Reptile & Amphibian Forums

How much am i going to have to pay for them and whats the avalibilaty?

Also, what projects have breeders got set up for them?

Cheers. A.

Please email me about that, I cant talk sales here on the forums. The Dwarf Burms are being bred to burm morphs now to produce dwarf het for morph burms. They are also being kept pure and free from contact with any normal sized burm. A few of the very large breeders have no invested in these. They will be very popular.

Email me to talk, morphspecialties@yahoo.com

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Savannah
Morph Specialties
New Imported Morphs
morphspecialties@yahoo.com(New Email Soon)
morphspecialties.com(Under Construction)

Absolutley beautiful burm Savannah. I am still in awe of there abherrant patterns and of course of how small they appear. I wish I was financially able to buy a trio from you but maybe someday. Good luck, Todd

(I know, I always have to pop up on these threads so here goes. Hate me or not, I dont care.)

Be wary of the "dwarf burms" until they have been proven out. I dont think anyone (even you Savannah) can say that these are, in fact, proven, 100% dwarf burms along the lines of the dwarf retics.

If you are the gambling type, go for it but dont be surprised if you lose your shirt in the end or maybe even have to sign some sort of waiver saying they arent responsible if they turn out to NOT be dwarf burms. Mighty big gamble...you have the same odds at a roulette table and you dont have to wait years to see if you win.

Im not even going to broach the "shady" aspects that are rumored around these animals. Just my 0.02.

The first Dwarf Burms have been in captivity now for over a year. These are mostly adults, some of them obviously quite old, and none over 7.5 foot. Since they have been in captivity, none of the older animals have grown, maybe an inch at the most. They have sloughed only 3 or 4 times, they are fat, healthy and doing well.

We also know that no animals at this particular locality do not grow any bigger. Therefore, if we were to go to that locality, we wouldn't find any bigger than the ones we already have, unless we are very fortunate.

We also know from Savannahs breedings that babies from Dwarf x Dwarf mating are less than 1/4 of the size of a normal burmese. We also know that in the 6 months that the babies have been around from these matings, their growth rate is miniscule compared to that of a normal sized burmese.

Dwarf retics on the other hand are different. Firstly Jampeas are often found at lengths of 10foot in the wild, and they rarely grow bigger in captivity. The ones which do grow bigger, will also be fatter than any wild caught jampea you will ever see.

Like it or not, these are a 'Dwarf Type' subspecies of Python molurus, closest relative P.m.bivittatus. They will probably be recognized as a separate subspecies in the coming year or so.

If anyone was to back out of buying these for the simple reason of not 'trusting' their potential size, I think they need to re-think. I, along with any other breeder of these, are very confident of their potential, and the least anyone should do is see them, before dis-believing.

As Savannah stated, the projects these will be involved are are obvious. The colour morph burmese for starters, so we can spend a few years trying to downsize beautiful albino granites etc...

There is also the potential for true dwarf bat eaters, and colour morphs mixed in there as well. The possibilities are endless, and if you have thought about it, someone will most probably try it.
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Regards
Chris Jones
Chris Jones Reptiles
Sand Boa Forum

Apparently your idea of "proving" is different than mine. I require at least TWO successful breedings with these animals (maybe even three to be sure) producing continuing offspring that attains no more than the 5 or 6 feet yall claim over the course of years, not weeks or months.
Would you happen to have *any* financial interest in these snakes, SandBoaUK? If so, your opinion means squat since you have a vested interest in propogating these animals. Thats like Bill Gates saying Windows95 is a very stable OS.
Can you define what an "obviously quite old" burmese python is and how it is that you come to this conclusion? They arent trees that you cut open and count the rings.
Also, you say that there are planned breedings with morphs. Id love to see a picture of a 4 foot granite male attempting to breed with a 16 foot normal female. It aint the size of the boat but the motion of the ocean, eh?
I can make a baby burm's growth miniscule too. Its called starving it.
Considering what you guys are charging for a specimen, I think backing out of a deal for realistic concerns about their genuinity is not foolish. Hey, I may be wrong in the long run and I will be the first to admit I was wrong but as it stands now, all that has been shown is that these are small burms (myriad of reasons why, including genetics of course) with little known history and a big price tag that are being touted as something that they may very well NOT be. Incidentally, if you truly believe that they are not infact dwarf burmese (P.M.B.)but a different species then you should not refer to them as such.
Bottom line, while they may actually be an undersized species of P.M., there is not sufficient history available to be certain and THATS where my definition of proven lies.

