Dragoon Gecko
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This is surely one of the most important and interesting post in geckoforums!! Thank you Steve, and all the other established breeders for your honest thoughts and opinions!
I thought a long time whether I should write something or not, as english is not my mother tongue , and it’s hard for me to put my feelings into the right words:
I think that the problems in the US-geckocommunity are similar to the problems in other /european geckocommunitys:
When I started breeding leopardgeckos in 2000, most of the breeders I knew in Germany were in my parents' age: Experienced breeders with years of successful breeding behind them. 90%were Hobby-Breeders: They stayed small, and kept just as many geckos as they could care about- and they were okay with it. The other 10% were breeding geckos as business, BUT those people who need to get some money out of it (because they lived from it) were willing to inform first very well which investments must be done, and they did it with the same consciousness and thoroughness as in every business . This guys understand that success does not come from alone, and that they had to work for it. And they understand that like in every business not everything goes the way we want it to go..
Today, it seems that more and more people try to step into breeding geckos not as a kind of hobby, but as a “quick way” of making money on hobbyist-level. I don’t know how often in this forum and in all forums allround the world, experienced breeders tried to explain that there is no “quick” way of getting money out of breeding geckos, if you count honestly everything together. But this posts seem to have very few effect..
I have seen some newcomers last time failing in trying to manage their breeding stock as a hobbyist, because they started without preparation and with naïve expectations of the money and number of eggs/hatchings they could raise and sell. As discussed earlier in another thread, as a newcomer you cannot sell geckos for the same prize as established breeders like HISS, Steve, Dan or all the others. And making a name takes its time: Its years of hard work. And, as someone mentioned here in another thread: As a newcomer you are trying to get into an already full market, and you cannot expect the other, established breeding colleagues to do YOUR homework just because you are too convenient to read the books and to usurp the basic terms ..
I may be wrong, but sometimes it seems to me that a lot of the Enigma-negativity comes from such naïve expectations I mentioned above. The most people writing negative about enigmas do not even own one..
Today, sometimes it appears to me that most of the gecko newcomers who want to get into breeding try to invest as less as possible, but try to get out of it as much as possible: This cannot work in my opinion: Over the time I have learned that in long term you can only get out what you put in!
Meanwhile we even have the mad situation here that after I posted some pics from my High-End tangs in some european forums , I got a flood of emails from people who showed me the pics of their normal tangs, and asked me if they can call them TT’s or HG-Tangs, too – “But my male looks very much like your HG-Female!!”. I can hardly believe that people want a HG or Electric, or TT, but do not even know what makes a TT a TT, and think they can claim their tangs whatever they want!! How can you work with polygenetic based lines when you don’t care about that..?
It seems to me that more and more first time breeders (and the most of them are very young) want to have the same High-End stock as long-term breeders, but not because they are interesting in the genetics, but just to to show it off. They don’t care about selective breeding at all.
Don’t get me wrong: With my 23 Years I am a VERY young breeder, too. Age has nothing to do whether you are a good breeder or not. But if you do it, you are responsible for what you produce, and you should have the mental maturity. And that’s what I miss more and more in the german forums..
Everybody should breed his own way, and not everybody wants to breed high-end geckos. That’s totally okay for me. But for me, it is ridiculous if someone buys a group of my lowest price animals because he wants to spend “as less as possible”, and complain afterwards that their offspring is not as good as my own offspring from the best ones..
Sorry, again: In breeding, you can only get out what you put in. And sometimes you will never get out what you put in. That’s life, and that’s the fact. You can quit breeding, or you can live with it- its everybodys choice..
Every breeder who really care about breeding and genetics, has in mind what he wants to reach with breeding, and which points he wants to concentrate in. And with this plan in mind, he select the most fitting animals.
In my opinion, there are 2 ways of breeding geckos as a hobbyist, and I am totally okay with both ways:
- first: to breed geckos just for fun, and don’t care at all about income and outcome.
- Second: To breed geckos, and try to get a part of the outcome out. I just want to say that I can understand that some people, me included, could not breed geckos without managing our finances , BUT please then do your homework, and act like the kind of person you want to be seen as:
If you invest in a gecko, its just like some kind of poker-game: You can ”win”, and you can “loose”. There is, and there will never be a guarantee in Breeding!
The last 2 years I invested allot into my geckos, and 2007 was the baddest year of breeding I ever had: Most of the eggs were infertile, and the Majority of the very few fertile eggs got bad. My best females escaped and were eaten by my cat. Two of my 3 young afghanicus died with no reason.. And some of my geckos did not passed their genes as I wanted to. Of course it is always hard when such things happen, but we have to keep in mind that there is nobody responsible for a bad season, or just bad luck.
And if you have a serious problem with a gecko from a breeder, it is the one, the best and the honest way to contact him and talk about your problem, instead of blaming the whole morph down. Most serious breeders try their best to make their customers happy, so please give him at least a chance to explain and to manage the problem..
So, the first point of being a real breeder is to think before making an investment, and then take it as it comes.
The other point is, that YOU, as the buyer and re-Breeder of a new morph, are responsible too for the future of a new morph:
Every time a new morph appears on the marked, it is in the raw, and that’s what’s so wonderful about them: We buyers can now form them, develop them. And it depends on everybody if to the better..
We all carry the responsibility of a new morph when we breed it, not just the one that produced it first.
I am totally okay with discussing some problems about a new morph, but with the intention to learn from it, and make it better. The enigmas, as all the other morphs before, will surely give us some nice surprises in the next future..
