Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I have written every breeder on indigosnake.com asking nicely for information on where and how to obtain an eastern and not one of them has written me back. I've kept herps my entire life, am a member of our state's herpetological society, as well as a herptile keepers association and cannot get a response. I do understand that they are hard to come by, and in many cases require a wait list, but what do I have to do to find one of these things? Any help would be greatly appreciated, Eric-

Hi Eric,

Good name by the way!

Easterns are tougher to breed & produce smaller clutches than many of the other snakes on the market.
That being said, this was not a good year for indigo breeders, only a few of "the few" had any luck & i'm sure all of the babies are spoken for.

Keep your chin up!

Eric
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If Jesus is your co-pilot, you'd better change seats!

n/p

I try to write everyone back that e-mails me, but it gets tough...I travel, etc.

I probably get 10 or more requests per week as do probably all of the breeders on indigosnakes.com.

It's hard to find one because the demand is much higher than the supply and they are tricky to breed. Certain years many of the breeders have bad luck, and the people on their waiting lists are left dissappointed. This creates a "backlog" of people who want these animals.

Indigos can take 4 years or more to be breeding size and known for egg-binding and other reproductive problems. Sometimes all goes right and you get a nice large fertile clutch. Other years you get skunked.

I don't think it's ever going to be easy to get ahold of captive born indigos.

Get on as many waiting lists as possible.
and good luck!

Dean is absolutely right. DEMAND definetly outweighs supply in this case. and the Couperi are hit and miss breeders, any one that has bred them repeatedly knows that often, after all their hard work, they may find themselves with NOTHING at the end of the breeding season.

This year has DEFINETLY been a banner year for bad production in Easterns. 6 out of the 10 breeders that I personally know have produced either nothing or just a few Couperi, and as Dean said they are allready spoken for..and the backlog sometiems continues for several years.

Many people get invloved with snakes because they can get a certain species up to breeding size QUICKLY by overfeeding, and then breed them VERY early, producing low numbers but still producing SOMETHING.

The problem with this is that it is bad for the snake, and doesnt allow the person to learn to truly appreciate them. The rush is to get to market.

I akin D.couperi with TORTOISES. Couperi take upwards of 4 years to reach maturity and breeding age, and then they often get eggbound or produce eggs that are infertile dureing their first attempt at reproduction.

So..it takes patience to grow them to size and even more patience to get them to successfully breed and the eggs to hatch.

Tortoises...are alot like that. They take a long time to reach sexual maturity, and frankly their owners arent worried about it, they honestly like the animals. They have too, its a long haul toget then to breeding size, relatively. I view Tortoise owners and Drymarchon owners as extremelt patient people, and definetly not in it for the money. It just takes to long and is to uncertain.

Take care

Fred Albury

I, like all of you, just love these animals. Throughout the years I have picked and chosen animals that I really love, I have only three snakes now, a JCP, a black and white Mangrove, and a Blood. I have just a couple more to go and my collection of favorites will be complete. The Eastern tops the list. Not because they are difficult to obtain either. I do understand the problems finding them, I was really just venting and didn't expect any responses at all so I do appreciate everyone being nice. I don't breed any snakes, they are all treated like children and have extremely large display cages. I am very eager to obtain one, and am willing to pay. I do have a question though. There is a guy here in town, Portland OR, who has a reptile shop. He claims that he can get wild caught juvi's, with papers, for around $150.00. I have not tried yet because most of his animals are in pretty poor shape. He did get what he called a black tail in the other day, but I think is actually a uni color, that is not doing real well. Should I beleive this guy? You know the saying, if it's too good to be true it probably is right?

From what I understand of US laws regarding Indigos, there is no way he legally has "wild caught" animals as they are protected and collection would be completely illegal. As you stated the animals he does have appear in very poor condition and any Indigos he smuggles will no doubt be in the same shape.

as already stated, there is NO WAY he has LEGALLY collected Easterns or Texans for that matter. If he has them they are definitely illegal & any papers he has will be forgeries.
I would be tempted to notify the authorities & set up a sting on this piece of trash!

Eric
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If Jesus is your co-pilot, you'd better change seats!

He's strictly talking about blacktails and unis.

No SANE dealer would talk about getting wc juvie eastern indigos.
First...he couldn't get them anyway. They are almost impossible to find in the wild. Seriously, it almost never happens. Juvies are VERY VERY difficult to find.

