Reptile Fight Club - Breeding to everything with a cloaca with Dominic Carbonneau

Episode Date: August 12, 2022

In this episode, Justin and Chuck tackle the topic of to breed or not to breed with  Dominic CarbonneauWho will win? You decide. Reptile Fight Club!Follow Justin Julander @Australian Addiction Reptiles-http://www.australianaddiction.comFollow Chuck Poland  on IG @ChuckNorriswinsFollow MPR Network on:FB: https://www.facebook.com/MoreliaPythonRadioIG: https://www.instagram.com/mpr_network/YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCtrEaKcyN8KvC3pqaiYc0RQMore ways to support the shows.Swag store: https://teespring.com/stores/mprnetworkPatreon: https://www.patreon.com/moreliapythonradio

Welcome to the first episode of the World of Warcraft series. I'm your host,

and I'm your host, and I'm your host, and I'm your host, and I'm your host,

and I'm your host, and I'm your host, and I'm your host, and I'm your host,

and I'm your host, and I'm your host, and I'm your host, and I'm your host,

and I'm your host, and I'm your host, and I'm your host, and I'm your host,

and I'm your host, and I'm your host, and I'm your host, and I'm your host, and I'm your host, and I'm your host, and I'm your host, and I'm your host, and I'm All right, welcome to another episode of Reptile Fight Club.

I'm your host, Justin Julander, and with me as mostly, or as always, Chuck Poland. How you doing, man? I'm good, man. I'm back. I'm feeling better. Good, good. Finally, pretty much through the inspection, I think we had 18 programs graded today and yesterday. All programs on track. We had one needs more attention in our aircraft confined space um so that was

a huge win lots of work went into this lots of relieved uh managers and uh yeah we're finishing up i think we got um we got like three more programs to do tomorrow uh and then they head out to our test line and do the test line so So not quite finished, but kind of over the big hurdle. That's good. You survived. Huge relief. I made it. I did it.

You still have a job? I do. I do. I'm still employed. That's good. Well, thankfully, it is kind of hard to get rid of us federal workers. Yeah. Just those fun little inspections.

I feel your pain. Cool. Well, you had time to look at any reptiles or things going well with the collection? Yeah, everything's going good. I had a couple more of those coastals eat. I think I have like two that are holding out on me now. Gotta love the holdouts. Yeah, I know.

Right. Like it's just, I feel like it's par for par for the course a little bit. I, uh, yeah, I don't know what happened. I lost my female Viper gecko, uh, the other day and I, I don't know if it was, you know, the only thing I can think of is, is, you know, I still had the heat and it was pretty hot around here. So I don't know if it was just too much heat or I really don't know what happened. So I'm pretty bummed about that. You know, I've got some of the offspring that I'm raising and just kind of trying to figure out what I'm going to do now. So, yeah, that sucks.

That's never fun. Yeah, definitely. Let's see, trying to finish that Diamond Python outdoor enclosure. So working on that. Taking shape, looking good. Yeah, definitely, definitely. I stained it and I shellacked it over the last weekend. And I've got some shelves that I've got to sand and stain and shellack.

So once that's good. A lot of shellacking going on, huh? Definitely a lot of shellacking going on. So once we're all shellacked up, I'll be able to put some animals in there. That'll be nice, I'm sure it's it's pretty hot here right now so i'm sure the the diamonds are like yeah you can wait you know what's your plan for that like during the heat of the summer that you can have like some kind of thermally protected spot for them yeah so the you know it's it's the the the cage is kind of

elevated and i was thinking about just kind of doing a drop down that's kind of connected to the ground um you know i the the area is on concrete but if you know i've just kind of like if you you know in the sun the concrete's kind of warm but yeah you know in in the shade that concrete holds a pretty pretty stable cooler temperature so i think i'll just kind of put that that that lower area in contact with the concrete that way it's you know got a big thermal sink to kind of keep them cool and sure um see how that see how that works but uh yeah just trying to it's pretty big i mean it's it's this this cage is a lot bigger than the one i have the coastals in so cool um yeah yeah a lot of they'll have a lot of room to move around.

I tried to do that whole fiberglass rock back thing. Man, it's not bad. It's just going to take a lot of work, a lot of material. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That can be expensive, especially these days. a lot of work a lot of a lot of material yeah yeah yeah so expensive especially yeah and the resin's not cheap yeah and the and the weave isn't cheap so it's just like i was like looking at it like you know what this is something like i already have the back done i've i've already kind of shaped it so i can continue to work on it you know minus the um you know minus everything

and then if i you know want to switch it over or whatever know, minus everything. And then if I, you know, want to switch it over or whatever, I can do that later. But I kind of want to get the animals out there and, um, you know, get them going. So I want to see how they do this year. So, yeah, that's, that's, uh, that's what's going on at, uh, Casa de Poland. Nice. Uh, yeah yeah how about you uh right yeah yeah we had the uh let's see the reptilian nation uh show out in salt lake this last weekend so that was fun to to catch up it's always good to see the you know the local breeders and stuff that you see year to year and so catching up with those guys you usually see like the same the the same folks or folks, you know, there, there's different, you know, different people that attend the show, but you know, there's a kind of a core

of people who've been around for a while that, you know, pretty well. And you're, does Joe go to that show? Yeah. Yeah. Joey Muggleston's at the show. Yeah. Um, so yeah, I caught up with him a bit and chatting with him. So that was cool.

Um, there were some new, uh, folks at the show that I, you that I hadn't done a Utah show before, so that was kind of cool. Nice. Adalyn Robinson, who we had on the podcast. Her and her husband were out at the show, so bought one of her prints for the reptile room. Nice. What'd you get? That'd be cool. Green Tree Python.

Nice. Yeah, I'm sure you've probably seen that one, but yeah, it's be cool. Green Tree Python. Nice. Yeah, I'm sure you've probably seen that one. But, yeah, it's pretty cool. And then, let's see. Yeah, David Levinson was there. So, yeah, I was on his podcast a while back when they were doing that. I'm trying to think of the name of it. Of course you are. Yeah, I have such a great memory.

Sorry. It's been a while. I've got to get my ribbing in on you, uh, yeah, I have such a great, sorry, I had to get my, it's been a while. I got to get my ribbing in on you. Yeah. Yeah. He had the best, uh, like Photoshop, uh, things. So like, I remember for my episode, he had me coming, coming out of a tent in Australia, like in the outback.

And like, he was like a kangaroo or, you know, one of the other co co-hosts was like a bat or something. It was pretty fun. Does he was like a bat or something it was pretty fun does he do like cartoon drawing or like or like no it's like just photoshop yeah oh gotcha yeah oh okay i see i see i don't know why i'm failing on that name but yeah so he's he's definitely creative but yeah he'll he always does these wacky uh fourth of july photoshop or like i guess they're videos with him in it but like he'll be standing there's like his butt hanging out of the you know like some draping a flag around him with

like the an eagle soaring in the background or something that's pretty he's pretty funny but yeah he used to have like a really long crazy handlebar mustache now he has like a big giant bushy beard but yeah he walked past me i'm like is that david like is he coming to the show you know like i i kind of just looked at him and i thought you know if he'd recognize me i'd like ask him if it's him but then he kind of looked at me and then kept walking so i'm like oh maybe that's not him maybe it's just a guy that looks like him and then he came over to adeline's booth and i'm like oh that is you isn't it and he's like yeah i thought that i thought you looked familiar but you're more scruffy i'm like yeah i'm more scruffy you got like a full you know post-covid strangers passing in the wind there exactly so i mean you know we we saw each other

when we recorded a podcast three or four years ago but that's about it so right yeah but it was good to catch up with him too hopefully they're uh enjoying their time out in utah they got a little i think they were headed down south to do a little herping or something yeah i think i see not too long ago adeline posted uh yeah a picture of it looked very utahish i'm not sure where she was but they were they were wanting to get out to the salt flats kind of out west of salt lake city and then they were headed south i think to see i i highly recommended that they go check out you know Bryce or something like that down south. So hopefully they took that advice. It looks like she's in some good Slickrock country, which is where you want to be in Utah.

At least that's where I want to be. The mountains are cool, too. That's where I need to be. Yeah. Man, maybe my vacation coming up i need that what are you doing are you busy um i mean i can always make time for chuck maybe i can road trip out to see the doctor there you go that'd be cool i'll put you up here i got two uh two daughters leaving so we'll get we'll have a couple uh guest rooms free up so i'll bring the dogs yeah well you can leave them home you're like

we've got enough dogs around here you keep your crazy crackhead dogs at home no your dogs are welcome they'd have fun with our dogs i'm sure oh i'm dude yeah or or you know fight with them whatever we have a little dog run out the side of the house, so it's a lot of space. I mean, you know, my dogs are California dogs. California cattle dogs that have not seen the open range quite like your dogs probably have.

