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The Cultivars (morphs)/Genetics Issues Discussions about genetics issues and/or the various cultivars for cornsnakes commercially available.

"AKC" type registry for reptiles?
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Old 02-20-2005, 01:18 AM   #1
kathylove
"AKC" type registry for reptiles?

Breeders have long discussed the need to have some standardized parameters (and names!) for the "ideal" specimen of various morphs of corns and other commonly bred herps. At least two people I know of have tried to start such a registry, but gave up when they found out how much work it is. If we actually had standards such as dog breeds have, keepers and breeders could compare their animals to the standard to gauge their breeding success. Of course, in order to be of any use, such standards would have to have broad acceptance with many breeders willing to accept a particular standard of "perfection" for a particular morph.

If successful, there would be lots of benefits, especially in the long term. Once accepted, hobbyists could buy pedigreed animals with known bloodlines, het traits, and purity. Such pedigreed animals would probably be of more value to future breeders, and thus more expensive than "mutts", even though mutts make great pets too! Of course, founder stock would only be as good as the animals accepted in the beginning. But after a few generations of breeding only registered stock, lines would become known just like in horse breeding or dog breeding, etc. In addition, the shows and other trappings of domestication would help prove to the public and government agencies that our industry is not really much different than any other domestic animal breeding hobby / industry, and deserving of the same respect. Not to mention that I could answer all of the emails I get about "I just bought a neon lime ghost pearl corn and want to know what it really is?" with just "sorry, it is not a recognized corn morph - you will have to ask the breeder what he thinks it is". Well, I guess that is already what I DO tell them, but it would mean more if there was a recognized registry to back it up.

OK - the point of this post (at last, lol!) A new registry has been set up, primarliy for bearded dragons at first (because that is what she breeds). The organizer has already joined with Tony Cueto to start hosting judged reptile shows at his shows, starting in Tampa in April. She has asked me about the possibility of enlisting a group of cornsnake breeders to write up (just a couple to start) breed standards for some cornsnake morphs. She has spent a lot of time with AKC people and other domestic animal registries to see what we can or can't use of their models. These standards would be written a lot like the breed standards for dogs, etc. Because our morphs are just color and pattern (unlike dogs), we could have one standard for all cornsnakes about their health, size, body shape, etc. Then additional descriptions for color and pattern of each type. We would need some discussion, then somebody to write, then bring it back and discuss it until we have a consensus. Seems like many morphs would not be too difficult as most agree what they should look like. But others coud be more problematical with differing opinions. Maybe start with the easier ones first?? Serp's book would be a good beginning point on many types, and go from there. He even started to organize a naming committee once (quite a while ago), but I don't know what became of it. Perhaps Chuck / Serp and those people could help here? Seems like this time, some of the (organizational) work has already been done, so all we have to do is come up with a couple of standards to start with.

Yes, there would be a lot of difficulties and disagreement, but it sure would be nice EVENTUALLY when it was finished and accepted. Please check out the registry website here: http://cmpregistry.com/index.php and get a discussion going on what you think about the idea and whether anyone here thinks they could help make it work.

THANKS! (Whew! My fingers hurt after all that!! Sorry for the book length, but it took a lot to explain it all.)
 
Old 02-20-2005, 01:32 AM   #2
dionythicus
I think it would be terrific. I hope it can be done.
 
Old 02-20-2005, 02:05 AM   #3
spook
It's a good idea, but where would morphs fit into these standards?
 
Old 02-20-2005, 04:55 AM   #4
DAND
Coming soon...

THE AMERICAN CORN CLUB

I've seen a discussion that was brought up about trying the same with Boids. I think it would be great if something like this was done.
 
Old 02-20-2005, 10:42 AM   #5
Serpwidgets
I think there's a great deal of value to be found in pedigrees, and knowing the ancestry of a given snake. I know that someone here is (or at least has been) planning a registry specifically for cornsnakes. I'm 100% for it.

But at this point in time, IMO it's too early to have any kind of breeding standard for specific morphs. We haven't even scratched the surface on the variety that could exist in any of the existing genetic-based morphs. What I mean is, if there were standards stating what an amel should look like (other than simply being homozygous for amelanism) then everyone would have been discouraged from breeding candycanes, sunglows, and reverse Okeetees. Then all amels would look like: hehe
 
Old 02-20-2005, 11:12 AM   #6
kathylove
Hi Chuck!

I was just about to email you to ask you to join in.

