Dr. Todd :
Whoa there Boggy Bottoms! Try some deep breathing while I use a calculator try to figure out how $80 to $250 is a 500% increase...
Two main points:
1. If someone likes a particular specie and thinks it's worth what a seller is asking for it, then the price is reasonable to that buyer. If another buyer doesn't like the price, so be it. That buyer goes and looks somewhere else.
2. With fewer and fewer folks keeping waterfowl anymore and even fewer folks successfully breeding waterfowl in numbers, there is an increased demand for all species. This is exacerbated when a species is uncommon and demand peaks (like recently happened in Brazilian teal in the US). When availability increases and demand wanes the price will go down. With the price down, more people buy them, the supply will exceed the demand and many of the 'breeders' sell off the species. Eventually demand increases because the birds become uncommon again and round and round we go.
Let me ask you this: are those selling pygmy geese for $3000. USD (a 1400% increase from 1970's prices) or king eiders for $2500. USD 'ripping people off'? How about Baikal Teal at $400pr (a 100% increase since the 90's)? What makes that ok and the price of something like Brazilian teal not? I will agree with you that $250. is too much for Brazilian at the moment, but I've yet to see the price that high. I see them most commonly at $150 to $200pr, an 87.5-150% increase from your $80.pr price.
Somehow you seem to misinterpret a dissenting opinion as derogatory. I'm simply trying to give these (mostly young) readers another perspective to chew over.
To ToeJam:
There are lots of species that fall into your price range but you'll need to filter the list by your aviary size, current inhabitants, weather in your area, ease of care/breeding, potential for hybridization, etc. etc. etc. There are several helpful books out there that would help you sort all this out, I'd suggest 'Waterfowl: Care, Breeding and Conservation' by S. Tarsnane. I've offered this before to another youth on here, and I'll offer it again, if you don't have a copy and would like one, I'll buy it and send to you. We need more kids like you to succeed with birds.
DT
see that's just what I'm talking about, your very first statement, if you will look, I SAID $50 to $80, well $50 times 5 is $250 thus a 500% increase,
also not sure what birds sell for in Canada but baikal teal have always been $400 here for as long as I can remember, actually many are in the $300 range now as they have become more popular, so here like many of the use to be rare stuff, they are coming down.
Kings at $2500 is a steal, they use to be $10000 went down pretty quick but held fast at $5000 for ever, again not sure what Canadian prices are
Smew for that matter were $1200- $1500 in the 80's and 90's, saw some the other day at $400 with $500 being the average????
Pygmys' also have always been $3000. But with all this we are talking super specialty birds here, not every day run of the mill teal.
If it werent for Arnold Schouten actually going up and collecting all the sea ducks himself, well we wouldnt have any in captivity here in the US, so when you are the only man with specialty arctic sea ducks, yes you can set the price where ever you want. Same with the pygmy's, if it werent for places like Mike and Ali Lubbock at Sylvan Heights, we wouldnt have any of those here either. But 1400% increase, if anything those examples of species state side have fallen in half at minimum.
I do agree with you that each seller has the right to set his or her own prices. After all, they are their birds. There are several sites with brazilian at $250 by the way.
But my point to the whole thing here, is mainly a lot of hatcheries here state side have started listing waterfowl at broker prices, I mean wood ducks at $150- $200, mandarins at $200, mute swans at up to $3000
Just a couple examples.... well the dot com er's are seeing all this, and now doing the same.
MY GOAL by posting what I did is like you too said, to inform the new comer and youth that no that is NOT what those birds are worth, period. American money or Canadian money.
Essentially, call it what you like but they are ripping folks off if they can find someone gullible enough to buy them at those prices.....
I breathe fine, and have no problem with you or your opinions. It's the snippy little comments that always seem to go along with them.
You know where you directed that "some people feel they should be the same price as 20 years ago" thing. You've brought that up several times over the fact that I havent had waterfowl in a few years ever since you signed on. Which has no bearing on what's right or not.
and most recently with the uneducated % comment... that's my only problem here. The post comes off much friendlier with stuff like that just left off.