Also...NO way NO how is he (or ANYONE in the WORLD) getting permits to take eastern or TX indigos from the wild. PERIOD. NO NO NOOOOOOOO way.

If he says he can get them legally...you can look him in the face and call him a liar, a cheat, and a dirtbag.

But I digress...he's probably talking Central American species.

This guy is shady to say the least. He SWEARS he can get them but again I didn't want to get caught in the middle of anything. Thanks again for your responses, Eric-

What a scumbag.

Stay away...and good luck finding a legit snake. They are worth the effort (and price).

Mike

Why on earth would anyone
1) Put the effort into finding juvie couperi
2) Violate Federal law
3) Violate Florida or Georgia law
4) Ship 3000 miles

only to sell for $150.00? A price in the ballpark for a legal WC blacktail. It would be much easier (and legal) to scam the ball python people with 66% albinos.

YEARS ago I had a guy offer me w/c Easterns. I told him he was out of his mind. I didnt talk to him after that.I imagine there are people out there that are unscroupulous enough to want to do just this, but as Dean clarified, Neonates are hard , EXTREMELY hard, to find. Which is a GOOD thing. Wish the adults were equally as hard, that there were LOTS out there but NO one could FIND them(In a perfect world)

What a scam artist. If he IS selling couperi, dont encourage the idiot by buying from him, too many good, honest breeders on this forum to deal with that.

Thanks

Fred Albury

Either...

1- the guy is just a plain lier and a moron (very likely, there are lots of them in the world)
2- he's trying to set up "hefte" up to bust. (which, in my opinion, you should be busted for trying to set something ike this up...where the guy would try to catch babies for you)
3- hefte himself is an agent trying to find out how folks like us would react to such a scenerio.

I am personal friends with the folks in GA and FL who have done more research (and continue to) on eastern indigos in the wild.
Juvies are almost never found...and, like Fred, I'm glad they are not!

Anyway...if this guy is truely telling you that he can get you wc eastern indigos...he should be in jail. I don't care how much he swears he can do it legally, it's bull$hit! You'll want to
contact the federal dept of fish and wildlife in Atlanta GA.

Let me know if you need more info...seriously, I beleive it's the responsibility of anyone who appreciates these animals to turn in such a scumbag.

If you police yourselves theres no need for others to come in and do it.

The guy is trying to rip hefte off, or hefte is a troll.

If you are for real hefte, you have one choice and one choice only.
Turn him in. He's trying to involve you in a criminal act, or steal from you. There are no other alternatives, you don't owe this guy anything but the punishment he deserves.

And, on the slim chance he is for real, his "suppliers" need to be dealt with as well. This is serious stuff.

I hope you can sleep well, because your post probably has a lot of us laying awake at night. Do the right thing, please.

n/p

but I am not about to turn anybody in for saying that they can do something when I've seen no evidence that they can. This guy is extremely resourceful and has come up with some animals I didn't think possible. Specifically some tree frogs that turned out to be a new species, but anyway I am not friends with this person, I am familiar with him and his business ethics but until I see evidence of some wrongdoing I am not going to start ringing any bells. I do understand that if it were how I made a living I would be concerned as well, and I am not implying that it's about the money. Please be assured I will not have him try to locate an indigo, wc, cb, or cbb. I will wait and do it legally like all of you, I really am not familiar with the laws, and that is due to my own laziness, but just wanted to throw that out there and see what you guys thought. This guy has been talking about getting wc Eastern's for over a year now. Again, I haven't seen them and I would because he knows how much I want one. I didn't mean to get everyone all riled up, so I apologize. One day when I get a CB Eastern, I will post pics, thanks for all your responses, Eric-

"I am not about to turn anybody in for saying that they can do something when I've seen no evidence that they can."

Your only responsibility is to report what you were told to the proper authorities. It's their job to investigate the validity of his claims.

"This guy is extremely resourceful and has come up with some animals I didn't think possible."

I don't care if he's David Copperfield. He still isn't coming up with legal, WC Eastern Indigos.

"I do understand that if it were how I made a living I would be concerned as well"

That sure sounds like your accusing the people who breed CB, legal animals in this forum of only being concerned because of competition. That's a complete joke! I don't think anyone who breeds couperi is having difficulty getting rid of their animals. That's both insulting and ignorant. I live in FL so I'll never keep, breed or sell couperi....I'd still bust his ass without a second thought.

