ACR - Dummy Records

ACR is moving to a new setup. When it's complete you will be able to register all of your snakes for free.

What is a dummy record?

Dummy records represent snakes that are not actually registered, but are known to be parents of snakes that are registered. The purpose of this is to help the ACR establish true relationships between snakes that would otherwise appear to be unrelated.

For example, someone owns three unregistered snakes: Male A, Female B, and Female C, and does not intend to register them. These snakes are bred together producing hatchlings in clutch AB and clutch AC. The breeder gives out this information (for example Male A X Female B) with the hatchlings. Here is how the hatchlings are actually related to each other:

Some of the hatchlings AB1 AB2 and AC3 are then purchased by someone who wishes to register them. If they are registered without any parents at all, they would not show up as siblings or half siblings. Other people who wish to register their stock might buy some of the other hatchlings, too. These hatchlings would then end up in many different places in the registry, with many different names, and nobody might notice that any of them are related.

By adding Male A, Female B, and Female C as dummy records and connecting their offspring to them, the registry then shows AB1 and AB2 as full siblings to each other, and as half siblings to AC3. The ACR software is able to use this information about the "virtual parents" to connect different hatchlings together.

If anyone buys an "AB" or "AC" hatchling from this same breeder and registers it with the correct dummy record parents or just with the info given by the breeder, then the registry shows the proper relationships between any hatchlings registered with the non-ACR parent info. Instead of many random and seemingly unrelated snakes, the information can be reconstructed through dummy records, to show a more accurate portrayal of the family tree:

For this reason it is important to include any parent info or "non-ACR ID tags" that came from the breeder (and the breeder's name and/or snakery name) when you are filling out your registrations. This information can be useful even if the parents are not currently registered or will never be registered, and whether or not that breeder ever participates in the ACR. This information can be placed in the "Special Notes" or in the spaces for the parents on the "Registration from Unregistered Stock" forms.