Besides, who wants a tiny burm? Thats no burm at all, its a ball python with a P.M. pattern but thats just MHO.

JDP, your opinion is just that and thats fine. You are talking about an animal you have never bred nor seen. No one is being forced to buy them, though many people have. Nerd and Brian Sharp have small groups of them along with one other well known breeder that claimed to not want them. Anyway, is 2 generations of breeding considered scientific or is it just what you need to see to believe it? The animals are small, sorry there isn’t anything we can do to make them big, I guess you will continue to see them as ball pythons. The adults are small, the eggs are small and the babies are small. That is a genetic thing whether you like it or not. It’s not a morph, its not man made, they obviously developed to be smaller for certain reasons of which I have talked to evolutionary biologists about. They believe it, so do the others who have invested in them and many who haven’t invested in them. There isn’t anything wrong with no believing it at all, its great to be skeptical, but the proof is right before you. If I remember right you have never bred a Burmese python? You must also not know you can tell an old animal by looking at it. The biggest animals are old, does it have rings? No, but you can tell by looking. These animals are going to go mainstream and you don’t have to buy them or even like them, but I don’t think you have any right to claim a buyer will have to sign a waiver? I’ve never heard of such a thing and I am the founder of these and the first breeder. The buyers of these will have seen the animals in person, another thing you haven’t done. Once they are seen in person there is no doubt in their minds. And I would suggest anyone who wants to purchase a Dwarf or any other high end animal should see them in person. Then there is no question about any “rumors” or “scam” going on.

Starved babies? So your saying i am starving my baby dwarf burms? They eat several med to adult mice a week. I have pictures of them eating. Just another attempt, I will tell ya. This is a nearly 5 month old animal during that picture. Less than 21"

Again, I think it’s healthy to be skeptical, please do.

Thanks
Savannah

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Savannah
Morph Specialties
New Imported Morphs
morphspecialties@yahoo.com(New Email Soon)
morphspecialties.com(Under Construction)

Agreed.

Have you ever actually starved a burmese, or tried it? It seems as if you have the completely wrong idea of what happens.

A burmese python that is starved, will be skinny and underweight. If you feed it just enough, it will grow very very slowly, but it will not become a 6ft, fat, healthy looking snake.

You cannot and will never, ever, be able to starve burmese pythons to produce stable, 6-7foot snakes. Some burmese pythons do not grow as large, this can be for several reasons. Sometimes it is just natural to have weaker individuals which never attain a large size. These can then be bred from and their babies will usually be smaller, and weaker most likely.

There are now several breeders who claims to have smaller burmese lines, particularly with the albinos. However, none of which can guarantee their babies will not grow less than 10 foot.

As Savannah also pointed out, it is quite obvious from looking at some snakes that they are either old or juvenile. There are variuous tell tale signs including dark colouration, body and head size, injuries that have virtually disappeared etc..

If you want to be skeptical, than please do. However, it's not something you can preach to others about, when youn haven't even seen these animals for yourself.
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Regards
Chris Jones
Chris Jones Reptiles
Sand Boa Forum

in regards to breeding out and PROVING a morph, dwarf, or any other 'odd' genetics is to breed the original animal, raise those offspring, and then breed those offspring and produce the same results in that second generation AFTER the wild caught adults. It is only common sense to be cautious with these snakes until breeding trials prove them out. Sure, you may have bred the adults and had several litters of significantly smaller than normal young. But you have not had the snakes, nor has anyone else, long enough to absolutely guarantee that they will not exceed the 7' range you project. If they come from an island or isolated population, environmental factors can cause the adults to only attain a certain size in the wild. By keeping them in captive conditions with the abundance of food we keepers feed them, you cannot at this point absolutely guarantee that they will not exceed the limits you've stated.

Look at some of the Hogg Island boas, they're considered small for Bci but there are numerous counts of them exceeding their wild counterparts in size because of the greater abundance of food in captivity. There are also animals that grow slower than other animals of the same species and locale. For example, I have a female Colombian redtail (Bci) who is about 11 years old and only 6 feet long. She grew MUCH slower than any of my other boas and her offspring are noticiably smaller than most other Colombian Bci. However, that does not make her a dwarf because given time she has reached the typical adult dimensions of Bci (6-7 feet). Currently I own one holdback from her first litter that is 4 years old and 3' long and another pair of 2 year old Bci that my best friend produced that are the same size as my 4 year old. They are all fed the same diet on the same schedule. My juvenile will most likely always be smaller than the other pair, but she will still reach the acceptable range of adult size for Bci.

