Your view of the reptile hobby

[psychocircus]

Originally Posted by smy_749

I'm pretty sure in europe they have laws with regards to keeping reptiles, I.e. things like minimum cage sizes and what not. Thats what I read on facebook so it must be true.

they can't put anything on the internet that's not true.

but yeah I think it's only a couple countries but youre right.

[AussieSnake]

Some states in Australia now have mandatory enclosure sizes, these are a bit contentious though as it is hard to please everyone, you have those who are happy to have large display units, then those people with large collections who prefer rack systems. We also have rules around breeding between species (eg inter breeding between Morelia sub species). Unfortunately each state has different laws and none of them are really enforced correctly. For example technically jags are illegal in some states in Australia due to them being a breeding between sub species. For many years jags were only sold as RPM to get around this. I think regulation is important but it is difficult to find common ground between different sections of the hobby. And it seems you can never stop some individuals form indiscriminately breeding there animals for the heck of it, or to make a $$$$.

[Roman]

Originally Posted by smy_749

I'm pretty sure in europe they have laws with regards to keeping reptiles, I.e. things like minimum cage sizes and what not. Thats what I read on facebook so it must be true.

Here in Germany we don’t have an actual law about enclosure size, but we have an official guide line. So normally there is no examination of your cage sizes, especially as you don’t have to report your animals (with the exception of protected animals like CITES etc.), but if you get in a dispute with the (local) administration about your animals and they inspect your housing conditions the vet who will do this will use these guide lines. Most staff of the nature conservation authority or veterinary office don’t know much about reptiles, so they will use these guide lines to evaluate your housing conditions.

If the size of your enclosure is approximately the same size as in the guide lines you might not have any issues, but if your enclosure is way to small you need some good and convincing arguments why this setup is still OK. This might proof difficult to say the least. So most keepers I know of use enclosures of an appropriate size. Of course there are also keepers who keep their snakes in racks and I haven’t heard of any problems they might have had so far.

I posted the following text some time ago in another context, it is a description of these official guide lines here in Germany…

You might take a look at the following document. It is an official guide line for keeping reptiles. It was published by our ministry for Food, Agriculture and Consumer Protection in 1997. This publication was a cooperation of ministerial staff, animal right groups and some representatives from the DGHT (Deutsche Gesellschaft fuer Herpetologie und Terrarienkunde - the German Herpetological society). It represents the minimum requirements for keeping each species. Obviously it is written in German, but after some pages with some preliminary text are tables which are easy to read and cover a lot of commonly kept reptiles

The tables are separated by group

Echsen = Lizards
Schlangen = Snakes
Krokodile = crocodiles
Schildkröten = turtels and tortoises

The columns are

- Name (scientific name)
- short description of the habitat and the geographical origin of the species (e.g. tropical, high humidity, arboricol, )
- Enclosure size (L x W x H, in reference to the length of the animal. E.g. if a snake is 4 ft long and the size should be 1,0 x 0,5 x 0,5 the enclosure should be 4 x 2 x 2 ft). For Lizards it is the enclosure size for 1,1, the length is head and body without tail, for the snakes it is the total length nose to tail end
- Basic temperature (in Centigrade) Tag/Nacht = day/night
- Max temperature basking place (in Centigrade)
for Lizards
- possible group mix 1,x = 1 male, several females plus possible life span e.g. (15-20) years
- remarks (sometimes there is a recommendation for the humidity = "Luftfeuchtigkeit")

http://www.bmelv.de/SharedDocs/Downl...ublicationFile


Switzerland has an actual law about proper cage sizes. I don’t know about other European countrys.

Roman

[poison123]

Thought jags were a morph?

[Mikoh4792]

Originally Posted by poison123

Thought jags were a morph?

coastal morph

[AussieSnake]

I believe the original jags in Australia were illegally imported, therefore they were sold under the radar as Reduced Pattern Morphs for a long while. They are now out and proud sold as Jags. This is the inconsistency in Australia, some states allow breeding of sub species of Morelia as they are seen as Morelia, whereas some states see them as clearly defined sub species. This certainly doesn't stop any of it from happening, as the hobby is not policed all that closely. (f there is no money in it for the government, why try hey). There is always a lot of contention over here around the natural intergrade areas, and always posts on forums and facebook with the what is my carpet tagline. But luckily over here we still have a lot of breeders who only breed locality animals, so we still have good bloodlines.