virgin year old balls what to do?

[pythoncollector]

Ive been on the site for a while and never registered figured i should take the dive in. I have alot of baby balls of different morphs and wondering if i should hold on to them untill they are atleast a year to sell for people who want breeders. Would it be worth it? I breed my own feeders so cost and upkeep isnt that much.

[treachery]

There really isn't a right answer for this one, I personally like buying my ball pythons young. I enjoy raising them up into adulthood and breeding them. Others want ball pythons strictly as pets, and when I sell my ball pythons to people they want them as young as possible. Yet there is people who are looking for quick projects, and these people look for breeding size animals so they can get the quickest results. So I would say it all depends on your clientele, maybe try offering what you have and those that you don't sale hold back. I've been trying to sell three of my Mojave's from 2015 season since May. I'm not going to use them for breeding so I'll just raise them until someone buys them.

[bcr229]

Someone breeding may prefer to get an older animal, especially with genes where the lower-quality ones can brown out over time. A lot of great looking babies are rather meh as adults.

[John1982]

You're going to have a better idea of how an animal is going to mature if you hold them for a year. This is both positive in that it should give nicer snakes a fair bit more value, and negative, in that not so nice animals will barely be worth more than they were as hatchlings - or maybe even less if they've aged particularly poorly. I tend to hold back more than I plan on keeping to see how one matures against another. I personally find it easier to sell hatchlings and don't often sell yearling or older animals for much more. Admittedly, I'm terrible at advertising and tend to bump ads every week or two, or month or two, or never - depending on how preoccupied I get just raising up babies.

[pythoncollector]

Thanks for all the replies, so i think ill just hold on to the demales and push selling my males. Im thinking of switching over to feedibg chick, since i got a cheap source of quail. Do yall think that will affect selling older balls?

[wolfy-hound]

I personally wouldn't buy a BP feeding on anything unusual. I prefer to get them eating rats, but if it's nice, maybe if it's feeding on mice. Chicks? Never. Quail chicks, especially never.

Another thing I don't see mentioned is to try to gauge the price drop that might be expected from some morphs. If you have a codom snake, the price mark may drop each year as more of that codom enter the market. So you might raise a baby up but then it's still worth the same price even as breeding size animal because the price dropped the next year.

Also, males tend to be lower priced, as many breeders will sell off unneeded males as they make and hold back combos, while female breeders are more desirable and able to make offspring.

It might be a better business plan to sell males and the lower priced codoms off younger, and hold back recessives, combo gene animals and females to sell at a larger size.

[pythoncollector]

Ok sounds like a good plan i figured the chicks wouldnt be a good idea.