In closing, you made the following statements:

Quote: "The Dwarf Burms are being bred to burm morphs now to produce dwarf het for morph burms."

Quote: "They are also being kept pure and free from contact with any normal sized burm."

These two statements are mutually exclusive. You simply cannot have it both ways. Either you are breeding them to existing morphs (which are NORMAL sized) to introduce the morph genetics, OR you are not breeding them to normal sized burms which excludes being able to introduce existing morph genetics. Which is it?

Raven

Not to speak for Savannah but I believe what she was implying was that she is taking a portion of her adults and breeding them with the morphs as well as taking the remainder of her dwarves and breeding them solely with other dwarves. Thus, you will be introducing the morphs to the dwarf line as well as keeping the dwarfs pure. With enough animals it would not be hard to do both. Todd

That is what I was saying, but some will take things and make them always seem shady. Yes I am keeping some pure that will never be in contact with any normal sized burm. Some will be bred to morphs and some will only be bred to my new wild caught albino burm. We can have it both ways!!! Sorry if you didnt understand what I was saying.

And I do agree 100% that I have not nor has anyone else produce many clutches and grown the babies to adults, or produce many generations either. And I have all the history on these snakes on my website and never said I have grown them to adults from babies.

I can see it now, those who do not want to believe. I grow the babies to breeder size and breed them, you will then say, hey a snake grows its whole life and we cant be sure of its full size until it dies from old age, then some get older than others, so we will never know!! Animals that evolve on an island or other isolated area do not grow significantly bigger in captivity. You can use anything for an example that you want, but it isn’t true. There are large jampeas in the wild, and there were large hog islands in the wild. Plus the larger hog islands have been bred into other boas since the 80's. It’s scientific- its evolution. If you don’t think so then talk to a biologist. They may grow faster in captivity, may breed earlier, and may get bigger in girth, but won’t get significantly bigger in length. I am sure many will disagree and thats fine. Do the research.

But again, I do agree that they aren’t proven THRU MANY GENERATIONS or have had babies grow to adult size yet. 100% true.

Out of curiousity, are you saying these are just normal burms that happen to be small? After you have seen all the pictures, the difference in color, pattern, little difference in heads, are you saying they are just normal burms?

Thanks again, Savannah

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Savannah
Morph Specialties
New Imported Morphs
morphspecialties@yahoo.com(New Email Soon)
morphspecialties.com(Under Construction)

That much should have been obvious from my post. I'm not trying to start an argument nor get argumentative and I don't see why this can't be discussed professionally and with a civil tone. What I am saying is that until there have been actual breeding trials by the typical industry standard held for ANY other morph, dwarf, etc. (not just one captive bred generation) there can be no positive claims that they will not get larger than the current adults you have. While I cannot vouch for the reasoning behind comments by some, surely you can see where some of us are coming from - those of us that would be skeptical of ANY animal newly introduced to the market. The live animal trade is a buyer beware market.

If after the F1 generation is raised, bred, & produced offspring (all staying within the current dimensions), then I'll be all for stating that "these animals won't exceed X length". But we aren't at that point yet and it simply is not a proven fact at this time because all the F1 generation are still hatchlings or, at best, juveniles. Even the foundation animals haven't been in captivity for very long. Despite claims that 'you can tell they're adults by looking at them', you really can't tell the age of an animal by appearance alone - it's simply an educated guess. Yes, animals grow throughout their lives, but it is typical that they reach their 'full' potential in a set number of years - varying by species - that isn't to say they have to be at their full adult size to breed. While your stock is obviously made of breedable sized adults, that by no means says they are at their full potential. It is also irrelevant what professional breeders have bought the offspring - it is common practice for those individuals/companies to take the risk with newly imported potential investment quality animals. Risks that the typical buying public should consider seriously before jumping on the bandwagon.

Raven

I do agree Raven. And any prospective buyers DO know the history, so they can make educated decisions. There are many facts in your posts, it’s just that I was more concerned with bad information being suggested by others, I’m sure you can understand. I do agree that I don’t know for sure exactly how big adults will get raised from babies. But I am confident that they won’t get much bigger than my biggest animals and certainly not as big as a normal size range.

I would love to have civil conversation, as long as it’s not telling me I shouldn’t sell babies, or giving people wrong information about my animals.

Thanks for your reply.
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Savannah
Morph Specialties
New Imported Morphs
morphspecialties@yahoo.com(New Email Soon)
morphspecialties.com(Under Construction)