Western Hermann's females

Kapidolo Farms

Well-Known Member
10 Year Member!
Tortoise Club
Platinum Tortoise Club
Joined
Nov 7, 2012
Messages
5,172
Location (City and/or State)
South of Southern California, but not Mexico
For an extended discussion about what type of W. Hermann's tortoise this is please see this thread https://www.tortoiseforum.org/thread...tuscan.168609/ where there are many photos of the exact tortoise for your inspection.

All the people involved with the history of this guy on the surface seem honest - so someone made a mistake. It happens, a female placed in the wrong enclosure, a male jumping a barrier, whatever. Several population specific breeders have sought males, and reject him as not pure, either based on their own discriminating eye, or the narrative provided in the link. Any studbook based on non-permanent identifiers is not ever going to be precise (I went the the AZA studbook and population management school - that's an informed opinion)

This little guy is available for $400 plus actual shipping OR I would buy, am looking for other barrier crossing/enclosure mixing western mutts that are female. I get the idea of locality specific, I like it. But this guy represents an error of one or more locality specific breeders, so maybe best to call his and hopefully her's off spring non-locality specific westerns, and let that be that. I mean think about it, they are ONE species, not like the mess Galapagos have gotten into which have bounced from subspecies to species to subspecies to species like a super ball in a racketball court shot out of a cannon.

More irony, if you like it. I recently posted a similar quest on Facebook, to get a response that 'nobody cares about locality specific Hermann's other than the few that breed them, and at too high a price anyways' only to later see that same person post population specific (questionable subspecies specific) greeks for sale at varying prices based on rarity of the population.

Some takeaways:
1)Unless you PIT tag before they leave your breeding operation, don't count on your studbook. You might still have fence jumpers in your managed group. This goes for all species of managed animals. Too many 'accidents' out there to consider anything more.
2)Buy animals for what they look like if bought as a pet, or only buy from a managed species group/breeder IF it comes PIT tagged from the breeders' facility. Anything else and it's a joke.
 

New Posts

Top