Dart Den
Serving the Dart Frog Community Since 2004...
Dart Den

Serving the Dart Frog Community Since 2004...

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Selling unrelated frogs ?
#1
I want to run something past you guys and you can give me your thoughts...

As I have read so many times on forums and websites people will buy a number of frogs from a particular seller and they will raise them up. If you ever follow the person long enough you sometimes find an ad from them a year or so later selling froglets without talking specifically about the parents or breeding. I have to assume the original seller had raised a large number of froglets from the same parents and once they were 2-3 months began to sell them. Here's where I'm going with all this - Isn't it more than likely that all these frogs have been bred with siblings for many generations?

From day one I have always kept track of each of my frogs, I even have a spreadsheet that lays out everything about each individual frog; origin/breeder, line, sex, etc...I have always made sure that I have never bred related frogs but I have a feeling that the average dart frogger doesn't do this. I've read that it's okay to breed siblings but I won't do this.

Now that the weather is warming up I am going to be selling some of my offspring but I'd like to selling them in groups of 4 or 6 so I can control which frogs go out. I have many grow out containers with froglets being separated by who their parents are. This way if someone buys say, six frogs from me, I can at least tell them that 3 came from this set of parents and the other 3 came from another set of parents that are completely unrelated. Once all of these frogs reach maturity and the buyer knows all the sexes he has, then he can find some other breeder to get whichever sex he may be deficient in.

Would people even care about this? Let me know your thoughts.

Thanks.
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#2
I care about this and applaud your efforts, unfortunately not many other people do. I would easily pay extra for such a service by about 20% per frog.

I have always found it ironic how this hobby puts so much pressure on lines and almost no pressure on the severe inbreeding we partake in.

I judge my acquisitions and their values based on what I consider to be a qualitative hierarchy of the odds of avoiding inbreeding.
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#3
rudy Wrote:I care about this and applaud your efforts, unfortunately not many other people do. I would easily pay extra for such a service by about 20% per frog.

I have always found it ironic how this hobby puts so much pressure on lines and almost no pressure on the severe inbreeding we partake in.

I judge my acquisitions and their values based on what I consider to be a qualitative hierarchy of the odds of avoiding inbreeding.

I think that there are many people who begin in this hobby and buy a group of frogs and let them grow up together and breed with each other, not really thinking about the consequences of this or even considering if the frogs are related. They may just assume the group of 4-5 frogs they bought are unrelated. I myself have always done something that I doubt many people do - I will buy 2-3 frogs fom 2-3 different breeders who I know have frogs unrelated to each other. I raise these frogs up and keep track of them visually and also take pictures of them so I have something to refer to later on if I forget. I have a group of seven D. Leucomelas in a standard 90 gallon and I can recognize each one individually and the population is such that no two breeding animals are related. I am also culling eggs right now on this species and the rest of my frogs.

The problem with inbreeding involves a lot of different species in the pet trade. If you want to really understand everything bad about inbreeding do some research on White Tigers. I don't want to get on a soapbox but what you will find out will make your stomach turn.
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