Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Ok, new to the forum but not to all things herp...LOL.

Brief history about me though. I got out of the reptile breeding hobby almost 10 years ago. However when I was keeping and breeding animals I also worked for a very large breeding/collection operation as well as several pet stores as the reptile manager. Just laying some groundwork here so I don't come off as a total newbie etc.

Being out of the hobby for so long and now recently wanting to get started again, I noticed how crazy the market has gotten. Mainly with the many color morphs going on. Especially in the Boa and Ball market.

My hear has always been with various Boa species though. Thus the reason I wanted to post this here.

What I'm wanting to know is..........how many hobbiest/breeders are only interested in genectically "pure" color variations? It seems everyone is only into the ghosts, snows, hypos, sunglows, etc, etc, etc. What about people who still enjoy the "natural" color phase of individual species? Are there any of those guys left around?

I was out for about 10 or so years and came back to all the morphs......pretty crazy stuff going on. There are quite a few folks that keep both morphs and normals. Here is a shot of one of my normals. Sorry no Sunglows or Motleys just yet.....I am busy making my mortgage and car payments with very little leftovers....argghhh!

Very very nice animal there.

Great example of a normal phase as well. That's exactly what I'm talking about. I think all the morphs are very beautiful in their own way, but nothing beats a clean true phase of a species. In my opinion of course!

I LOVE exceptional "normals", ie non-normal normals . I love the stunning forms of all non-mutation boas.. bcc or bci. One of my major goals is to produce some income w/morphs to later focus specificly on non-mutation animals. I can't wait to jump right into BCC and island boas (I am really excited about Corn's, I hope to get a pair within a year or so). Gray @ allboas.com is one person off hand I know that has a passion for normals. Check out his site... he has one of the best collections of them out there.

"Focus more" is what a meant

np

that enjoy both morphs, locales, and the locale morphs.
Myself one of them. I like the Central American imperator morphs, and have built my collection on those for right now. I hope to use the money from the projects to start or strengthen my pure subspecies and locale projects, and to start some groups of rare pythons.
There are also the special animals, like Sonoran Hypos and Leopards that are great pure locale morphs.
In addition to my morphs I have Western Costa Rican imperator (C.I.T.E.S.), Panamanian imperator (C.I.T.E.S.), and Pure Bolivian amarali (Barnett Orange Crush and Miller Blonde).

Many breeders who work with both pure locale specific subspecies and morphs spend a lot more time with the pure animals. It takes a lot of work to secure pure bloodlines to found a new project, and they often require special conditions to keep, raise, and breed successfully.

Talk to Gus Rentfro, and visit his site RioBravoReptiles.com Gus is strictly a pure boa guy, and has mastered techniques for nearly every available imperator and constrictor locale, among other projects.

Hey Chris....Have any pics of the Costa Rican Boas?

I have a few more, I think three on my photo gallery. I need to get more pictures of my collection.

Very cool Chris.....I didn't know that they were on CITES list. They are definitely awesome looking Boas....The gold highlights in the saddle markings and the head do it for me. Here are some Costa Rican Boas in case you missed my post after getting back from my honeymoon.

I did see those when you posted before. I think you visited the serpentarium my Western Costa Ricans came from. Zoocriadero (sp?) Grecia, CR.

All boids are CITES listed, appendix II, few are C-I. The only boa I know of that is C-I is Argentines. Appendix II requires permits for export from country of origin only.

I also used to do a lot of breeding and then cut way back to a few projects for about 10 years. And you are right there are a lot of morphs but it is also a great time for normal locality specific boas. I remember 10 or 12 years ago my wife was absolutely in love with Surinames, bright red tails and a wash of pink. At that time there was no way I could afford them and, even if I could, they were extremely hard to find. Now I have a pair that are prttier than the ones I couldn't afford back then and a pair of nice yellow peruvians too, all without breaking my budget. I am amazed too at some of the other things that are available. I used to import Mandarin Ratsnakes 20-25 at a time and feel lucky it 2 or 3 of each batch survived. The goal of course was to get a healthy colony and provide the first captive bred ones. Well that fell through, I sold what I had, and I am glad to see that, even though I didn't do it, there are plenty of healthy captive bred Mandarins on the market today. There are lots of other examples but this is already too long. All I can say is it is a great time to be getting back into herps!

I did notice the availabilty of some species that either were too difficult and expensive to get, or they were always wild caught.

Like the suriname's. I used to get a few of those each year at one of the reptile stores I worked at. They would always come in loaded with parasites/worms. Sad...but I only lost a few over the years. They were a difficult boa to sell in the pet trad though. Nice to see more and more of those are captive born.

Same thing with Amarali. I used to want to want those soooooo bad! 10 years ago hardly anyone had them. Heck you couldn't even find a decent photo of one.

I think all the crazy genetically engineered morphs are cool, but I still dig a pure phase boa any day.

My son is almost 5 and showing a lot of interest in snakes. I want to start slow with a pair of something. Leaning towards Hog Islands due to their size and price. However, I still want those darn Amarali!

What reptile shops did you work at?

I worked for West Texas Reptiles for about 5 years. Then went to work for another reptile copmany called Lone Star Reptiles which didn't last all that long.

During my time at West Texas Reptiles we had a pretty large collection of animals. Lots of colubrids but we had Burms, Rainbows, Bloods, Carpets, Common Boas, among others.

Personally I kept Green Trees though. But I started out in the early 90's with burms. At that time the money was still really good on hets and albinos. I had some of the first double hets around at the time for the albino greens. I never produced any though. I ended up selling all the burms to get into a smaller more manageble species......lol

I have and produce some colombian morphs, but I am steadily increasing the size of my insular boas, such as nicaraguan boas, hogg island and newly acquired panamanian boas.

I think there will be a place for anything and everything boa constrictor....

Great time to get back into the game.

Bob