Post by muddydragon on Aug 24, 2010 8:38:10 GMT
i think it depends what you are after, with breeding stock the best thing is a swap, i know in zoos and such like they do loaning programmes (for years!) but they also swap (for instance) all young males that they breed for unrelated males. obviously you have a problem with snails what with them being able to store sperm and being hermaphroditic so you can't really prevent them mating with siblings/parents without isolating them. on the other hand inbreeding is less of a problem with snails as they have inbuilt methods of dealing with this due to often inbreeding in the wild.
however i think a permenant swap is a good idea, just the cost of postage and everyone has their own snails. forinstance i've just had a clutch of Jadatzi, after that i retired the adult jaditzi to a non-breeding tank (where all my snails mix and all eggs are frozen). (obviously you wouldn't do this for a rare species, say meglobulimous but albinos aren't really rare) i will then keep some of the young and sell on the others, my intention is to later (once my selected 'keepers' are a bit bigger and i can tell for certain the strong ones) try and find someone to swap some of my jadatzis with jaditzis of a different lineage to keep the breeding pool more open (the more swaps the better) and retire any with bad shell growth etc to the non-breeding tank/sell as pets only. in an ideal world you would keep them all in different tanks so they only breed with unrelated snails, however in the real world that isn't terribly feasible (depending on how many you keep, i intend to keep very few to adult-hood so it is easier for me, since i just want some babies for myself as opposed to profit). it depends on what your motives are, are they to keep the gene pool open or to make a profit its difficult to do one without sacrificing part of the other.
i agree that loans can be risky and i won't restate what people have said. i wish you luck let us know how it goes, but be careful.
I moved some posts from old topic to here they are related to swapping. They are 4 first posts on page 1. Remember to check them out. - CroSSLeSS
however i think a permenant swap is a good idea, just the cost of postage and everyone has their own snails. forinstance i've just had a clutch of Jadatzi, after that i retired the adult jaditzi to a non-breeding tank (where all my snails mix and all eggs are frozen). (obviously you wouldn't do this for a rare species, say meglobulimous but albinos aren't really rare) i will then keep some of the young and sell on the others, my intention is to later (once my selected 'keepers' are a bit bigger and i can tell for certain the strong ones) try and find someone to swap some of my jadatzis with jaditzis of a different lineage to keep the breeding pool more open (the more swaps the better) and retire any with bad shell growth etc to the non-breeding tank/sell as pets only. in an ideal world you would keep them all in different tanks so they only breed with unrelated snails, however in the real world that isn't terribly feasible (depending on how many you keep, i intend to keep very few to adult-hood so it is easier for me, since i just want some babies for myself as opposed to profit). it depends on what your motives are, are they to keep the gene pool open or to make a profit its difficult to do one without sacrificing part of the other.
i agree that loans can be risky and i won't restate what people have said. i wish you luck let us know how it goes, but be careful.
I moved some posts from old topic to here they are related to swapping. They are 4 first posts on page 1. Remember to check them out. - CroSSLeSS