So they're like, whoa, this is a big dog park, you know. Yeah, that'd be great to have. Yeah, that'd be a lot of fun cool yeah you put me up a couple times so i owe you for sure no no worries yeah well i you know trying to still trying to figure out we got i gotta get my buddy tommy through a test line uh once that's done then then uh i'll start thinking about vacation but there you go i can't can't leave my wingman hanging. Yeah. Well, so the show went well.

We moved a few animals, so that's good. Made some room. So just in time, the brettles are pipping today. Nice. Yeah, I came home from work. Nice. Went down there sticking their heads out. So hypo to hypo brettles. How big of a clutch was that?

12? It's like 20. 20? Yeah, first time breedereder all the eggs are perfect they're all looking good i open them up they're some some good looking stuff in there so i'm you and your big you and your big i know i don't know what i'm gonna do with 20 uh breadles but yeah they'll uh they're they're usually pretty straightforward so i'm not too worried about it but yeah i got about half the

inlands eating so that's good they're moving in the right direction now saturdays are the days that i clean the rodents and feed the babies so i missed uh my saturday with with the show so i i gotta play a little catch up and hopefully yeah you know they're nice and hungry for this next uh try and we'll get all of them going but a few of them have shed so that's good they're second shed so um yeah blackheads still don't want to take on their own so i did an assist feed there with some baby food so we'll see see how they do pick up but i got some great graded uh sorry great advice from uh one of my australian buddies um and uh so hopefully i can improve things a little bit but yeah steve crawford um he does the aussie wildlife show um he's the man

like he's he's he's british but he lives in australia and he's like bred just about everything so yeah so he's uh putting his owen pelly pythons together to nice yeah but yeah he sent me a video he's making this huge like outdoor shingleback uh skink enclosure looks pretty sweet so very cool i'm jealous that they but he put so he puts you up on a little blackhead python game right yeah yeah he's he's giving me some tips to help try to improve my incubation success so i really appreciate that yeah yeah um i i'd like to get better than you know 20 percent success rate or whatever i got so yeah but yeah it's nice to have uh people who know what they're doing uh give you always always good times but rarely do we ever get there alone yeah yeah so yeah uh brittles pippin i think

that's that's my last snake clutch i've still got a few uh gecko eggs that are incubating some nephorus wheeler eye yeah i was gonna say how that how's that wheeler eye doing yeah doing great yeah i just fed them this afternoon they're chasing around bugs. So, yeah, they're doing great. Yeah, can't complain. Everybody seems to be happy and doing well. Cool. Yeah, one of those times. Well, let's get on with the show. Yeah, enough about us.

Nobody cares. Nobody cares. Nobody cares. All right. Now, we've got with us a guest today, as you've probably seen from the description of the episode, if you're listening. But Dominic Carboneau, am I pronouncing that correctly? You're pretty damn close. Okay.

Which is good for Justin. Normally he's like, the name, the name, don't remember the name. Yeah, you're doing well if I can remember a name at all. I'm surprised I remember Chuck's name half the time. Welcome to the Reptile Fight Club. Why don't you tell us a little bit about yourself? Where do you fit in in the hobby? I've been doing reptiles for, jeez, I don't know, since the 90s too. I'm probably close enough to your age. I've been breeding for a very long time, and I think this is a big part of this episode. I figured we should chat about it. keeping for i don't know i guess i'm about 25 maybe possibly up to 30 years uh worked in a zoo

for about 10 to 12 years a long time ago from like when i was 16 to maybe 25 uh then i became a little rains reptile zoo which is a little zoo in canada it's now the biggest rescue organization in canada and they've actually have a couple of places in united states now they do a lot of uh like museum tours for like three four months and move on from one place to another great little place uh did that for about 10 years but uh needed a real income and uh became a you know i needed a job that. I became an advanced care paramedic. And now I'm doing real estate and paramedic. So, yeah. Okay, nice.

I've been keeping mainly Morelia my whole life. And I've kind of diverged a little bit everywhere since then. And it's funny, like never bred before and then started much more later in life and uh last couple of years have been really really good uh full racks of babies uh almost too many um i think last year produced 112 baby morelia this year i didn't do as well i did more clutches but less babies i think i did just under 196 i got seven clutches and i think i reached out to you because i bred two new things this year i uh bred uh and teresha the pygmy pythons for the first time ever uh dang it that's awesome yeah i was pretty happy with this uh oh wait pygmy python i'm thinking pygmy bandits yeah no no no no pygmy that's why i reached it those i have yeah

they're they're horrible bandits on the mind too but yeah yeah they are yeah oh trust Oh, trust me, I know. The most cool snakes ever, but man, they're horrible to get going. I didn't get any this year, so I'm like, maybe that's not a bad thing. I'm doing horrible with the babies. I got six babies, and three of them I shipped to my friends. He's still trying to get them feeding. The three on my end, I'll be honest, all three of them I shipped to my friends. He's still trying to get them feeding. The three on my end, I'll be honest, all three of them died. I kept the cesspating them and then after

about a month and a half, all three of them perish, which is really rough. So I don't know what I'm doing wrong. I don't know, I guess. So I bred Angolan pythons for the first time this year. I was pretty happy. Oh, cool. Congrats. Yeah, that's cool. Thanks. Honestly, I bred them exactly like a carpet python. I did nothing different, and it went really well.

And I got six clutches of different carpets, IJs, Coastals. I did Darwins and did some weird crosses. I'm trying to go for the big, what's it to say, like the big morph game there. I'd love to have a white snake. So I bred a super caramel exanthic pure coastal to an albino to produce the triple het, or I should say the caramel double het to try to eventually go for that morph combo, which is like the 10 year plan.

But, you know, no, overall, it's been really good. So I've been breeding for quite a while. So I figured we can try to hit on that subject and see if I can debate one of you guys. Although I don't think I can compete, but I'll try. Oh, I'm sure you'll compete just fine you'll be fine yeah yeah so uh now dominic had a uh a suggestion for an earlier show that we did so and then he gave us some really good suggestions made a couple more so i'm like you got to come on the show and and debate these in person so we're glad to have you on thanks for coming and i'm sure it'll be a fun discussion yeah yeah so today we're talking about breeding you know if uh you know if we if we need to

breed our snakes to everything with a cloaca as as chuck loves to say and and here you know his favorite his favorite statement there but um or you know if we if if you even need to breed your stuff or, you know, you could kind of slow it down or kind of fill it out. So, yeah, we'll go for that. So let's Chuck, give us a call on the first coin toss to see heads. It's heads. Of course, you're the winner. So. All right, man. Well, I'll give you a break. I'll debate this one.

Okay. I'm sure everybody's sick of hearing from me anyway, so they want to hear the Chuck. They love you. They come for the Chuck. They love the doctor. No, they stay for the Chuck. They come for the Justin. All right.

Well, all right. So give it a go. And then, Dominic, if you want to call, and then we can see who gets what side. Let's go for heads. What's that? Heads? It's actually tails. Chuck's a double winner today. So what side do you want to take, Chuck?

What – okay, so – Should you breed your snakes? So should you breed everything? Just breed everything indiscriminately? Or should you – oh, gosh. I'm going to say that you should be a very discriminant breeder. So don't breed your snakes to everything. Okay.

Or at all. So that's kind of on that side. Or at all. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So don't breed or breed modestly. Okay. All right. Does that sound good?

You ready for this? Sounds like you took the easier side to debate. Yes, I did. Yes, I did. Without shame. Without shame. Yep. Yep. I've been, I've been, I've been Jooland-ered enough times. Oh boy. Well, and I'm sure, I'm sure Dominique's coming prepared. So it shouldn't be a bad discussion either way.

All right, well, since you're the double winner today, Chuck, do you want to go first? I will go first. Or a steam guest? Okay, all right. I'll go first. Okay, go for it then. So, you know, I mean, I think, you know, it can be, well, it can be super exciting to produce tons of stuff and you can get caught up in the madness of breeding and the excitement of it. On the other end of it, most people don't have unlimited space.

They don't have an unlimited food supply or pocketbook to be feeding things. And the other part, the biggest part to that is most people don't have the time someone like Nick Mutton does to call people and sell animals. So a lot of times it's easy to produce, but sometimes they're hard to move. And so you can quickly get overwhelmed with lots and they're hard to move and so you can get quickly get overwhelmed with lots and lots of animals lots and lots of work uh and and you know i think um it the the problem with over producing is is you got to find a home for those things if you produce them whereas you know if you breed modestly or or don't breed at all you know you can get to kind of take the easy road with

the animals and all you're really worrying about is the, I guess, the adults or the animals that you have, not necessarily the offspring that they produce. So kind of maximize your enjoyment of the reptiles that you have, because to be quite honest, you know, breeding is amazing, but it's a lot of work. And anybody who, who is, you know, hatched, you know, 10 clutches in a year will tell you, yeah, it's, it's an insane amount of work. And so, you know, I think that's probably how I would lead is just the amount of work and the amount of time and energy that breeding can take up in your life. You might be best served by just sitting back and enjoying what you have and not having to breed it. Wait, wait. So clarify this.

