Good posture, no bumps and ‘immaculate health’: what it takes to win top frog or reptile
April 1, 2024
By Sharlotte Thou
Sixteen-year-old Lara Ristic is one of Australia’s best reptile owners – and she has the ribbons to prove it.
Three of her snakes won first place at the Sydney Royal Easter Show on Monday, besting a seemingly impossible judging standard. Winning animals must be both “typical” of their species, while also “really standing out”, vet and former judge Robert Johnson says.
Ristic began keeping reptiles as pets five years ago and has been showing them at the Easter show for three. This year she entered 10 of her 14 reptiles in the frog and reptile competition, which features frogs, geckos, snakes and lizards.
“They’re my babies,” she says. “I love them so much.”
Ristic, who was named overall runner-up champion, says the judging standards are “intense” but necessary because they promote proper animal maintenance. It’s especially important because “reptiles don’t show when they’re in pain or sick”, she says.
The reptilian and amphibian competitors are judged on their health and must be cleared by a vet to compete.
While the indicators of health vary from animal to animal, the judges look for a healthy BMI, good posture, signs of worms and bumps in the spine.
Judges also assess an animal’s mental health, marking down animals that show signs of stress.
“We want our animals to be in immaculate health,” show organiser Anthony Stimson says. Animals merely in “normal health” aren’t winners, he adds.
“The ones in perfect health are looked after a lot better … we need to talk to their owners and find out what they’re doing.”
The judging process is slow and calculated. It takes more than half an hour to assess the first 10 snakes. Judges crowd in front of individual enclosures marking scoresheets, their expressions serious, sometimes taking the animals out to examine them.
On seeing a yellow-and-white striped snake wrapped around a branch, one observer quips, “you get everything on a stick at the Easter show”.
Judges are looking for a “wow animal”: one that scores highest on a range of qualities and characteristics.
“It can take 20-to-30 years for a breeder to choose something that’s absolutely a perfect score in quality, pattern, colour and variation,” judge Brad Walker says.
“We’re looking for a pattern to be nice and clean, colourful, that stands out and isn’t washed out.”
Other factors can also be at play: being a difficult animal to maintain, being a new species or a species that will generate interest in the hobby can also score highly.
One such example is the green-and-gold bell frog, which breeds extremely well in captivity but is endangered in the wild. None were entered this year.
Walker, who is the longest-serving reptile judge in Australia, says that for competitors who score lower scores, the show presents an opportunity to “help them understand why they scored that way”.
“More often than not the reason is that they don’t know any different and haven’t been trained, or somebody hasn’t given them any advice.”
The show has an encouragement award, aimed at motivating those less-experienced competitors.
“We have 12-year-old competitors going up against a big breeder in New South Wales, who has been doing it for 30 years and got the absolute best of the best,” Walker says.
For younger competitors, Walker says, reptile showing can lead to a career in conservation or animal care – provided they receive the right support and encouragement.
Amicable amphibians
For some competitors, the show is an opportunity to shine light on an under-appreciated group of animals.
Snakes, for example, are often thought of as being dangerous or as pests. “But they’ll actually take care of pests like rodents for you,” says Cindy Jackson who entered a gecko in the competition.
She and Marie Callin, who entered the first-prize winning magnificent tree frog, describe their pets as “very curious”, saying they’re “very amicable to handling and interaction”. They say they didn’t do anything special to prep for this year’s show, apart from keeping their pets in good condition throughout the year.
“I prefer to interact with my animals over humans, or some of them anyway,” Jackson says, laughing.
Children, at least, are keen on the idea of pet frogs and reptiles. Jackson says kids have told her, “we don’t want a dog, we want a snake”.
Despite the cold-blooded nature of the contestants, Johnson says the atmosphere of the show is warm and fuzzy.
“There’s a real family feeling,” he says. “A lot of people come every year so it’s a great reunion.”