In my opinion,..

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Posted by BrianSmith on April 26, 2003 at 23:54:13:

In Reply to: they wish!!!!!!! posted by M n R-Reptile on April 26, 2003 at 20:46:51:

Anyone that deals in mass numbers of imported snakes to make a few bucks on each snake, without a care in the world as to where they go or how they're kept once they're sold, is pure scum in my book. I've always thought that, and I will always think it. They completely lack any moral values and I hope they are soon to be a thing of the past. I am going to devote a large percentage of what I make on captive produced morphs to counter such practices. I also have a few other "campaigns" already in motion that won't fully "bloom" if you will, for a few more years. The only thing that seriously concerns me is that one very good point that the other fellow brought up concerning alternative means of income for the present day reptile farmers or collectors in other countries once this market is all but valueless. He pondered whether or not this could lead to these very same snakes being raised and diverted to leather markets. In this case I would actually prefer that things remain as they are. To me this sounds like a very valid concern that needs to be seriously examined.

P.S. (I am fully aware of the irony that virtually every morph originated as the result of an imported snake or snakes. Call it fighting fire with fire, I suppose. But a few 10 or 20 thousand dollar morph imports are VASTLY different than thousands of 20 dollar snakes)

:Nobody has imported or will import over 2,000 balls at one time this year except L.A. REPTILE who got in 5,000 at once of the first hatch and sold them all within the day.
:No one has the resources especially most of the people on the classifieds. The most I have ever gotten at a time was 600 and that was alot of snakes! Most people selling those huge lots on kingsnake are one of two things:
:1)trying to look big by posting so many they are supposedly getting, or brokering ball pythons from several different dealers
:2)trying to scam people like a fake company did last year.
: main reason those numbers wont show up at once at one persons place: PERMITS
:The exporting countries hand out quotas....the quotas never exceed 2,000 balls. Most quotas are in the 600-1,400#hd range.
:The quotas are set for how many possible snakes a certain exporter can produce. If he produces more they have to hold them till the gov comes down sees the rest and starts the issuance of a new quota, while during that time they already sent out the balls that hatched so far thus fulfilling the original quota, Hope i didnt lose you there.
:There was only one time I can recall someone importing over 5,000 balls at one time and that was strictly reptiles when they imported about 9,000-12,000 which where sold to gourmet rodent which sets them up INDIVIDUALLY and feed them so they have baby balls in stock all year. They sell these baby balls to PETCO.
:I highly doubt it will happen this year though.

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