You're saying you should be ready for babies to house them and stuff when they hatch? You should. You and Owen should. Congratulations to the Mackinwookie, by the way. Oh, yeah, yeah. We forgot to congratulate the Mackinwookie. That's pretty awesome. I know Owen worked long and hard.

I told him it was Mackintastic that he did it. It was good, man. It was good. Yeah, way to go, Owen. That's pretty awesome. I told him it was McIntastic that he did it. It was good, man. It was good. Yeah, way to go, Owen. That's awesome. If you're listening, always, sometimes. Sorry. All right, go ahead.

No, no. So, yeah, that's, I mean, obviously you want to be ready for the offspring. But a lot of times you hear that. People are like, oh, crap, I have more eggs than space. You know, I don't have enough room for all these offspring. Yeah, you just don't always know what you're going to get, right? So when it all goes, oh. All right, sorry.

That's okay. So true, and it's going to be harder for me to debate because I think I'm much more on your side, but I'll play the devil's advocate and go for the other side. So to me me you're missing out you plainly simply said if you look at all the enjoyments and how much you learn and how much you can truly get from breeding you tell me you don't want to work you don't want to put time into it you want to just enjoy just your animal but you're missing the entire other aspect of owning animals i mean think about it when you're breeding what are you looking at you're missing the entire other aspect of owning animals.

I mean, think about it. When you're breeding, what are you looking at? You're looking at their cues. You're looking at when they're going to be producing follicles, when they're going to ovulate. You're second-guessing yourself. You're doing all these things. Then finally you get eggs. The next year it's even easier because you're like,

I know this girl does this. I know this girl does that. You learn and you learn, and breeding truly makes you a better keeper. And every single time you breed, you get better and better. You learn more about your animals. You learn more about how each animal is different. Should you breed everything? That's debatable, but you should definitely breed because I think that you can definitely learn a lot from every single animal and as a keeper you'll improve and it'll also probably lead you to become maybe even a keeper that will even I don't know attack harder to breed species go for those species that other

people are having troubles like this year I went for the pygmy pythons do I regret it maybe but I did it and I never thought I would do it before it? Maybe. But I did it. And I never thought I would do it before. And I'm pretty happy I did it. I learned a lot about it. I mean, I bred a species that for the first time, I never even saw them lock up. I never saw them cuddling, anything like that. But somehow it happened. Okay. I screwed up with the babies. The babies aren't doing or thriving like I'm doing, but I learning from it and i'm progressing as a keeper because of it so i think that everybody should strive towards being able at some point in their time of keeping to breed and improve improve their knowledge improve their their keeping improve i don't know everything about the animals in that sense

if that makes any sense. No, I like that point, too. I really like that point that you pay more attention to your animals if you're trying to breed them, I think, in a lot of ways. Otherwise, you might get, okay, I've had this animal for 10 years, and what else? So, yeah, I think that kind of keeps the excitement you're you're always keeping your females and you know males in peak condition so yeah to support that i like that statement yeah and and i mean to be honest i i i you know

i it's hard for me to argue something like that i i i fully agree with that. As somebody who has bred and done that and moved on to harder species, I'm fully on board with exactly what you're saying. I think the big issue probably comes when you say, well, I'm going to breed everything I have as much as I can. can um and and you know i think there's there's kind of an issue in the hobby where if everybody did that where do those animals go what what happens to those animals and um you know i fully agree with you if you don't breed those animals it's it's it's it's it's the sticky wicket right if you don't breed those animals you don don't produce these fabulous offspring that move forward selectively bred genetic projects and push into new boundaries and create new bloodlines and and everybody looks at it like I have to breed, then you end up with a problem of more, you know, more animals than there are people to, to, to take care of them. And then what happens to those animals? And then it becomes like, is this an, is this an ethical concern? Are we being, you know, ethically sound with, with what we're doing? And I think

that's, that's probably where, and you know, where's that line? What, what, what, um, because, you know, I, I don't think that line is the same for carpets as it is for retakes as it is for ball pythons and where, where the homeostasis in the market is for for different species and and you know we're such a niche i'm sorry nipper community and and you know it's but but but carpets are gaining you know they're gaining uh strength and you know new morph combinations are interesting people so that there's a lot of fluid dynamics going on there but i think overarchingly my my concern would be one of ethics in overproduction okay so could we consider if we overproduce could we consider alternative things for snakes so one of the the things you could say is that let's go with ball pythons what do you do

when you have too many ball pythons what do you do when you have too many normals or unlucky, I don't know, not hitting the odds on your morph? Could we ethically consider using snakes as feeders? Could we consider alternatives to overproducing if it does happen, which would technically not be a bad thing. A lot of animals eat snakes. A lot of snakes eat snakes. Now, can you overproduce if you can use them as a feeder? Because right now I can tell you a lot of people would love to have feeder snakes for their other animals. I can tell you my womas, every single baby that don't make it, it's always woma food. And I've always trained them like that. Now, is that a bad thing? If one comes out with a kink, I personally don't want to reproduce that. I don't

want to give it to a friend. I don't want to. I think it's food. So one could argue that if you produce everything and you have too many, maybe one of the arguments could be that why not use it as an alternative food source? And that's a fair, valid and good argument. I agree with you. And I think that there's no reason not to. You know, I think the issue that comes into when you go down that road is there that a lot of a lot of breeders do it for the they love the animal they love, you know, they love what they're breeding and their heartstrings get attached to those animals. And they have a hard time breeding

and then sending that stream into a food source prey. Which is weird because we have no problem breeding rodents to do that. And it's a way we look at it. And I'm not saying that everybody is that way. I'm just saying that I think that's a complication to the argument that you're making. But nonetheless, I definitely agree with you. I'm sure Justin assists feeding his blackheads is probably on your side with this one. That's always a tricky one for me because I got in this because I like snakes and it's hard to – I mean, obviously, if it's stillborn or it's kinked, I'll throw it into the blue tongue cage or something.

They'll eat it pretty quick. But if I had a healthy offspring, I'd have a really hard time feeding it off to something. But that's just personal preference. What about if you overproduce or if you have too many? Yeah, well, I would maybe consider a wholesaler or something before I would. But I guess, I mean, ethics, there are some ethical considerations because a lot of times I feel bad selling an animal thinking, you is this animal going to be neglected or you know those kind of things that sure and and obviously a rapid you know either euthanasia or or feeding to a you know a king cobra or a black-headed python might be more humane in the long run than than than, you know, selling it to somebody who, who loses interest in

a month or two, you know, that kind of thing. And again, like, you know, it's, it's kind of a nipper thing, like in carpets, you know, crosses are, are, are so like, oh, worthless snake. It's a crap it, you know, um, get that thing out of here. Who cares? And, you know, I mean, I'm sure everybody's heard my get down is I think crosses are awesome. There's, you know, you put stuff that doesn't normally breed together and you get cool shit out of it. So, you know, whether you're hung up with the name or the taxonomic conundrum that you put yourself in, who cares to me? Like, you know what I mean? They're all snakes in boxes. They're not in the wild breeding.

We're not trying to repatriate, you know, we're not trying to repatriate Australia for the Aussies. They don't need our help. So, you know, who cares? Like, I feel like you're arguing my fun now. Well, perhaps, perhaps. But I think the problem is that when you do go and cloaca it out, you potentially can produce a ton of byproducts, which are crosses or stuff that you're using to make specific morphs. And you make what is quote-unquote the undesirables of carpet pythons. And those go to wholesalers or they get sold for cheap and regarded it for cheap a lot of times.

But does it matter. Does it matter? Well, I think it matters for the long term. Sorry, go ahead. Go ahead. I was going to say, keep in mind, it's a snake in a box, right? We're not putting these in nature. We're not shipping them back to Australia. We're not affecting any wild population. So why does it matter?

Why does it matter if that steak is going to be sold for $20 instead of $2,000 if it's not the right more for the weird cross? Because I think people treat animals – unfortunately, people treat those animals accordingly to what they associate a value to it. So if you pay $10,000 for a bull and I, you associate that as a $10,000 animal and you protect your investment accordingly. But if you only paid 60 bucks for a cross carpet and something happened, maybe you don't look out for that animal, right? No, the way it is, yes.

