easier to cb alternative snakes puts a cap on demand side at a price below what most people think it's worth to produce them (also considering alternatives they could produce), what would happen IF wild harvested supply where to somehow decrease? I guess we would go back to the normal old days where you saw (normal) ball pythons every now and then but not at every table.