+1 iclazion I would gladly help you where I can. Just let me know what you need. I would rather see slings find a new home instead of becoming feeders.

I for one, value ALL life. That doesn't mean I will let my animals go hungry. This is part of Darwinism, the weak must die for the strong to live. I am highly sensitive to death (probably because I am so sh1t scared of dying myself) and therefore I oppose any form of killing if it is not in order to serve the survival of another.
I don't step on ants if I can help it and I don't kill Mosquitos. I will NEVER condone trophy hunting or bugs preserved in resin sold with a magazine.
So yes, I am very emotional when it comes to my animals and their well-being but the world must move on. These magazines will get sold and animals will be hunted for their heads, all I can do is not support these activities within my own capacity and once I have completed my degree I will consider acting against these activities.
I am not an exceedingly religious or holy man, but I do believe in God. Life is beautiful and sacred and who is anyone to give more value to one life and less to another. Feeding a kitten to python is just not necessary, it's excessive and sadistic in my opinion. If the guys python had not eaten in a year and there were no feeders available then I would have to deem it necessary. The fact that he recoded a video of it proves he is trying to make a statement rather than just feed his snake.

A bit of a rant, but that's just me...

Everyone makes very good points, but, I am not a religious man. I see no problem with it. The Python Video thing, was sick, but I have no problems with feeding kittens to snakes (or whatever) as long as the kitten is euthanised humanely before feeding. I realize I'm probably shooting myself in the foot with that comment I made about the curlies, but that is what free speech is for. Yes, there are people who will buy curlies but I live far away from the nearest city. I don't want to take the risk of posting, so I wouldn't have been able to sell my stock anyway (The female moulted out anyway so meh). I wouldn't have attempted any curly breeding if it wasn't for the fact that I needed some breeding experience so that someday I could try breeding rarer species.

I hate hunting with a passion. I dislike anyone who hunts, even if it's for the meat, I still hate it. The farmers here are always exploiting the buck (or whatever they are) and thus there aren't many wild animals around. Yes, most of the time they buy buck or whatever specifically for hunting but I still hate it. Sure I hate all buck species, doesn't mean I like hunting. I like tarantulas, doesn't mean I won't feed the dying/deformed ones to other Healthy tarantulas. I know I'm probably contradicting myself but meh.

I apologize if I come across to strong (or whatever the saying is).

I just think what w do at home is what we do at home. I just think that there should be some consideration making our private stuff known to the world. I just would have like to maybe see you give that curlys to some noobs or something. :whistle: But they are yours and you are fully allowed to do with them what you want.

As for the resin bugs. I think if it was truly educational then cool go ahead and use plastic bugs but no its money driven and killing of thousands of bugs for a profit just urks me.

Too each his own. Half of the curlies would have gone to the guy whose male it was anyway, but the male got chowed and the female moulted so nothing came out of it. True, I shouldn't have said that why should everything be censored?

I doubt plastic bugs would be any more educational as they are plastic after all and lose a lot of detail, But from the advert I saw on TV the quality doesn't look very good of the magazine itself. The diagrams look like ones like you used to see in
Bugs! That was an awesome magazine, think it was done by the same folks who did that Dinosaur magazine with the 3D Pictures. But If I could, I would buy it just for the resin bugs as I think it's cool. But as I said, to each his own.

Hmm... touchy subject.

I also value life. I care as much for my Curly (if not more) as I do for my P. Metalicas. My curly has a lot more personality! I find it hard to kill anything, with a few exceptions (Mozies, Ants, Flies, Rouches, Button Spiders <- hate those!) The whole bug in resin thng, if they breed it, fine, but I still wont support them. If they are harvested from the wild, burn in hell. Am I overly emotional about my Ts? No, even though all of my Ts have unofficial names. I'm attached to them, they carry the same emotional attachment as our cats do.

That said, feeding curly slings to anything is atrocious! Cat to python, same story. We should take into account that Rats and Roaches are species bred for feeding due to the ease of breeding them, not to mention the fact that they are plague species. One can argue that plague species or not, life is life. But Rats and Roaches are at the bottom of the food chain for a reason and that justifies the rate of reproduction. It becomes a matter of conservation. One can now argue that Curlies are abundant, not so in the wild. This should be taken into account when breeding.

I would very much like to get some experience in breeding, but I will not breed B.Vagans of Curlies even though I have the Ts, because they are abundant, so I refuse. I will not be able to care for all the slings and will not kill them off or feed them to other Ts.