To me, it's just kind of a human thing and and and the issue is how we talk about uh uh crosses or hybrids or whatever within the carpet community it's how we it's how we label them and name them and and i you know i've tried to say like some of the most awesome snakes I've seen were crosses and people are like, who cares? Get it out of here, whatever. Feed it to a cobra, which fine if you can. I'm just saying I don't disagree with all of that line. I'm just saying that there are some complications around when you go down that road. A lot of keepers don't down that road a lot of keepers

don't want to a lot of keepers don't have cobras to feed them to but you know a lot of people um have issues feeding to veranids or you know snake eating yeah snakes so going back on a few things you said first of all um when you say do you know how many people have ten thousand dollar snakes they keep in a ten dollar tub or they you know what it blows my mind like it's it's not like other hobbies people have will have the most expensive animals and have the cheapest tub set up for it with and not even have a thermostat or just have a heat pad plugged directly and why is that i don't know why the hobby is like that but i think your your argument falls short on that one because whether you produce a ten dollar snake or a ten thousand dollar snake not always but many people

will keep them the same way and we'll keep them in the smallest setup or we'll keep them in the tubs where the ten thousand dollar snake the same way as the $15 snake, will be kept. Very similar. Not everyone, but many. Yeah, I hear what you're saying. I mean, I think your point is nuanced because as somebody who keeps Tracy A., I would keep my Tracy A. in a small, not because I don't care about the animal, but because the security for the animal is vital. So sometimes it's not necessarily about the cost of what you're keeping it in, but the appropriateness for the animal. Now, if you're keeping a $10,000 bolognese in

a $2 tub and you know that that is just absolutely not in the best interest of that animal or whatever, yeah, clearly that's a situation where the rack mafia mentality is prevailing over the animal's best interests. And I would say that's the rare instance where you would see somebody allowing their incredibly costly investment to override their common sense. I think a lot of the people who are trying be on it to it this year, he who shall not be named but is fingers crossed for, you know, it's been one of those things where it's kind of anyone's guess. We kind of know how Python reproduction works. We kind of have some good ideas based on some previous experiences, but Bull and I just don't seem to be reliable, like a lot of scrubs don't seem to be reliable. So it's, you know,

I hear what you're saying and your point is well taken. I just think that there's some nuance there where you don't necessarily have to spend, you know, $10,000 on a $10,000 snake to house it if you meet its requirements. I don't think that a snake looks at an enclosure and says, you know, this is not the Ritz-Carlton. I need a more expensive enclosure to be happy. I think as long as you're meeting its needs, it's not really concerned about how expensive its, its enclosure is. You know what I mean? Yep. I, I, I'm kind of hoping that we're, we're coming out of that as, you know, I think a lot of us, especially our age, we're kind of raised in the, you know, shadow of people like Brian Barczyk who had row upon row of tubs, you know? And so we all looked

at that and went, Oh, I want to do that someday. I want to be a big breeder, a professional breeder, and have a row of tubs. But I think there's a little bit of paradigm shift, and I'm hoping that's taking hold and that pretty soon more people will be keeping in cages or larger enclosures. I mean, not that a tub can't serve a purpose. I mean, most breeders need to keep their babies in tubs. But I'm hoping we're we're moving kind of beyond that mindset i guess as a whole yeah well there's the whole there's the whole animal behavior portion of that and the whole animal husbandry portion of that and you shouldn't conflate those two things yeah yeah so going back to the bullens so going back

to breeding now can you imagine if I told you I know 20 people? We all have bolins, but we only keep one each. Your argument, you're supposed to be arguing the fact that we shouldn't be breeding everything, right? So why don't we just spread the bolins around or spread any other Bismarck pythons, any other ones that are slightly more rare in the hobby and we just keep them right let's just keep let's just enjoy them let's not breed them that's how it was done back in you know but should should we should we do that or should we argue that you know what we should breed all these snakes we should put them together we should pair them well Well, I mean I think – yes, I mean I have three tracier that I bred together. Now, that's one – that's – call that one pair of snakes, right?

Should I breed that? Of course I should breed that. Now, if I had 50 Tracy A and I had the formula for breeding Tracy A, is that reasonable? Should I breed that? Because the question becomes how many Tracy A keepers are there out there? And I'll tell you what. When I bred mine for the first time, it was really like, oh, that's been done? Okay, well, that's old news then. And people moved on. So once you breed something like that, or once the mystique of being the one who did that

wears off, all of a sudden, then you figure out people maybe care less about some of this stuff. And then you get the real climate of where that market is. And I'm not saying that I couldn't sell 50 clutches of Tracy A. I'm just saying that sometimes people go into it thinking one way and once the wash works out and you've got all these animals, then it's like, oh, the demand wasn't as high as I thought. Now you have all these animals that are potentially rare, highly valuable, but they're all on the market at the same time and they're rare as crap and they all need to have good outcomes for the future of that captive species to move on. So breeding it all at one time may not be the solution. And I, I guess it's unfair because I think I picked either not breeding them or rarely breeding them.

And I feel like I'm, I'm, I'm winning on both counts here because I'm gonna, I'm gonna slide over to my rarely breed them and say, you know, you have to be able to. It's not reasonable for breeders, especially rare guys who do rarer stuff, to never breed their animals. That doesn't make any sense. So if the one guy finds the perfect recipe and can breed, I'm going to go back to Bull and I, can breed them and can produce 50 clutch, that one guy can do it, but no one else or what is it, one or two people successfully do it every now and then? Okay, but if that one guy, you're telling me he shouldn't do it. Well, I'm not saying he shouldn't.

I just don't think he should breed all 50. Well, why not? If he can, he should. Well, because he can share what he knows and other people can breed theirs and you shore up your genetic diversity because all of the animals were highly related or all come from the same, it's not as robust. You're just making it look bad now. It doesn't mean they're all related.

They could all be separately. They could be genetically all diverse. I'm just saying that if somebody could do it, why wouldn't they? Would it crash the market? Possibly. all diverse you're just i'm just saying that if somebody could do it why wouldn't they would it crash the market possibly but wouldn't you be happy to buy a freaking bolins for a thousand bucks instead of 10k i'd be happy i might actually own them i don't see where it would be a bad thing if somebody is able to breathe in vast numbers and if you can't move them you adapt i i at first when i was first breeding i only had one or two, and I didn't know how to sell them.

It would take me the entire year to sell them. And then the next year would come, I still had leftover babies. Now what do I do? I hate selling. I hate dealing with people. I wholesale them, and I move them out. So let's not talk about a species that's hard to breed and isn't produced in any real numbers. Let's talk about a species that's easier to breed and produced in much greater numbers because I think that's where the argument gets.

It's easy to make that argument with a rare, hard-to-breed species. I have to use this mic. But is it easy to make that argument with a common – no, no, no. I understand what you're saying. I got you. I got you. I'm with you. You're right.

No, you're right. You're not wrong. You're right. But where I think the community suffers the most is probably in the less difficult stuff, the more widely kept and widely bred stuff. That's where we see kind of the ills of overproduction. Not to gang up on Dominic or anything, but I think even if there were 500 Bologna that all of a sudden appeared captive bred and hit the scene and they were a thousand dollars each i i still

would question you know if if a lot of people could do them justice because they're a very specialized python that's why they're rare that's why nobody's breeding them is because they're very specialized hard to keep properly they die fairly easily if you're not you know if you're missing something so you know maybe that's even captive captive bred or young animals taken from the wild don't fare well a lot in captivity. So there could be that kind of ethical concern with producing them and putting them in the wrong hands. And to his point though, I mean if somebody could produce 50 of them definitely 50 clutches of them yeah sure that's i mean that's good but i just i mean that's probably not going to happen anytime i guess i'm seeing a lot of those probably suffering and and meeting and untimely end whereas if we shift to something more common

whether it be carpet python or even the more common one like ball pythons which this is going to irk me to say but there's a reason there's tons of ball pythons created everywhere right there's ball pythons galore people breed them like crazy they're everywhere you go to a show yay 90 of all the tables is ball python right okay it drives me completely insane that being said for what why is it 90 ball python because 90 of all the keepers like ball pythons they all keep ball pythons they all do it so is it bad to breed that much in those ridiculous numbers maybe not because you know what if we couldn't sustain a show with 90 ball pythons and if we couldn't sustain all these people breeding all those bile pythons people would stop breeding them good point i mean i i mean i you know i i feel like i feel like we

we we condemn the whole rack thing where do you think the rack thing came from because everybody's got to shove hundreds of ball pythons into somewhere and and you know all these people who are sitting on their ball pythons is because the market's full of tons of of ball pythons and you know if everybody at the end of the year was moving their ball pythons i think and yeah do i think that people get into it and get weeded out because they think they're gonna make money breeding ball pythons and then they find out that you gotta breed snakes for the love of the game not for the love of the money yeah absolutely that's a thing but at the same time there's still tons of people who have the love for the game who have tons of racks full of ball pythons because we overproduce ball pythons and we do it because why we're trying

