 <p>Just to note that this was resolved in Django 1.8 with the addition of the <code>from_db_value</code> method on custom fields.</p> <p>See <a href="https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/1.8/howto/custom-model-fields/#converting-values-to-python-objects" rel="nofollow">https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/1.8/howto/custom-model-fields/#converting-values-to-python-objects</a></p>