Actually, what I had in mind was to start with some of the selectively bred amels. I think some of those could be the easiest to describe. There could even be sublistings. For instance, many dog breeds have smooth coat and rough coat. We might have regular pattern and zigzag/aztec in most types, so we could go for the extremes of normal patterns and fused patterns, trying to eliminate the in-betwen, not really normal and not really zizags. Or we might have a sub-category of frosted types. Seems like it would be fairly easy to describe an ideal candycane. Everyone wants as white of a background as possible. And an intensely colored, solid red (some like orange) blotch. If we decided to have a frosted category, then we would look for the one with the most frosting in the blotches. Seems like we could have fun if people could actually compete in shows to see whose candycane (or amel okeetee or creamsicle or whatever) could come closest to whatever the community decides is the "ideal" for that selectively bred type. Of course, breeders are not forced to breed for that type if they don't want to participate. But the idea would be that the standard "ideal" animal is what most breeders and hobbyists want anyway, so the animal closest to that "perfect" specimen is the one that most people will want to buy anyway.

As I see it, we (breeders and buyers of future breeding stock) do this anyway, (in our heads) - trying to breed (or choose stock) to a standard that MOST of us will find appealing. But since there are no written standards, the beginners are kind of left to figure it out for themselves. If they wanted a black miniature poodle, they could go to the breed standard to compare their potential purchase to it, or they can just ignore it and buy whatever appeals to them. But at least they have a choice.

What do you think?
 
Old 02-20-2005, 11:22 AM   #7
Buschjs
I agree, it needs to be done and I hope it is successful. How would this actually be implemented, would each animal come with a certificate indicating their ancestry?
 
Old 02-20-2005, 11:42 AM   #8
kathylove
Please check out the registry website here: http://cmpregistry.com/index.php to see more about how the techinical aspects would be handled. I am sure it will evolve as it goes.

The nice thing is that we wouldn't have to work out those aspects - it's already in place. We just have to describe a couple of standards and get the ball rolling with corns. Others will work on ball python morphs, dragons, etc, and on how the certificates would work and putting on the shows, getting judges, etc. If the majority of corn breeders didn't like the way it is handled after a fair trial (don't know how long it would be), and we couldn't get needed changes accomplished, then I suppose we /they would just stop supporting it and it would eventually cease to mean much to other corn keepers /breeders.
 
Old 02-20-2005, 12:18 PM   #9
Menhir
I think this is a great idea for line bred morphs!
There is a whole lot of confusion in europe about line bred morphs - most of the time because they have better sounding names than "amel" or "anery".

I think there is a whole acceptance for unwritten laws in these morphs. There are also well known sites/books that specify these laws, but in the end, there is nothing like a standart.
We often see this with our lexikon (=encyclopedia), after a while, most of the peolpe agree to the explanations we give cause they see that they are internationally accepted. But there are still breeders that explain things to newbies just as they like and the argument "don't care what 20 year old boys write on their homepage" seems to work
So I'm hoping that the whole stuff works and we'd be able to simply expose the "liars" by linking to an accepted standart.

Btw. I hope you don't try to discuss every detail. With dogs, the whole thing grew for years to what we have today, we won't be able to fit every animal as it should be, we won't be able to be aware of every frosted, ziggyzaggy, atzeci, half atzec, smile on the head snake - thats imho.
I think we should start with simple and clear morphs and then devide it into subspecies, when there are several animals or lines that are different enough to be mentioned extra. But that should be a process, not a whole wall of things to do, that we build in front of us before the whole thing can start.

Divide and conquer won't fit for that - I think top down and slowly split will be the best way... some kind of evolution

Greetings
 
Old 02-20-2005, 12:51 PM   #10
kathylove
Exactly!

Yes, there IS already a lot of acceptance for many types, especially just the simple recessive traits and combos. And there are lots of breeders who pick out names for unproven pretty animals that may be the same as already named morphs. But those recessives are easy- two generations and you have the trait! More numbers to work for combos, of course. But as Serp said, we don't want just a mix of "general" amels or other simple or combined traits. We want the extreme examples that people find beautiful. The ones that take many generations of tweaking to perfect, and that can never be completely "perfect" - we always want "just a little more" (or less) of this color or that pattern. That is what makes it a fun, ongoing project, and can pique the interest of the beginner hobbyist / breeder as well. That is why I found leucistic Tx. rats boring after a while - once it is pure white, you are finished - what else can you do besides produce more of the same?

I think if we picked just 2 or 3 long established, popular types to work on (maybe candycane, alb. okeetee, and sunglow?) then we could attack the problem one little part at a time and see how it worked before going on to some more difficult to agree on types.
 

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