to make this combination that combination oh i didn't hit this i gotta hit this combo you know the odds on this are long and i got this but i had to do you know i had to to make four or five clutches of it before i hit it and it's like you're chasing you're chasing you're producing you're producing and you know to your point if we had these other you know i don't want to say waste streams. That's not the right word. But feeder streams or something where these animals could be used, that's just not where they're going. I think they're kind of meeting probably a short life and and not not the best life um so so i i just think when you talk about

animals that are produced in mass um like ball pythons this is where the issue like you see you know you can kind of see the issues that come out of it and and yeah i see i i definitely see the ethical reason like the ethical issue with having too many snakes and having too many snakes in tubs and continuous. But this isn't a debate about the rack system or whether or how we're keeping them, no. I didn't think I was going to debate cages over racks. I didn't think I was going to debate cages over rocks well i mean to to dominic's point like i i thought that uh you know how how many people got into ball pythons for kind of the money or or the the fact that there's a million different morphs i thought one of these days this this you know market or whatever this

house of cards is coming down but it hasn't i mean it continues on and it almost gets stronger in some ways and it's it's really impressive but i you know i look at uh you know other other things and you know even though there's morphs and there's excitement to some extent it just doesn't have the staying power that the ball pythons have so you know i i don't know why that is but you know and i don't want to have a giant collection of ball pythons have so you know i i don't know why that is but you know and i don't want to have a giant collection of ball pythons i'd much rather work with morelia you know they're much more along but but but to the you know to the ball pythons credit it's it's it's had a lot of staying power and and it can survive all the animals that have been produced and keep going i think it's pretty

impressive i mean go ahead i'm just gonna say think of all the friends or people that asked you like i can name you this many times like two years ago they're like so i want to get into ball pythons i want to get into the breeding game i want to do i don't know how many times i told them i'm like honestly you're too late like everybody else is doing it there's like you'll never keep up with all these other people and yet just like you're saying it's it's not dying off it's not going away. I kept two ball pythons in my life, and it was in the 90s, and I paid way too much for wild-caught animals.

That's the only ball pythons I've ever owned. They were really cool back then. But anybody else who gets into them now, it's still, I'd hate to say it, but it's not too late. People can still make money. People can still hit those crazy combos and keep going and it seems to be a pyramid scheme but it just keeps going it's not ending yeah there's some successful pyramid schemes out there yeah i was gonna say man i mean i and you know you can you can do you can do the morph thing and and you can do the morph thing and you can – I just – if that's going to be your business and that's going to be your primary source of income, you need to be either producing in mass and advertising and marketing right or you need to be at the top of the pyramid scheme making new animals that are going to be bought by second, third, fourth, fifth tier breeders to keep the thing going.

So it depends on where you fall in the pyramid. But I mean, I still kind of – I think you're sort of changing it a little bit there because there's a lot of middle ground because – I agree. I agree. If you pick a really good looking morph, if it's 50 bucks people are going to want to buy it because it's good looking you know so you can still sure still make a make it as a middle guy but i guess my question is well and this is kind of purely academic and it doesn't matter but

if there were no morphs would you see you know nobody was keeping ball pythons for the most part before there were the morphs. And then that's kind of brought everybody in because it adds an extra layer of excitement. I mean you never know what's going to crawl out of the egg. It could be some crazy looking thing. And the whole idea of making combinations means, oh, I have to be a breeder. I have to produce these things and I make these combinations and, oh, I have to be a breeder. I have to produce these things, and I make these combinations, and oh, this is cool. And so you're making little breeders

that all eventually have their own rack systems, and they're making their combos. And you can see very quickly how mathematically it turns into, oh, shit, we have too many ball pythons. But that doesn't stop some of the bigger breeders from going well i'll take those rack systems off your hands and i'll you know i'll buy your wholesale animals and and no problem and you know um you know uh the sutherlands have done really did really well with ball pythons and they you know they they're and and there's plenty of people

who've done really well but not everybody's the Sutherlands. Not everybody advertises. Not everybody markets. Not everybody does it professionally. But if everybody's goal is to be a breeder and to make the combos and those kinds of things, then it starts to get into that kind of potentially not good place. You know what? I see myself as like a small time breeder i've been doing it for a long time but i just breed i breed a couple of clutches every year and yet somehow i can move my animals and did i adapt yeah at first i used to have one clutch

and i had a hard time selling one clutch now i just slowly find contacts and then i wholesale and now i'm at the point where can, anyway, I don't know if you guys knew, but I'm from Canada, but Canada sucks for selling carpets. Carpets aren't popular here. There's like three or four people in all of Canada that breed them like regularly. And that's about it. If you want anything, we got to get them somewhere else. But what do I do now? Now I'm considering the Asian market. The Asian market is crazy. It's insane. They pay tons and tons of money. I know many people from the States. I know one or two people from Canada

that ship everything. They take everything, one price and it's done. Now, is that wrong? Maybe ethically, wholesaling, we could debate whether wholesaling, I think you guys already did, whether wholesaling is right or not, but it's a way to move animals.

And anyway, going back to that, like I'm doing it. I'm just a little tiny guy, small time breeder. This is not my job. I don't do this. I mainly, why do I breed snakes? I breed snakes to hit on the cool things that I want, to line breed what I i want and to be able to sell an entire clutch just to buy you know two rough scale pythons or to be able to buy a black headed python that's two three k here that i can't afford but this way i can do it and i can use my snake money to buy

more snake money so one could argue breeding snakes sure gives you money to buy better snakes and and i i completely agree with that i i think my issue is that when you end up with you know 50 or 100 pairs of snakes and you're you're breeding all of those snakes for what to get you more snakes like Like when is it, you know, when does it like if if if it always has to go to the, you know, to because breeding everything is better. When is breeding everything not better? Is it infinite breeding? Everything is better all the time, always. Or do you hit a point where you're like, this is not better, not better for me, not better for the animals. Not better for Canada. Maybe better for the Asian market. We're not sure. And I feel like the other part of it is too like I don't think there's anything wrong with wholesaling. And I think wholesaling has a purpose. It serves a function. It's a good thing. But what it does is it dulls out the signal in what in in what the market can really handle

because once it leaves you you don't have to sell it you don't have to deal with it you don't know what happens to it does it does it perish does it sit in a reptile shop does it sit in a warehouse you we don't we don't really have a good you when you wholesale, you don't have a good pulse on that, right? But when it sits in your collection and you're trying to sell it and you're competing with other people and maybe you're being from Canada and only having three other breeders to compete with and not having a lot of carpet sales there could be a tough a tough gig I get that part of it but but you don't necessarily get to feel like how hard now if you were producing 200 snakes a year and you always sold those snakes no problem you know you had your website you sold them boom you would you you would be you'd be like yep no problem i'm doing this i'm selling them no problem but if you had to sit on those animals and sit on those animals would you still feel like

producing them every single year makes sense if you're not selling those animals without wholesale my rule of thumb is i think sorry go ahead just oh i i was just going to say, I think, you know, Dominic kind of addressed that is you can find other markets to kind of take that, you know. But yeah, you're right. There may be a finite point to that. But, you know, finding those other routes or mechanisms that allows you to work with what you want to work with rather than just what's popular. You know, and I think it's kind of a boring world if everybody just works with what's most popular. I like being able to – yeah. And I understand we live in a global economy.

But shipping overseas is not easier anymore. It tends to be a little bit harder. So maybe it's not for everybody. And really, you know... That might be easier in Canada. I don't know. How's the process there in Canada? I've never done it. I'm actually looking into doing it. All I know is that getting any appendix to animals from the States is horrible.

It takes forever um and trying to ship and but what about exporting from so like from canada to to the asian it's been about three months of researching and i'm i think i might have it down i think we'll see okay it's uh it's it's definitely a tricky one so here's another argument that I'll throw your way. Okay. So in nature, you take wolves, you take their prey, you take anything like that. What happens? There's a lot of prey.

There's a lot of breeding. There's a lot of offspring. It keeps going. What happens if you have too many offsprings? Eventually, they eat all the prey, and then eventually there's no more prey. So what happens to all the predators, they slowly die off and then it keeps balancing itself, right? So nature will balance itself out always naturally from prey to predator. Now, if you look at the market or if you look at breeding animals in captivity, it's kind of the same thing. If we

breed too much and there's too many animals, what will happen? It's going to saturate the market or people are going to be stuck with them. It's going to kind of prevent people from breeding because if there's no more room for them to go anywhere, there's no more room. They're going to have to slow down, not because they want to, because they can't really go anywhere. And then what's going to happen? It's always going to keep balancing itself to a certain degree. So is there a line? Of course there is. But I think you don't need to stop

yourself like i can tell you if i still had my 100 babies from this year next year where would i put all yearlings next year i don't i might have enough space for 100 babies but i don't have 100 space for 100 yearlings and i can tell you that would slow me down would it prevent me from continuously breeding to a certain degree yes but not because I don't want to. I don't know if I'm – See, but I kind of feel like – yeah, I don't know. I totally get what you're saying. I totally get what you're saying. Went from the breed as much as I can to now that I've bred years and I have refined some of my stuff, now I'm selecting my projects.

