When do you list your babies for sale?

[LadyScales]

Hello! I have eight beautiful babies this year. They have shed out, and will be getting their first meal soon. I was just curious. Does anybody list their babies for sale before they're ready to actually ship? Obviously, I'm going to make sure they get a few meals into them and a bit more weight. I was just wondering if anybody lists them first to see what interest there is while you're fattening them up. Image of one for hatchling tax!

[Armiyana]

I'm still pretty new to it with my 3+ 4th clutch hatching this year...
I like to make sure my little ones have 2 meals in them and at least 1 healthy looking bowel movement before even considering putting them up for sale.

Failure to thrive or some sort of internal issue is always possible. So I want to make sure there is at least a good start before listing them. After that, I like them to have 5 meals before they're shipped.

[LadyScales]

That makes sense, thanks! This is my third clutch technically, but my first with really exciting morphs! My beautiful lemonblast rescue produces some awesome babies.

[Homebody]

Does anybody list their babies for sale before they're ready to actually ship?

I don't see anything ethically wrong with, not only listing them, but even taking a deposit, aa long as you're prepared to refund it if something goes wrong. From what I hear, selling ball pythons is a tough business to break into. That extra advertising time seems like it would be valuable, maybe even critical.

[nikkubus]

I would post pics of them on social media to get some eyes on them and get some interest basically right away, but wait to offer them "for sale" when they are close to the point I'd be ready to actually ship them. I'm not sure what kind of network you have, if it's going to be a thing where you have places to show them off where people will want to buy them later or not. If you don't, it wouldn't hurt to post them for sale a bit earlier as long as people are aware they aren't ready to go yet. I probably would do a wait list instead of deposits, especially if you aren't very experienced yet, but that's just me. Refunding those and eating the cost of the fees because a couple of them are being tricky to get eating could suck.