How did you get started?

I am really passionate about reptiles and any animal at that but mostly reptiles and would like to breed reptiles and become a reptile vegetarian. Are there any breeders on here that started young? If so at what age did you start? how did you start ( svaed up for years and bought 50 snakes at once or started with 10 - 20 snakes ) What did you start out breeding? what problems did you run into because of starting out so young? Where are you now? Ect..... Share your story please.

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Originally Posted by dylanhagler

vegetarian

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Veteranarian***

Bought a female normal, fell in love, got more, many many years later bred a few clutches, discovered morphs, bought a lesser, then a black pastel then this year bred my own BEL and bought 4 more genes to play with later. :D

I have always been fascinated with reptiles and amphibians, specifically snakes. As a young child I would go into the woods and swamps and capture all kinds of critters. Of course the easiest ones to catch were the frogs, turtles and salamanders. But I will never forget capturing my first snake. It was a big garter snake that ended up biting me and then expressing its scent glands on me.:oops:

I ended up bleeding and stinky but I was hooked!:D

My fiancee (then boyfriend) started with a pair of ball pythons when I turned 21, which is still young to be taking on the responsibilities of multiple animals. I was fortunate enough to have some savings around and spent about 10k on the initial like, 12 snakes and racks and equipment. Since then, most of our spare money (which we don't have much of) gets donated to the animals. We are up to about 30 snakes and it's a major money and time suck. But we love it.

It's good that you're on here doing your homework. I was too stupid to go looking for forums and wound up with a bunch of single gene males! :oops: They're my sweeties, but if I could turn back time....

I'll go with exotic reptiles since I've been catching local herps since I was 4. After graduating high school and getting my own place, a buddy got a bp and then his mother threw a fit and he needed somewhere to keep it. So I volunteered, and then it dawned on me, I can have these kind of animals now. I only recently started down the breeder road since my life is pretty stable and I have a house now..

stared with a few hatchlings....some years later, they're adults....so breeding is the next step.....breeding is the most wallet friendly way of acquiring new snakes. either snake funds from the sale of hatchlings or bartering with other hobbyists.
i do not see any profit in this endeavor. even if i count eggs before they hatch, the expected maximum earnings from each season will always be less than the cost of snakes i plan to acquire. lol!!!