And I'm being more – now that I have a line that has a name and I have this going and that going, I have some very specific pathways and directions that I go. And so maybe I don't try to breed everything, but I try to breed selectively down certain pathways. And I think that's kind of a natural trajectory. Whereas, you know, if you were to just start breeding everything so you can produce as much as you can. And yeah, you know, I hear what you're saying as far as there being checks and balances in nature for predator predation. an unlimited amount of resource to kind of artificially push that way further than would be a natural homeostatic balance in nature. So we have the capacity and we've done it with our populations. You see why we hunt deer and do things like that because we've whacked out those homeostatic balances and now the snapback is out uh is it's out of balance and it's no good so i guess what i'm saying is that potentially that overproduction you know yes it'll have a

rebound effect absolutely and and you're right there's a cost that that comes with that but i think that's where i bring in the efficacy of it because on that rebound, there's probably suffering. And is that suffering necessary? And is that suffering part of the ethical way we should think about how we pose? It's so hard not to agree with you because you know how many retired breeders or animals I don't breed anymore because I went a certain way. I bred the jag i have a pure coastal exanthic jag i bred him one year got the exanthics out of him that don't have jag

and i'm never breeding jag again so i get it and i'm i can't i gotta argue against you right so i don't really have a choice on this one sure Sure, sure. Absolutely. Yeah, we don't always get to argue the side we like, but we got to argue the side we get. So that was a bit tough. So how do I argue that? I mean, one could say, so in that situation, why don't I just breed the jag? Why don't I just breed more? Because you know what? People love them.

They're gorgeous. They're a lighter color. They're less patterned they do they they might be weird little freaks but people love them so if i can make money if i can reproduce them why not is it ethical then you can go into derpy herps but ethically is it wrong to produce more pure jags why Why wouldn't I be able to do it? I retired him, but why don't I do that? Yeah, I mean, Derpy Herps, I don't know.

No, no. I mean, look, I think the circumstance and the application matters. The specific example matters. And in some cases, yeah, go for it. In some cases, it's about example and you got into it that that, you know, hey, man, less people are into Jags than they used to be. They were all the rave back in the day. And now not even the podfather will touch him. So it's like, you know, what, what, you know, at what point, like, you know what I mean? Yeah. Yeah. But but never to be bred again, I'm sure. So, you know, I mean, it's kind of, you know, and look, I'm not here telling anybody never to breed their stuff.

If you want to breed it, breed it. But there's the other side of things to think about. And look, I'm just going to be honest. There's people here who do not give a shit about the animals and all they care about is the money. And if that's what they're there for, they're going to do that anyway. And there's no stopping them from that. And it doesn't even mean that somebody who does care about the animals and doesn't care about the money can't make a mistake, overproduce, and have an animal suffer from it. It's just sometimes that happens. Like it's both ways.

You know what I mean? I guess all I'm saying is that it's super complex. It's super Kumbaya Fight Club right now. I'm totally with you. But at the same time, I just feel like there's so many um potential pitfalls and and where we are in um legislative laws and how we're viewed by the public at large you know i feel like we have to be cognizant of of how we produce especially if it's an excess but isn't it better like one of the probably prime argument i should have used from now is isn't it better to produce captive bread than to steal from the wild? The more I produce, the less will be stolen. Right? So maybe not with Australian herb, but you could take, I're still imported, right? So the more you breed in captivity, the more that is produced and the more that is freely handed out in the market, well, eventually people will stop taking them from the wild. If you produce more in captivity and breed everything that has a Cleoca, you're going to stop stealing from the wild. So technically, indirectly helping. And who cares what they produce?

It doesn't even matter because it's not from the wild so technically indirectly helping and who cares what they produce doesn't even matter because it's not from the wild god this yeah i mean i hear what you're saying but but i think that there's that there's money to be made and that there's countries that will write exportation permits um because of that and so there's plenty of there's no shortage of green tree pythons. We don't need to be importing green tree pythons anymore, but we do, because they're writing those exportation permits. I think there's kind of a mixed bag there,

because you do have countries that if they're not exporting for the pet trade, and they're not making that money exporting the pet trade, then they're going to look at them for skins or food or you know things like that so you know if you stop all of a sudden and say okay no more imports uh go ahead and do what you will with them you know then all of a sudden their habitat goes away and they get you know used as skins or food then all of a sudden you you know you have an endangered species in those countries. Obviously that's an extreme version. I get that. And I think importation has its place in keeping genetic diversity.

I mean you can look at the issue that we have with carpets and our genetic diversity. I mean everyone thinks that a jungle carpet looks just like a U.S. jungle carpet and they won't see it any other way, right? Because all they've seen is what US jungle carpets look like, which have been line bred to all look the same. So importation has its place, but I also think captive breeding has its place, and so you're never going to shut down both, but at the same time, is that a justification? Is having very, very robust captive markets a true justification for potential overproduction? I think that's the question have we have we reached our uh saturation here we've we've uh brought you have any other topics you you want to bring up quite sure it's so hard to debate the side that i just want to make it clear that i'm completely yeah completely for like yeah I collectively read everything. If you win the coin toss, you make a good decision. Says the double winner. Your life is not bad.

But listen, there was a whole year where I lost every single coin toss to Sweet Lady DDP over here. And it was horrible. But we sold you on. Yeah. But no, I think you guys have both brought up really good topics and really good conversation starters. And obviously, any issue we discuss on here

is not one-sided, is not simple, is not going to be solved by you know anything we're just kind of making people aware of both sides and and obviously you know you want to think about what you're doing if you're breeding animals you don't want to just do it indiscriminately and you you want to have a plan for what you're going to do and i think a lot of people you know start out maybe a little too quickly and they they buy up all the animals and then they start breeding them, and then they're like, oh, wait, nobody wants to buy them for me because nobody knows who I am. If you start out slow, you get a good reputation, you can kind of build. And then, like Chuck said, you kind of find that balance of what can I move, what can I sell?

Am I breeding too much, and maybe I'll cut back a little bit the next year. Or nobody wanted to buy these, so I'm not going to breed them this next year because I still have babies and I don't have room for yearlings, like Dominic said. So there's all sorts of things to consider if you're going to breed. And it's not one or the other. There's obviously a mixture. I think if you have a set of carpets that every year you produce them, you sell them off and you keep going, man. But maybe you don't do that with everything. Maybe your prothensis, you don't do that because for whatever. Maybe they're not well-known or whatever.

Or you need to make more of them because so few survive. And you love headaches. You love the challenge. So how about the other side of the argument? Pull it. Sorry? I missed that. So how often do you go on Facebook and you look at the posts and people are like,

Hey, so I just got myself a Brettlesles python and i'm gonna put it in with my darwin because that's my only two snakes okay so i i already know you guys probably see that and it's like well anyway it does that to me and like i can't believe people do that but people do and then i look back at where i started when i first got my first snake i remember it was sold to me as a coastal but it had red all over the side as an adult and it was obviously a cross between either a darwin or an ij or west papu and whatever mixed to a coastal and all that and if it wasn't for that snake that i bred for the first time to i don't even know what the mother was and there was no described lineage it was bought in a pester and all that but everybody

starts somewhere everybody breeds whatever it is they breed at the start yeah and then from there you start and that's what gets you going like if it wasn't for my weird cross hybrid animals the first carpets that i ever bred in the 90s. And for all you know, those animals probably propagated to tons of other people and have destroyed the lineage. But that doesn't help my side. But if it wasn't for that, I wouldn't be where I am now breeding what I want or maybe specific. So is it wrong? Usually we all start somewhere. We all have to do it. And when you start,

you might not have the money to buy the $700 German line jungle bread for high yellow, blah, blah, blah. And from him and the other one, and maybe people are looking at that $700 jungle. Like I'd rather buy the $150 jungle that's written on the wholesaler table

at the show. I don't know. Sure. Yeah. Sure. And I bet you look back at that animal like with fondness and you're not thinking, you know, why did I ever buy that dirty blankety blank, you know, cross? You probably liked that carpet.

