"AKC" type registry for reptiles?

Well, I knew you weren't talking about me...but I thought there might be some people on here that didn't know that. Thanks for clearing things up!

Here's a screenshot of the database viewer. Much of the functionality is already in place.

For example, you can navigate to either parent by clicking on the parent. Also, navigate to any offspring by clicking "offspring" and then selecting the offspring from a list of all of the current snake's offspring.

If anyone can think of any other fields that would be useful in such a database, speak up.

A monumental task, if it catches on and gets big. But I can't think of anyone better equipped to deal with it.

I have been watching this thread and it is a very interesting idea. I have Arabians, Mini-Donkeys and Beagles and it is important for them to be registered or they are mutts. There are, and always be followers, of registered breeding stock and unregistered pet quality stock. The Mini Donkey registry is an open one. I am amazed at how many Dog registries there are. The AKC is closed and I don’t see how we could mimic their registry, but is may be possible to follow the guidelines of another. I think that most people here are underestimating the monumental task they are suggesting.

The Snake industry is similar and different in many ways to the horse, dog and other registered breeds. My first impression of a registry for Corns was that it would be like having a registry for Tropical Fish, which in my opinion is the closest thing to our snakes. I breed Koi and there is no registry for them. How could you register 1000’s upon 1000’s of baby Koi? Most of them go into a pet type market like most of our Corns. Breeding Stock Koi, are bought based upon the line they come from and the Breeders reputation, much like our Corns.

Our Snake industry has many players. I love the post by Don S which clearly states the up hill battle that all professional Snake Breeders face.

Originally Posted by SODERBERGD

As a professional corn snake breeder, I'm in a minority in this industry compared to the part-time breeder. I'm competing with "weekend breeders" that are happy to sell a sunglow motley for $25.00 because they're not certified to ship them. Or because they promised their wife or mother that they'd get rid of those little pinky-eaters at any price just to get them outta the house. It's tough enough competing in this "amateur-driven" market without adding registration fees to the budget. My prices are not based on what my snakes are worth, but more for what the market will allow me to get. I maintain that a higher standard went into the making of SMR snakes and I'd probably stop breeding them when/if I get to the point that I spend more to produce them than I can get for them.

Several people have made post about what goes on at Snake Shows as well. It is very rare for somebody to pay more for a snake at a show because of the breeder that is selling them, over saving $5 or even 5 cents. Add the enormous Pet Shop/Industry to this equation and their will be very little control possible. There will be very little participation in a Corn Snake registry from these Corn Snake enthusiast. It seems to me that the only people who would participate in a Corn Snake Registry would be serious breeders.

Most bigger breeders keep track of their breedings and have a way to link the offspring back to which stock they came from. I don’t know why they do it, but I do it so, if something pops up in my colony down the line, I will know where it came from and will be able to reproduce it easier. I know that I could supply the data to a Registry or to a buyer that they would need to registry their Corn Snake, without too much extra work, since I am already doing it in a way. It clearly seems to be totally impossible to register all Corns, but it may be possible to register select breeding stock. Why would we want to register Normal Corns, except for wild caught lines such as Hunt Club Okeetees? They are produced in very high numbers. Our select breeding stock of today, may very well be very normal in the future as well, just like tropical fish.

I read in this thread somewhere that it would be necessary for whoever took on a Corn Snake Registry to not have any intent on making money at it. I totally disagree. It could be non-profit, but if it is to be successful, it would have to be worthwhile to everybody involved. Operating cost and wages would have to be covered. There are legal issues that may be a huge hurdle as well. What would be wrong with somebody making their living at maintaining a registry. All other big registries, take in enough money to pay for all expenses including wages. You would not need to charge a great deal of money to register a Corn Snake to produce a lot of income to cover expenses if there was enough participation. $5 X 20,000 or $5 X 100,000 is a lot of money. You could substitute $4,$3 or less and you would still generated a lot of cash flow. The time or wages that somebody would disserve to maintain a project like this should be compensated for and all cost such as the printed Registration papers, postal cost and on and on, would need to be self sustaining or it would certainly fail. The registry would have to be established in a way that it could be past on into others hands in the future, or it would be lost. There would have to be an incentive for future players to get involved. I think a Registry for Corns would have to be taken very seriously and approached as a business or it will certainly fail. I think the amount of work it would take to maintain a registry , is being underestimated by most and would be doomed to failer, if it is attempted as a hobby rather than a non- profit business. You can take in a lot of money and pay for all expenses including wages, and still be within the guidelines of a non-profit entity.

