The Power of Private Breeders

It's not uncommon for me to see a story in which a zoo is celebrating the hatch of some rare species of reptile of amphibian, maybe for the first time in a zoo - only for someone in the comments to point out that there is a private keeper which has been breeding that species for many years.  There's often an underlying assumption that private keepers and caretakers are better breeders than zoos and aquariums.

But are they?  That can be a murky question.

Overall, my answer is, no.  Private breeders aren't inherently better at breeding than zoos - plenty of them, in fact, are quite awful.  There are, however, cases in which a private breeder can greatly excel, getting much better results than many zoos do.  There might be a few reasons for that.

First of all, private breeders tend to specialize, whereas many zoos are more generalists.  If you dedicate yourself to Uroplatus geckos, and that's all (or at least 90% of what you do), you're going to develop a system of working with those animals in considerable detail.  On the other hand, Uroplatus geckos at a major zoo might be in a Madagascar building, cared for by keepers who really wanted to work with lemurs, and the geckos are just a side exhibit that they take care off.

Second, private breeders are, by nature of being economical, going to keep multiple pairs or groups of a given species, which gives them more flexibility.  This pair of cockatoos isn't mating?  Switch mates with the pair in the adjacent aviary, see if that works!  Whereas a zoo in a similar situation might have to wait for an SSP transfer recommendation, do pre-ship testing, then quarantine, then introductions... and so on.

Thirdly, and I'm convinced this is the biggest strength of private breeders versus zoos in some cases, turnover.  Zoos constantly are replacing staff, both due to the low wages and the tough conditions, which makes it a lot harder to build expertise and develop institutional knowledge.  A private owner taking care of animals year after year is more easily able to learn from mistakes and improve techniques.

Private breeders will also say that the fact that their livelihood depends on their animals breeding also makes them more efficient - which makes sense to a degree.  It also makes some of them less willing to innovate, because they don't want to risk messing up soemthing that seems to be working.

A strength that zoos have over private breeders?  Collaboration.  A zoo that cracks that code of breeding an endangered species is going to share their secret with other zoos so that they can breed too.  A private breeder is more likely to want to guard that secret so that they won't lose an edge over rivals.

The Borneo earless monitor is a reptile species which has started gaining a toehold in the US, both in zoos (though not publicly exhibited anywhere, I believe) and in private trade. "Conservation thru Commercialization" is the slogan of Tom Crutchfield, the famous reptile dealer/breeder whose exploits are recounted in Stolen Word, by Jennie Erin Smith