I did. I kept it for a really long time. All that good stuff stuff just as well as you do but i would never do that again now i i like i look at that and i wouldn't even touch it with a sure sure you wouldn't buy another one we we all move for them and if it wasn't for breeding whatever had a clayoka back then it wouldn't have brought me to where i am and i think a lot of people are like that we all start breeding whatever it is we have so why did people breed a green tree to a carpet I'm assuming they just that's the only two animals they had at one point that's how it started and look at that as

much as I hate those carpondros they're gorgeous gorgeous it's a beautiful hybrid you can't you can't say it's not nice so is it wrong ethically i yeah they are beautiful completely wrong but you can't deny their beauty there's a reason people do it yeah sure sure i mean i you know and and I don't necessarily think that all crosses or hybrids end up in bad relationships with owners. I think a lot of cool snakes come out of stuff and a lot of people get hooked on it. I think it's more – to me it's more the idea of what we push. And I guess it's like this. Does everybody have to become a breeder? Does everybody have to breed snakes?

Does everybody have to get into it to be a breeder? Because I feel like the way we talk about it and the way we romanticize it makes everyone want to be that way and and when it is that way then then all of those pitfalls which i talked on you know kind of come into play at scale right and so yes you know we look at it that way but should we talk about it like everyone should look at it that way? And what is – but who are – and at the same time, who am I to say that anyone shouldn't want to breed their snakes together or whatever? You know what I mean? in carpet pythons, people who read their Darwin to a Brettles are mucking up the lines, plain and simple, plain and simple. But are there people out there who are working to keep that separate? Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. But as stories change, as time goes on, as people's keepers, we're going to put out there. And is it that there's no problem producing as much as you want and do it, have fun with it, go wild, get crazy because it's all – it's a buffet and everybody is eating.

Or is it, hey, listen, Americans are fat. Watch your portion size. Eat healthy. Be careful, right? I feel like maybe – yeah, the country buffet argument, I know, right? You put it like that in simple cracker barrel terms. But the whole reptile industry has changed. If you look at over 20 years ago when you guys had animals, like I never even thought of breeding. I knew nobody that bred, and I was on the forums.

I was on the old – I don't even know what it is where you would write and you'd wait a day. Jeez, I'm dating myself but back then like i kept for over 10 years and i had one blood python i had one scrub i had one african rock i had one bull snake i had one of this i had i never even considered pairing them up but back then that was the mentality you kept what you loved and you experienced and you did it right so we did that i find it went all the way to everybody needs to be a breeder and for the past like 10 15 years it's been everybody needs to be breeder and breed everything and i almost feel like there's almost a shift going on again where now it's nobody should keep in iraq everybody

should keep bioactive and these gigantic setup it's only a few animals and blah blah okay i can't shift back to there i like i don't know i like my front facing cages to look at my animals i'm never going to go bioactive but that's my personal choice but i feel like people are moving away from the breeder again and moving towards again the keeping not that i don't know maybe that's just my observation but yeah no i think you're right you know i you know i i there's a place for that you know i i think um all things in all places um you know i and look listen you know i I love my wife, but she is an idealist and she's an amazing idealist. And she truly goes hard for the right things in society.

Me, I'm a realist with the hopes of an idealist, right? I recognize that things are going to be the way they're going to be. And that's how the reptile industry is. It's going to be the way it's going to be, but the idealist in all of us should still be present and talking, right? Because it's going to be the way it's going to be. But it's what we put forward in discussions like this, where we talk about it, we bring up the idea and somebody thinks you know what that okay i heard that i get that i understand that and when they go to do that maybe they think about that or maybe they don't and then they learn the lesson of the realist right yeah we never

declare a winner on here we just you know bring up as many points for for either side that we can and yeah and and the listener makes their decision of what they're going to do with their animals and with those kind of things. So hopefully all you listening have gotten something out of this. And it was a really good discussion. I appreciate the points that you brought up. Yeah, great stuff. So thanks again for coming on,ique. And, um, I don't know, I kind of like,

I like to, after, after the debate, I like to kind of get back on the same page and, you know, see if there's anything cool you've heard out in the hobby, like any, any good content you've listened to or any cool things you've seen lately, uh, in the reptile industry, just kind of you know kumbaya i just listened to yeah i just listened to uh venom exchange radio uh phil and nipper they had a great uh show just recently kind of talking about the trip that we all went on down in southern arizona so that was fun nice yeah those guys are great recap yeah yeah so you know kind

of from the venomous perspective but yeah yeah i don't keep venomous but i really enjoy listening that show best best voices best podcast voices just listen to it for the podcast right at least for the reptiles exactly yeah and phil's deep you know baritone voice yes he's great i think i listened to maybe one or two episodes of The Venomous. But the problem is, like, there's so many Latin names that people keep putting out. And if you don't keep Venomous Snakes, I don't know what they're talking about. Yeah. I have to pause and look it up, you know, and sometimes I spell it wrong.

But it's so frustrating. Like, I try to listen to other things, like the Boa Boa Boa podcast. Like, I'm going to listen to it. I don't keep Boas, like i try to listen to other things like the boa boa boa podcast like i'm gonna listen to it i don't keep boys but i want to listen to it and then it's like they're gonna say the continuous names of other things and i'm like i don't know i i know what imperator is now or i know what corrales is i know a couple of them but i don't know the rest i know like i know my little like little niche or am I allowed to say that? Nipper? Yeah. There you go.

Nipper. But I wish that some people would every now and then. Like whenever you say Tracy, you should use the common name once or twice in the whole podcast so people can follow you. Because I'll be honest, I still don't remember what a Tracy is. So that's the Homa Hara scrub. So why don't you what a Tracy is. So that's the, that's the home of Harris scrub. Why don't you just say a scrub? I know what Somalia is. I don't keep Somalia. They're, they're not legal here. Gotcha. Gotcha.

No, that's, I mean, that's a great suggestion. I think, you know, I, I think we all kind of fall into that sometimes or another, but it is good to remember that not everybody listening. And I don't know. I listened to the Smart List podcast, and one of the hosts has a sister, and they always use her name Tracy to say, oh, for Tracy, this is what we're talking about, because they'll use lingo from acting or whatever.

So it's kind of – So like layman's terms for Tracy. Exactly. So we need to have our Tracy moments and say – That's a good idea. That's actually – I'm just putting it out there. That's an outstanding suggestion and a very fair point.

A lot of people know their domain. No, I like it, man. I remember the podcast where Joe Phelan used to do it with Melissa for a while. But when he did it with her, he used somebody who knew a lot with somebody who was not even keeping herps or anything like that. But by doing that, it made it that if they were talking about geckos, let's say I know nothing about geckos. I don't know anything that has legs. I don't keep them. But if they started talking about their geckos or their things like that, at least I could follow.

I find it so hard. So listening to the Venom podcast, it's a great podcast. I think it's super interesting. But I'm missing half the information because they're talking about this and this and this. And it's so frustrating. Yeah. Well, and you listen to, I mean, meeting Nipper and hearing him talk yeah i had to ask a lot like what are you talking about and and like we we did have this discussion with uh justin um

from you know from the uh herp network uh justin smith and and talking about using yeah using common names versus um uh scientific names and they're for some animals, that's all there is known is the scientific name. So it makes it difficult that way. Good luck to getting into invertebrates and using common names. Exactly, yeah. Tarantulas and things like that. That's like the common name is the scientific name. But you're right.

For the nippers that we get into, sometimes we forget that there's a lot of people that don't know what you're talking about and you're going to lose an audience. You know, sometimes people just be like, okay, too many, too many Latin names. I'm out of here. You know, so that's a, that's a very good suggestion. I definitely think one of the goals here is to bridge gaps and to get people thinking. And so if, if, if using, you know, the, the common name helps do that, then that's, you know, absolutely what we do.

I'm just saying once in the podcast. Yeah. No, I got you. I got you. Well, and also Nipper's dog out in the background, panting and whining every once in a while. That was kind of funny. I wasn't sure if it was Nipper or the dog, but it was funny to listen to.

Everybody pants. I was trying to think of which one that I listened to. I actually really found interesting. Let me just pull it up. Collie Bird Radio. Every now and then they do the shows that are specific to specific things. The last one they did, I'm just looking it up right now, was on specific. I think it was just baby keeping. Is that possible? Yeah. Raising.

Yeah. I think that was their last. Yeah. They did a couple. And I found that super interesting. I don't keep collar grids, but so many things applied and I love, they've done a couple of shows that are very specific to like the breeding or the feeding or anything like that. But they really go really well into detail.

And I personally I love those shows. Like it's it's really interesting because you get to you get to really learn a lot on it. So I don't know if that's another one I really enjoyed. I always I always have to catch myself thinking, oh, maybe I should get some. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. No colubrids. I don't know. I don't want to turn into Ellen here.