I think, a reptile registry would make more sense on higher stakes animals. An example would be Ball Pythons. Their are so many people advertising het animals that truely aren't what they're advertised as. Het Albino balls go for $1000/pair. Het Piebalds go for $4500/pair. I know how angry I would be if I purchased a pair of $4500 normals. A registry would safe guard purchasers who are interested in making high dollar investments.

I really love this idea...but with cornsnake retail being expanded into all morphs (I saw an Opal at a pet store, I was very surprised)...Don is right in his statements...

Serp, I like your database...I wish I could create something like that...

Originally Posted by blckkat

I think, a reptile registry would make more sense on higher stakes animals. An example would be Ball Pythons. Their are so many people advertising het animals that truely aren't what they're advertised as. Het Albino balls go for $1000/pair. Het Piebalds go for $4500/pair. I know how angry I would be if I purchased a pair of $4500 normals. A registry would safe guard purchasers who are interested in making high dollar investments.

I really love this idea...but with cornsnake retail being expanded into all morphs (I saw an Opal at a pet store, I was very surprised)...Don is right in his statements...

Serp, I like your database...I wish I could create something like that...

Yeah, I agree. Serp, when's that shareware registry program of yours coming out?

To give you a further example of what an uphill battle this would be:

Every year at shows, I will have a bunch of heterozygous animals on the tables marked for what they are het for. As an example (using made up prices, as I am not going to look up what I really charge), I will have Amelanistics het Opal for $50, Amelanistics het Butter for $35, Amelanistics het for Butter Motley for $50, and Amelanistics het for Opal Motley for $200. Right next to them will be regular Amelanistics, not marked as being het for anything for maybe $15. Invariably, people will pass over those marked definite het animals and pick up the regular Amelanistics. As they are paying for them, they will ask me "Can you tell me what these are het for?"

If those labels indicating heterozygous traits were to be certificates of authenticity instead, do you think the results would be the same or not?

And as Joe Pierce has pointed out, all of the good intentions in the world aren't going to pay the bills when the reality of the task being proposed finally comes home to roost. Yeah maybe initially the glow of the fun and technical challenge will carry the burden, but a year or two from now the honeymoon will be over, and you will find yourself with a job that doesn't pay for the time and effort you have taken on. What then?

OK suppose the fee is only $5 per animal. I may produce 6,000 babies this year. Perhaps 3,000 of them will be bulked out to wholesalers, leaving me the rest of the stuff composed of keepers and animals to be sold at retail. Do I really want to tack on $15,000 to my overhead for those animals? And heck, everyone realizes that not all of those 3,000 will live. So did I just pay $5 per head for a number of dead snakes as well?

I think anyone considering doing this needs to REALLY sit down and work out a 5 year plan on it and figure out best and worst case scenarios. Figure out what your projected work load is going to be and look at EVERY possible problem you may have to wind up spending your time on to get resolved. Joe's point about lawsuits is worth thinking about. What happens is someone applies for a new cultivar and it gets denied and they follow up with a lawsuit because you just damaged their income earning potential with YOUR decision? This is a VERY REAL possibility not to be taken lightly.

Just make sure you know what you are actually getting into, please. Believe me, this is NOT a new thought you are having.....

Rich, I think we need to think of the corn snake buying world in two seperate packages.

One are the impulse buyers who dont care about the genetics and probably dont understand what het even stands for.

The other group are the hobbists, small breeders, and big breeders like yourself who have at least knowledge of the hobby, and arent clueless when it comes to genetics and future breeding projects.

I myself was just looking over your updated 2004 list and thinking, I would really love the caramel motleys het for amel. Since I'd like to produce butter motleys, it makes more sense for me to pay the extra $20-30 to buy caramel mots het amel, as opposed to buying a caramel and an amel het motley, or something of the sort.

I totally agree that this is a HUGE task to undertake, and someone does need to sit down and look ahead a few years, at the very least.

