Very interesting topic!!!
I know that I have not posted to this forum in awhile (due to health issues) but this topic has piqued my interest. I often hear the same debate amongst rat/mouse breeders/fanciers and see similar arguments for why it's inhumane to sell mice/rats as feeders or to cull for any reason. Somehow, the mouse/rats life is WAY more valuable than that of a lowly snake. And, of course, amongst snake breeders, I see the opposite debate of how a snakes life is more important than any number of mice/rats. During the current debate, I have read that killing a snake because it is a hybrid with the wrong looks is OK, but if it is just the wrong color morph in a pure clutch is equivalent to murder. What is the distinction here, exactly?
I have been keeping snakes as pets since I was 13. I started with water snakes and green snakes, and I even caught a pine wood snake. I did not get into cornsnakes until I was 16/17. I have been catching and releasing snakes since I was 4 years old, however. I bought my first mouse when I was 13 and began breeding mice at the age of 16. I have been catching wild mice or admiring them from afar ever since I can remember.
I have only raised 1 clutch of snakes so far (this is my first year trying to breed more clutches and I missed last year entirely). In this clutch, 1 of the babies was TERRIBLY kinked (almost folded over itself at the midsection.) I could not bring myself to kill it without giving it a chance to live. I was not even sure what I would do with the snake if it survived, but I supposed that I would be keeping it for the rest of its life because I did not want to pass my problem to someone else. I knew that it may have more problems as it got bigger, but I tried to let it live. I very much regret that decision because the little guy died anyway and I could have saved it the pain of a "natural" death. I see that culling deformed hatchlings is not really debated here, but if the snake had been a poor feeder would it have been any better off? Yes, a poor feeder looks normal on the outside and might make a lovely pet as an adult, but that snake is more likely to be bred than an obviously deformed snake and pass along poor feeding response (along with potential defects that cause its feeding problems) to another generation.
I have heard of snake breeders that raise some snakes STRICTLY for feeding other animals (and I think this was mentioned in the original thread about this topic.) Why is breeding snakes as food for other animals any different from culling some and keeping others in the same clutch? Rather than breed 3 clutches of food for other animals, someone may breed 6 clutches of which approximately 3 are used as food. Is there a difference here?
As I mentioned before, I have bred fancy mice since I was 16 (I am now 33.) I DO cull my mice. I cull excess males (because males will fight to the death if you do not separate each and every one as adults, with some exceptions.) Having too many males is a major problem regardless (and few people want males as pets because they cannot generally be kept in groups and because they have an odor.) I also cull any defective (very rare situation), poor growers, aggressive, and albino/PEW mice (few people want these as pets.) Lastly, after the mice reach adulthood I can determine the best quality mice and those that are substandard quality are culled. Culling is not a practice that I enjoy, but it is a necessity if I want to breed mice for any reason. Without culling, I would be quickly overrun with mice. Some of my mice go to pet homes, or to other breeders. These are mice that make it through the culling process and are the best of the best of my stock. I have excellent quality mice as a result, and I get to enjoy breeding mice without the stress of getting overrun or selling them to petshops at feeder prices. My mice receive excellent care (especially compared to mass-produced feeder mice), I do not over-breed my females (I often have to buy frozen mice to supplement my supply), and my snakes are fed a healthy diet. If I applied these strict breeding practices to my snake breeding, and fed off substandard animals, then people could expect to buy only great quality animals from me. They would NOT expect to receive animals that I deemed not good enough for breeding. No, I don't expect to apply these strict breeding standards to my snakes because I will place substandard animals as pets (there is more of a market for snakes as pets than mice, which allows me to do this.) I also will not be mass-producing snakes and I will try to breed only quality animals. But, I think that I have come to the difficult decision to cull any deformed hatchlings (even those with minor defects if I have reason to believe that the defect may be hereditary) as well as non-feeders (rather than fighting to get them past that stage, making them suffer in the process, possibly having them die on me anyway.) I think that we do have a responsibility not to sell or breed snakes that will pass on defects, making them more difficult to keep as pets and passing these genes to the next generation. Snakes, like mice, and as mentioned in other posts here, cannot be sterilized to prevent them from adding to the gene pool. If we truly want to produce and perpetuate quality snakes, then culling is really a necessity (as it is with my mice.)
Of course, common colors and varieties (including hybrid snakes) are not a defect, but as some here have stated, I cannot judge people who choose to cull these snakes. I feel this way because, as I stated before, some people breed snakes to be food for other animals. Why should the entire clutch have to be labeled as food to be a legitimate reason to cull them? I see no difference between breeding a clutch of corns as food for another animal and breeding a clutch of corns for colors, and feeding off the excess. As is often stated regarding snakes, a snake's gotta eat. Snakes don't just eat mice and rats. I don't see a snakes life as any more valuable than a mouse or rat's, it's just the cycle of life. And maybe culling snakes to avoid flooding the market is just as viable a reason as culling snakes that don't meet our needs as a breeder? (As long as they are not going to waste and are actually being used to supplement the diet of other animals.)
Anyway, I am very open to the views of others and I am always on the fence, so to speak, regarding these kinds of issues. I have figured out what works for me over many years of practice. I even sold all of my cornsnakes in 1995 because I could no longer handle feeding them mice, lol. I then had to stop breeding mice because I no longer had an outlet for them. I got over that eventually and I have been breeding my current lines of mice since 2000. I still don't enjoy the culling part, but I love breeding mice as a hobby and my snakes are a very important part of that process. I have a system that works and I feel less guilty about feeding my snakes well-raised mice than feeding them the sickly looking things that come in freezer packs.
