Culling 'side product' hatchlings

Originally Posted by Nanci

I think it's morally wrong to create animals and then kill perfectly healthy specimens that don't meet your expectations. That is disgusting. If you don't have an outlet for them- or should I say, don't bother to find an outlet for them- you shouldn't be breeding. Each one is a living, breathing creature; a normal has just as much value, in life, as a Cinder. It's inhuman to think otherwise.

Nanci

Though I did not put it that way, I am glad to see somebody popping up with at least the same level of feelings against this

Duff, i oversaw your first post... you were popping up before Nanci... LOL

Originally Posted by Blutengel

Duff, i oversaw your first post... you were popping up before Nanci... LOL

No worries

Back to the topic, I think bringing in hunting seasons, legislation, controversial population control measures, etc. isn't really what the argument is about. It's about culling perfectly healthy offspring simply because they don't have a desired look or value, which is not the same thing, IMO.

I agree with Susan totally, you can't guarantee they will have a good quality life! I doubt even HALF the babies I've sold over the years are still alive. The way things seem to go locally, I'm thinking that number is closer to 75 percent! Why? escapes, ignorance, lack of skill, and misjudgements in caring for even well started corns. I got a PM recently from someone who bought four well started corns from me and she told me in so many words that the last one recently died, and she doesn't really know why. And that it had sticky fluid coming from it's mouth when found dead...

So, now all four babies are dead before I hear of this... Kathy's manuals sit collecting dust in pet chains everywhere cause people won't pick up the book, read it, and APPLY it!!!!

I was furious after I got this PM. Why did I bother sending these poor jewels to their torturous death? I'm better not ever knowing what happens to my babies by selling to my wholesaler friend who then sells to pet stores. Hear no evil...

I cull heavily when I breed snakes. If they won't eat after everyone else is on meal four. They are put down. If a baby eats a few meals and gets into this skip a few, eat a few, fall behind the rest...they get put down. I just won't deal with poor doers in my bunch. I also check for any kink of any kind possible, and recently, make sure both eyes look normal. If anything is out of whack there, they get put down. There are literally tons of just fine corns out there, I don't need to add my deformed stuff into the mix!

A post made somewhere else by Kathy Love pretty much summed it up for me. We are a fuzzy Disneyland fairy tale belief, so terribly removed from the real world... Yes, respect life guys, but there is a cold harsh undertow that so many seem so far removed from... I mean, it's to the point if my dog got treated the same as I am at work, it would be called abuse and someone would spend time in jail!

I'll place human life over animal life any time. Why? Cause that's my value despite my disgust with the general populace! Death is as much a part of life more than too many people realize. This just reeks more of the Peta theme the more you try to, oh we shouldn't just kill things... It's what they've been preaching for years!

So I voted for the first three. If I feel there is something off about a hatchling or older corn, I'll put them down. If I'm producing a TON of normals, and know that my wholesaler can't use so many, I'll only keep what I consider the nicest normals. That's been done before.

Maybe I hold the unpopular view, but then, that's somehow never bothered me...

I was going to start quoting scripture, but figured that was going to open a bigger can of worms!

Back to the basics...opinions were requested and eagerly supplied. I am not against culling if that is what an individual wants to do. Will I cull my clutches? The defective and the non-eaters, yes. The normals, not likely...unless that's all I hatch out, and at that point, I will give up breeding entirely!

And just because...here's something cute to make you smile!



And no, it's not mine.

Awww....

it worked Susan...too cute...

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.

great post Charlene!

Originally Posted by Russell

great post Charlene!

I concur!

To answer one of your questions...I was one of the posters that amde a distinction between culling hybrids of the wrong look and culling normals from a clutch of het parents. I made this distinction not based on the ends, but on the justification.

Quite simply...you can control the results of breeding for morphs through careful selection of your parent stock. If you want to breed a specific morph, or new combination of recessive genes, you have several options. You can use het parents which will ALWAYS produce normal offspring, you can use 2 different phenotypes to produce het offspring of both phenotypes, or you could use homozygous parents and get 100% homozygous offspring. If you choose option 1 or 2, the results are guaranteed to produce normal offspring...everytime. So when making the decision to go this route with your breeding, you *should*, as a responsible breeder, have an outlet for the normal offspring that you don't want or need for yourself.

When breeding hybrids, you cannot as easily control the outcome of the snakes. ALL of the offspring will be hybrids, but some may look pure for one species or the other. In this scenario, I believe that culling of the "pure looking" offspring is justifiable to prevent future ignorance or unscrupulous behavior from allowing those snakes to breed. It is the only way to guarantee that they WON'T be bred by someone in the future.

IMO--if I want to breed for a specific morph, but I don't any, nor do I want to SELL any normal offspring, than it is my responsiblity to invest the money in parentage that will reduce the number of "unwanted" offspring produced, rather than purchase inexpensive het parents and kill any undesireable normal offspring.

If I want to produce hybrids, but do not ever want anyone to have the ability to sell or breed those animals in the future as pureblood snakes, it is my responsiblity to ensure that every hatchling that I sell as a pet or a breeder does not resemble pure offspring...which can only be done AFTER hatching and through culling.

Again...these are opinions. Nothing more...

thanks Russell! I wasn't even sure if I made sense (splitting headache) lol. Anyway, you must have been typing your post when I was typing mine. I read your post and I really respect your position. Even if I did NOT cull, I still would much rather buy snakes from someone who ruthlessly culled and sold only the best of their babies than buy from someone who tried to save every one they bred and bred and sold the ones they saved. Even if it's a hard thing to do, I'm glad to see that there are breeders out there concerned for the betterment of the species rather than just trying to sell every snake they produce. This may be why Rich has such lovely snakes, I'm sure he doesn't have the TIME to deal with defective snakes or poor starters. (No offense to the people who are more sentimental and do try to save all of their babies.) I don't want to come across as cold, because I really am not, but I have learned that it is necessary to develop a little "hardness" when it comes to breeding animals if you want to add more than you take away.

Oh, and thanks for the explanation tyflier. I appreciate it. I think that what struck me about your post was the use of the word "murder". I don't see how killing one animal is murder and killing a roughly equivalent (healthy) animal is not. I can see the distinction you are making (maybe about the necessity of one versus the other) but I felt that the terminology was a little extreme. I too often see those kinds of terms used to describe the killing of healthy rodents to feed snakes, and I disagree with the use of the word "murder" to describe the killing of any animal. Thanks for not taking offense