The question is whether or not it's worth it to do this just for the hobby-goers, since the impulse buyers dont really care about hets, or a registry.

Who knows, it'll be interesting to see how it works out.

It seems as if the main opposition to a Corn Snake Registry is the added cost to the Breeders and I agree with this completely, but the cost of registration can be set up to be paid for by the buyer. The buyers pays for shipping cost now and it should be the same for any proposed registration with a registry.

I am not completely familiar with all Registries but I am vaguely familiar with some. With some Dog registries you pay a very low fee to register the litters and you receive a certificate for each puppy to be sent in by the new owners to have their dog registered. They pay a fee to obtain the Registration Papers for their puppy which covers the cost of maintaining the registry. This would cost the Breeders up front a little and would cause more work for Corns that may or may not be registered.

The Mini Donkey Registry does not charge a fee to pre-register a foal. A standard form has been made up by the registry to be filed out by the breeder. The breeder fills in the info on the parents who already have a registration number and with their signature, they confirm the info on the form is accurate. The buyer of the foal, fills out the info that applies to them, such as their name and address and a “Name” of the foal and sends in the Breeders Certificate with a fee to have there foal registered. With this system, the entire fee is paid for by the buyer and not by the breeders. The only fee the buyer pays would be in the form of printing out a copy of the Breeders Certificate and the time it takes to fill it out. There would not necessarily be any additional cost if the Breeders Certificate was transferred with the snakes.

A system similar to this one could easily be established and would not require any prior work by the breeders except for maintaining a system of keeping track of his breeders and which offspring were produced by which breeders. This is already being done my most breeders. At the time of sale, if a person express the desire to register their Corn Snake, a Breeders Certificate could be supplied with the Corn Snake to be sent in with a fee to the Registry.

This type of system would work, but it would require a the Breeders to have their breeding stock registered with the Registry to get it started. All Breeders would have to have the same type of system to keep track of their offspring as well as their Breeders so all of the numbers would be compatible in the system. The identification number supplied with the Registration Papers would be the snakes ID # and searches could be done with a system of this type to track the ancestry of Corns.

If the Registry was left open indefinitely, somebody could always Register their Normal or Amel Corn, there just would not be very much history on the Corn. This type of registration may cost more than submitting a Breeders Certificate, due to the initial set up cost. I could see some added value of the a Registered Corn to some prospective buyer depending how deep the lineage goes. I think everybody could see the value of knowing the lineage of a new Corn bought as a breeder. This knowledge does have value to some people as well, even if they do not plan on breeding their Corns. It is like the pride of ownership of a Registered Dog as opposed to a non registered one. It depends on the value of “papers” to each individual buyer.

Yes, another objection. Actually just food for thought. Once you become an element of a transaction via being an data collection entity that said snake is actually what was advertised, you become a potential yaught payment for some attorney. I know it always sounds negative when Rich and I come up with this stuff, but it comes from experience. Anyone in business is in a constant state of education in the school of hard knocks, but the survivors are the ones that learned from those mistakes. Ask McDonald's why they warn you that their coffee is hot.

What if a snake was alleged to be het for this or that and turns out not to be? Now, I don't have dogs so I imagine that the AKC is problably blameless in such matters by virtue of some precedent, but we all know how ambulance chasers are. If they smell blood, they'll go for the throat. Andsually when there's a lawsuit, they don't miss any throats involved. This is probably what Rich was referring to when he advised an evaluation of every possible scenario. I think of the label on the baby stroller that warns you to take the baby out before folding it up for storage. We all know how that warning label came to be. Even if you say the registry entity is blameless in such matters, it can be challenged in court. It will be a judge that decides who all the guilty parties are. Also, is there a legal precedent nullifying an entity's liability if their system is hacked and/or otherwise compromised?

Also, what about herd rates? It doesn't take much longer to process 10 entries than it does one. In the old days of carbon paper and physical filing cabinets, it was understandable that volume discounts were not so applicable, but today with that copy/paste function or one of those awesome programs of Serp's, it shouldn't take that much longer to do multiples. I know breeders that pay their vets herd rates. They promise to bring in X amount of animals for the year and don't pay full price for each visit. An attractively low herd rate might encourage a big breeder to get more involved. Again, it's just as much about time for a big breeder as it is cost.