Sorry for the long post..
/Rebecca
I thought a long time whether I should write something or not, as english is not my mother tongue , and it’s hard for me to put my feelings into the right words:
I think that the problems in the US-geckocommunity are similar to the problems in other /european geckocommunitys:
When I started breeding leopardgeckos in 2000, most of the breeders I knew in Germany were in my parents' age: Experienced breeders with years of successful breeding behind them. 90%were Hobby-Breeders: They stayed small, and kept just as many geckos as they could care about- and they were okay with it. The other 10% were breeding geckos as business, BUT those people who need to get some money out of it (because they lived from it) were willing to inform first very well which investments must be done, and they did it with the same consciousness and thoroughness as in every business . This guys understand that success does not come from alone, and that they had to work for it. And they understand that like in every business not everything goes the way we want it to go..
Today, it seems that more and more people try to step into breeding geckos not as a kind of hobby, but as a “quick way” of making money on hobbyist-level. I don’t know how often in this forum and in all forums allround the world, experienced breeders tried to explain that there is no “quick” way of getting money out of breeding geckos, if you count honestly everything together. But this posts seem to have very few effect..
I have seen some newcomers last time failing in trying to manage their breeding stock as a hobbyist, because they started without preparation and with naïve expectations of the money and number of eggs/hatchings they could raise and sell. As discussed earlier in another thread, as a newcomer you cannot sell geckos for the same prize as established breeders like HISS, Steve, Dan or all the others. And making a name takes its time: Its years of hard work. And, as someone mentioned here in another thread: As a newcomer you are trying to get into an already full market, and you cannot expect the other, established breeding colleagues to do YOUR homework just because you are too convenient to read the books and to usurp the basic terms ..
I may be wrong, but sometimes it seems to me that a lot of the Enigma-negativity comes from such naïve expectations I mentioned above. The most people writing negative about enigmas do not even own one..
Today, sometimes it appears to me that most of the gecko newcomers who want to get into breeding try to invest as less as possible, but try to get out of it as much as possible: This cannot work in my opinion: Over the time I have learned that in long term you can only get out what you put in!
Meanwhile we even have the mad situation here that after I posted some pics from my High-End tangs in some european forums , I got a flood of emails from people who showed me the pics of their normal tangs, and asked me if they can call them TT’s or HG-Tangs, too – “But my male looks very much like your HG-Female!!”. I can hardly believe that people want a HG or Electric, or TT, but do not even know what makes a TT a TT, and think they can claim their tangs whatever they want!! How can you work with polygenetic based lines when you don’t care about that..?
It seems to me that more and more first time breeders (and the most of them are very young) want to have the same High-End stock as long-term breeders, but not because they are interesting in the genetics, but just to to show it off. They don’t care about selective breeding at all.
Don’t get me wrong: With my 23 Years I am a VERY young breeder, too. Age has nothing to do whether you are a good breeder or not. But if you do it, you are responsible for what you produce, and you should have the mental maturity. And that’s what I miss more and more in the german forums..
Everybody should breed his own way, and not everybody wants to breed high-end geckos. That’s totally okay for me. But for me, it is ridiculous if someone buys a group of my lowest price animals because he wants to spend “as less as possible”, and complain afterwards that their offspring is not as good as my own offspring from the best ones..
Sorry, again: In breeding, you can only get out what you put in. And sometimes you will never get out what you put in. That’s life, and that’s the fact. You can quit breeding, or you can live with it- its everybodys choice..
Every breeder who really care about breeding and genetics, has in mind what he wants to reach with breeding, and which points he wants to concentrate in. And with this plan in mind, he select the most fitting animals.
In my opinion, there are 2 ways of breeding geckos as a hobbyist, and I am totally okay with both ways:
- first: to breed geckos just for fun, and don’t care at all about income and outcome.
- Second: To breed geckos, and try to get a part of the outcome out. I just want to say that I can understand that some people, me included, could not breed geckos without managing our finances , BUT please then do your homework, and act like the kind of person you want to be seen as:
If you invest in a gecko, its just like some kind of poker-game: You can ”win”, and you can “loose”. There is, and there will never be a guarantee in Breeding!
The last 2 years I invested allot into my geckos, and 2007 was the baddest year of breeding I ever had: Most of the eggs were infertile, and the Majority of the very few fertile eggs got bad. My best females escaped and were eaten by my cat. Two of my 3 young afghanicus died with no reason.. And some of my geckos did not passed their genes as I wanted to. Of course it is always hard when such things happen, but we have to keep in mind that there is nobody responsible for a bad season, or just bad luck.
And if you have a serious problem with a gecko from a breeder, it is the one, the best and the honest way to contact him and talk about your problem, instead of blaming the whole morph down. Most serious breeders try their best to make their customers happy, so please give him at least a chance to explain and to manage the problem..
So, the first point of being a real breeder is to think before making an investment, and then take it as it comes.
The other point is, that YOU, as the buyer and re-Breeder of a new morph, are responsible too for the future of a new morph:
Every time a new morph appears on the marked, it is in the raw, and that’s what’s so wonderful about them: We buyers can now form them, develop them. And it depends on everybody if to the better..
We all carry the responsibility of a new morph when we breed it, not just the one that produced it first.
I am totally okay with discussing some problems about a new morph, but with the intention to learn from it, and make it better. The enigmas, as all the other morphs before, will surely give us some nice surprises in the next future..
Sorry for the long post..
/Rebecca
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