Pied Garters.. Has anyone seen this?

[d_virginiana]

I like the first one, but I wouldn't even want the second one... My guess is that the price will probably start going down in a couple years. I imagine anyone who has one will be breeding it. I do worry about inbreeding like you mentioned though; with such valuable babies I bet there will be some people who just breed siblings and parents back to each other again and again to get whiter pieds. Even worse because this trait seems to go back to only one or two snakes (which was it?).

[ConcinusMan]

It's not really a problem even if it started with only one snake, IF you outcross with totally unrelated snakes every few generations. The thing is, with prices like that, especially if they're falling, people won't do that. They'll take the shortest route.

[Greg'sGarters]

The picture you posted up I forgot about. Lol. That looks to me like a reverse paradox more than a piebald. Yeah selling that as a piebald is like crossing 2 snakes missing a few scales here and there, and selling them as scaleless.

[BUSHSNAKE]

that is what happened with amel redsided garter snakes. They went from being like $350 to under 100 in a VERY short time frame...

thats what happens when supply exceeds demand...and when people are greedy lol not in that order tho

[ProXimuS]

I like that first one, but would never pay $1000 ore more for it, or any animals for that matter. I think that price is a little ridiculous....

[aSnakeLovinBabe]

How about if everyone buys them and people who are breeding them start to lower their prices to compete with each other. When Spider Ball Pythons came out, they were $18,000 each. Now they are $500 each AT MOST.

I don't think anyone is paying anywhere near that for spiders now. I see them for under $100 each now!

[aSnakeLovinBabe]

I like that first one, but would never pay $1000 ore more for it, or any animals for that matter. I think that price is a little ridiculous....

Eastern indigo
Boelen's python
Diamond pythons
high end USCBB emerald tree boas

All animals that are not only worth that, but I have and will continue to pay those kinds of prices for, because they are worth every penny! I am hoping to acquire a pair of boeleni in the next 5 years or so. It will probably run me around $5k. But let me tell you.... there ARE animals that are worth it and you are paying for their rarity, quality, and the people who have spent years or decades of their lives perfecting lineages and working on bringing them into the world.

Personally though, I will not pay $1k for an animal that is relatively common in our hobby simply because it's a morph. I just wait a few years if I really want one. But I've really moved away from morphs for the most part... they don't do it for me as much as keeping odd and interesting specimens that are top notch representatives of their species.

[aSnakeLovinBabe]

The picture you posted up I forgot about. Lol. That looks to me like a reverse paradox more than a piebald. Yeah selling that as a piebald is like crossing 2 snakes missing a few scales here and there, and selling them as scaleless.

Actually it could be as simple as this snake ingested something toxic and shed off color in some of it's scales. This has been seen in boas and some other species already. Boa gets a bad rat and BOOM, sheds off half it's color in one shed! I wouldn't call that one a pied either. pied animals should have at least a "patch" of white somewhere, and I haven't seen any true pied animal of any species where the remaining pattern on the snake was normal. If this DID prove out to be a morph of any kind, which I seriously doubt... it would fit better into the "calico" description... at least that is what most of those white flecked things are called these days. There are other reasons besides genetics which cause scales to lose all color... and given how small the areas are on that one, I would just be surprised to see it genetic. Not impossible, just improbable.

[annulataarethebest]

Supply and demand, Scott will be the only one with the piebalds available, therefore he gets to pick the price. I assume pieds that have only a couple patches of white here and there will be the cheaper ones, and the $5,000 price is reserved for the more white animals, and I could see them selling easily for those amounts... The first round of people who buy these snakes will most likely be other snake breeders who will be looking to reproduce the morph, so they'll just look at it as an investment that will take a couple years to pay off. But it would. If you put $1,000 into a piebald, or actually, let's say Scott hooked you up with a pied and a het pied for 1500, in 2-3 years you'll be producing 10-30 babies (at least) per year, with half being piebald, probably some more than others. Even if the price drops to 500 within that 3 years you'll still easily make your money back. Then after that the money is going to come from crossing other morphs into the piebald (i.e. piebald albino, piebald flame maybe??) to create some more designer garter snake morphs like the "Snow" eastern.
I also don't think inbreeding is as much of a problem with captive reproduction of morphs, of course you're going to have to breed siblings/relatives back to each other to establish a new morph, but it's going to take more than those first couple generations for any defects from inbreeding pop up. And most breeders will make sure to outcross animals anyhow.

[Tora]

so how do the pieds look now? or did Scott give up on them?