There's a very good chance that this guy is completely full of it but that's not really for you to decide.
Chris

hefte?
I agree with everyone else on the subject, but just thought it could be turned around too.
In either event, I think you should make the call to the wildlife authorities. If he's a scammer, he needs to have the Sh** scared out of him..If it's a sting on you, they'll have to acknowledge you did the right thing...
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Carl W Gossett
Garage Door Herps
Monument,Colorado...northern territory of the Great Republic of Texas

I specifically said I was not talking about the money. If you are in an industry, whatever the industry, and care about it, you would obviously be more concerned than people who weren't. So go look up the definition of ingorance and you will see that it is you Chris who fits that description better than I. Please re-read my post and then read what you wrote, I'm confident you will see what you missed the first time. As far as the name calling is concerned, you again misunderstood and jumped to the most low brow childish response you could come up with. But the truth is, whether this is a sting, or the guy actually knows someone who will illegally take Eastern's from the wild, he hasn't done anything wrong. I see that you guys are all very quick to call and tattle tale on the what if's and the maybe's but I honestly couldn't live with myself. Take a minute to think about what would happened if I reported him. They would go and ask him if he has ever imported WC Eastern's and he would say no. They might dig a little deeper and try to find proof but if they didn't, and I doubt they would even if he had, it would be over. A huge waste of time, money, and resources all to make a point that you cannot even talk about importing federally protected wildlife. I sure wouldn't feel any better. Actually all this nonsense has made me realize that an Eastern, and the people who breed them, are just to hard to deal with. I am in this for the love of the animals, not that you guys aren't but at some point you need to ask yourselves if you take yourself too seriously. Good luck, and maybe I'll run into you guys on other posts.

I apologize if I misunderstood your comments. I don't think anyone in this forum makes their living selling Eastern Indigos (if they were they'd be homeless and starving this year )

Do what ever you feel is right. People here are protective of wild Eastern Indigo populations because they are passionate about them. None of us wants to see wild indigos exploited for profit and that's why everyone has voiced their opinions so strongly in this thread.
Chris

If you heard that someone could have someone "bumped off" but didn't report it, would you feel like crap or just say well you couldn't prove it one way or another? It's illegal and I can honestly say you may not bump into any one of these guys on another post, as illegally importing a protected species is akin to murder, especially the conditions these snakes would have to go through to keep it covert. Man, some people just don't get it! Burns me up. Don't have any but will legally some day soon. Have a care about what you don't do...it could bite you on the backside.
Todd Hughes

In no way, under any circumstances, is that ANYTHING like murder. Again, you may love these animals but to say that taking them from their native habitat to be pets is like murdering a human being really just reinforces my view of the indigo community. May I remind you that NOTHING HAS HAPPENED. THIS GUY SAID HE COULD, I DON'T KNOW IF HE CAN OR NOT, I DO KNOW THAT I AM NOT GOING TO HAVE ANYTHING TO DO WITH HIM AND THATS IT. I honestly have never heard anything like this before, you people are NUTS. Take care, Eric-

This is really getting out of hand.

It's easy to be self-righteous when you’re telling someone else to do something.

Murder???

Apology at the top of page, but still feel passionate about previous post. My opinion only!
Todd Hughes

"passionate" guys here. He's really harmless, just gets worked up about stuff. A wealth of knowledge and great contributer.
You are in a different forum here.. We all work hard to keep these animals going and get skunked 2 out of 3 years it seems. Just the suggestion that someone "might" be doing something unlawful with our favorite creature stirs us up as you've noticed!
Hang around, lurk or whatever, but don't stop visiting. You'll find a lot of info here..
I understand how you feel, but I still think the guys should be reported as I said in my other post..
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Carl W Gossett
Garage Door Herps
Monument,Colorado...northern territory of the Great Republic of Texas

I just found out I have another breeding project that should be showing itself around February 2006. This one will be a holdback I'll have to take care of for about 18 years

I'm looking forward to it though,
Chris

If you think indigos eat a lot...!

Best wishes,

Mike

That is truly awesome!

Eric
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If Jesus is your co-pilot, you'd better change seats!