Dude, I haven't even ventured down the path because there's no way. I couldn't do it. It's hard because there's so many cool reptiles out there. But, yeah, you almost have to specialize to some extent. Although, I don't know, my buddy Brody, we've been in the shows together. shows together and i mean he'll come back to the table with just this assortment of stuff and i'm like does that fit in you know and a lot of times you know i'll sell some of the projects that don't work out at the shows and things so you're like oh you know what happened with this one or what you know that kind of thing but it's it's kind of fun because you get to making an omelet yeah

you get to experience a lot of different cool species. And I mean, a lot of the stuff that he keeps, I'm like, Oh, I'm kind of glad he's buying that. Cause I want to, you know,

see that more often. And if he's successful with it, then I'll see a little baby. I don't think there's a, I don't think there's an issue with dipping your toe in, in a lot of places. It makes you more well-rounded. You know,

it's just, you know, when you do it that way you know it's just you know when you do it that way you got to go wide but you can't go deep if you don't go you know if you don't go wide you can go deep but it's very very very difficult to go wide and deep at the same time that every time you try that though like you go because i don't know your friend is passionate about brazilian rainbow boys i got a pair a pair of Brazilian rainbow boys two years ago. They're still in my collection and I, I, I don't really care about them. I don't really look at them. I take care of them,

but I can tell you they're going to be moved. I've done that with two other pairs of boys. I've done that with other there. And I find like, I get this passion from someone else. So I try it and then I'm like, but these aren't for me or these aren't, these don't fall into my little bubble of things that i really like you know i can never have too many morelias yeah but yeah i can have two boas and it's too many too too many yeah it's just it's just not me but and why do you get them because you your friend is so passionate your buddy talks about it because you hear a show about it

yeah and you try and you're like i don't even know why I tried it. I already knew it wasn't for me. Yeah. It is hard when somebody is really excited about something. And it's funny to listen to Owen say, quit talking about these. Every time I bring up a species I love, all of a sudden everybody buys them out and then you can't find them anymore. Stop buying them. They're terrible. You've got everything.

It is hard not to get excited about stuff. Exactly. Exactly. Well, cool. Let people know how they can find your stuff, what you're working on. My name is under domsreptiles.com.

I've got a small little website that I kind of keep updated. I probably have 60 animals to put up for sale, but there's only three, but there's more. Instagram, domsreptiles, and Facebook is my name, Dominic Carbonneau. Or Dominic Carbonneau. I don't know how to say it in English. So, yeah. Wait, say that again. In in french the right way yeah

okay okay it's good to hear the right way yeah i could probably try to pronounce it like that yeah i'd probably butcher it so yeah i'll let you say it and everything but yeah oh you make it sound good though you make it sound good, though. You make it sound good. I want to bring up one last thing. So you posted up your poster with all your different localities. Okay. That's right. Love it.

But this leads me to the next question. No, great job. Like, I want one. But I want to know. Yeah. So if I'm looking at them and I was looking at the top right corner, you're putting West Papuans, you're putting Darwins, and you're putting another species or another locality of pythons all under one Latin name. Yep. Right?

Is it fair to assume that this is the new taxonomy that's coming? No, no, no, no. We're not taxonomists. So basically, I mean, there's been a lot of discussion about that. A lot of people have kind of picked and said, hey, wait, what about this? What about this? Yeah, exactly. And I think that's raised a lot of questions.

But, I mean, obviously the book's going to describe it in much more detail than I can. But basically the overall take-home message is that we looked at the available data, and that's the best thing that Nick and I could agree on, first off, and come up with as far as the data. That looks like they're lump of, I mean, the, yeah, yeah. And some, and others it's splitting too, because we've got the, you know, the Gammons, Gammon Ranges carpets that we've kind of split away from inlands. And yeah, I mean, it's, it is,

it's maybe going to get us in trouble and there might be some readers of the book or they're like, these guys are nuts. And that's fine. I mean, it's maybe going to get us in trouble, and there might be some readers of the book that are like, these guys are nuts. And that's fine. I mean, that's science. You try to fit the data. You try to make the best guess at what's going on. And we'll leave it to other people to do the actual taxonomic work. And unfortunately, I heard that the group that did the Antaresia paper is also working on the carpet.

So we're going to, yeah, it'll be interesting to see what they do with it. But as far as we can glean, the best genetic work that's been done kind of lines up with what we're doing. Does it line up with that poster? As far as that goes. Yeah? To some extent. I was a bit surprised. Yeah.

I mean, it's definitely hard to draw a line and say this is where this ends and this is where this begins. But, I mean, there's some, like, a lot of things come into play, you know, biogeographic barriers. And one of my favorite kind of epiphanies doing the book was um lining up the genetic uh work that's been done with uh drainage basins in australia and so the drainage basins actually line up really well with the different putative you know genetic uh separation so you know that's kind of what we're going off and there's there mean, the evolutionary history chapter is greatly expanded in this version, second version.

So there's a lot of discussion on that. And, you know, anybody can take it or leave it, you know, if it's. And I imagine that people will keep the same common names, you know, like you're not going to necessarily call your northern coastal carpet a jungle carpet just because they're now lumped in with Cheney. But there is a big difference between the southern coastals around Brisbane and those that are further north. And the coastals up further north, the northern coastals, there's no real genetic difference with jungles that are in the same region that they are. So jungle is just kind of a morph, if you will, of rainforest carpets. A regional variant.

Yeah, that blend in better in the forest. So I imagine if you took jungles out of the forest and bred them in a savanna or something over successive generations, you'd probably see none that look like what you'd consider a jungle. So I don't know. That's kind of what prompted that. And I thought the poster is kind of a primer for the book, but it was meant to be kind of a companion to the book. You could almost add it in the book.

But I got impatient. Yeah, I got impatient. And there are some figures that are kind of similar to that where we have all the different pictures of the carpets and, you know, the... But not hand-drawn by the doctor. Not hand-drawn, yeah. So, yeah. But yeah, I forgot to mention the poster. But yeah, I've got a bunch printed out and I'm ready to start shipping. I think I sent one to the pod, a couple to the podfather. And I offered it to Chuck, but i didn't give me your address listen i was in the middle of the shit storm calm down i want him i want him man it's too late too late you offer yeah seriously what the heck so i i i'm trying to get the pricing down to figure out. So the guy at the post office told me a price, and then I actually shipped one to Eric, and he charged a different price. So I'm like, how is this working here?

But anyway, I guess it's fine. But I just don't want to go out there and lose money. I learned the hard way because with the first edition of the carpet book i i uh it cost like i think 13 17 to send a book to australia so i set up everything on the website when the antaresia book came out to ship books for 17 and so people prepaid for books and then all of a sudden the shipping was 35 they doubled the price overnight without really, you know, any fanfare. So I go to ship the books and they're like, yeah, that's $35. I'm like, wait, what? It was 17 a couple of weeks ago. You know, what are you doing to me? And so I, I basically like broke even I'm giving away free

books, you know, I'm not, not making a dime on them and I had to pay for them, you know? So it's like, Oh boy. So what do you do yeah so i'm i've learned the hard way a couple times but i should have a good idea of what these things cost so i'm going to start sending some out to kind of it's cool that you're doing that i uh i'm really looking forward to seeing it just because i'm really curious i i thought meccafi would become their own species thanks and i was pretty sure chenier and um mcdowell soi would have become their own species. Thanks. And I was pretty sure Chenier and McDowellie, so you would have lumped those two completely together. I don't know why.

The Darwin and the IJ was a bit of a surprise to me. Yeah. I mean, just the genetic work that's been done show that at least the New Guinea and the Cape York stuff is very closely related and they're both fairly closely related to darwin's a little further afield from darwin's but since i don't know we didn't we weren't sure what to do with the naming so it was easier just to call them all very gotta and be done with it but you know again this is just our best idea of what what how it

could fit and how it could so you think it's you know there's there's a lot of different ways you think that's going to make it a darwin locality or a west papuan locality i mean there's there's still localities you know but um the i think the original was described up in in you know northern australia so um you know if anything the the cape york and the new guinea stuff would be uh something different maybe than the darwin but they they grouped together pretty closely and the fact that you know rising seas and lowering seas kind of make that land bridge come back and populations can intermix. So, you know, what, how long does it take to speciate or to subspeciate or whatever? You know, it's hard to say.

So that, that was one of the things, you know, that we kind of said, okay, we'll agree on this. But I, I was thinking, you know, the New Guinea and the, and the Cape Yorks were a little, little, uh, separate from the Darwin's a little further diverged over time, a little longer separated, kind of that idea. But Nick wanted them to be very goddess. So I went, okay, I can live with that. Yeah. So it's all fun to think about those things. But yeah, hopefully the book will give you a lot better insight into our thinking and rationale on what we did. I look forward to it.

Well, I appreciate the comments. All right. Well, I guess that does it for another episode of Reptile Fight Club. Join us again next week for some more fighty goodness. That's it? You're not going to give the podfather his due? Okay. Gosh dang it. I always forget. Jeez, man.

Thanks to Morelia Python Radio Network for housing our podcast so graciously. And check out all their stuff on the socials. You know where to find them. You know what's going on. You know the deal. All right. Well, thanks for listening. You know what really grinds my cloaca? Thank you.