How Ambitious Are You ?

I had an idea for a discussion... Breeders and business folk alike - How ambitious are you?


How far do you plan or desire to take your hobby or business?

We all know that a love for animals is the first reason you should be in, but if that was the only factor, we'd all probably call it a day with one or two awesome pets. I've been thinking about my (very ambitious) goals a lot and I'm curious about what others want to be happy in this field.


Just a passion you don't mind pouring money into? Self-sustaining? Making enough money to fuel your wishlist? Making enough money to live off of? Making a 'name' for yourself? Starting some sort of public venue (store, zoo, educational)? Owning one of everything? Propagating rare species? What will satisfy you? Are you already where you want to be with the animal-pursuits and have other goals in life (family, nice house, better job)? Etcetera. Ideally, but realistically.

I want to produce morphs I enjoy, learn from the experience, have fun raising my snakes and feeders, eventually make a decent side profit from it, and have a name as a good breeder. I don't need to be big big, just kinda known.

I want to make pretty snakes. That's it.

As long as I break even and get to keep expanding I am happy.

Not necessarily an easy thing to answer. In my case, my desires have tended to evolve a bit as the hobby progresses. At first, I just wanted to move to the next level, so to speak, and progress from just keeping to breeding. It was also a way to eventually make some cool bp morphs I couldn't afford. Now i hope it will progress to the point where I can more or less break even, and be able to persue all the other projects I'd like to try. I will take it as far as I can, but the break even point would be a major goal reached for me.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Shey

Just a passion you don't mind pouring money into?

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This. I had that with my horse for 22 years before he passed away, so I'm used to paying for my hobbies - and my whole snake collection costs less per month to maintain than my horse did. I also plan on pairing my females every other year rather than every year, I think it will keep them healthier overall, plus it keeps the number of clutches I produce every year at a manageable level.

I also find myself looking at other species to keep, especially the different boas, and find myself drawn more to the individuals that are a little more flighty and/or defensive than the norm. I like working with them so they eventually will at least tolerate human interaction and handling, though the process may take several months of patient and consistent work.

It started off as "I want to produce animals that I cannot afford"

So I went from a "Passion you don't mind pouring money into" to "Self-sustaining" to "Making enough money to fuel your wishlist" + more. :gj:

But the most important is that I LOVE what I do, can't beat seeing a snake peep out of it's egg.

Future goals are to produce the combos that I have on my list once I get there I will be pretty satisfied, until I set new goals of course.

Right now I'm just putting money into it as a hobby and keeping, not breeding. I'd love to get to the self-sustaining point, but I find myself drawn to boas more and more... which require more housing / food and can be harder to sell than BPs (plus larger clutch size), so I'm Leary of breeding.

I think I'll continue it as a small hobby for the next 4-5 years, acquiring new species and deciding exactly what I love, then I'll reconsider breeding.

When I first got into snakes, I had no intentions of breeding... then I was bitten by the "breeding bug," and decided to give it a go. Now (5+ years later) I have a decent-sized collection, but have only been breeding one clutch per year for my own personal enjoyment. At one time I had some lofty goals/ideas, but the momentum died pretty quickly, especially once my hours at work started to get more demanding - actually need to downsize the collection now, as I no longer have the time or money to maintain 25+ snakes without breeding for profit. So at this time, my goal is to get it down to a more manageable number (like 10-15), and maybe to start keeping for diversity instead of "what goes with what."

I started a few years too late in relation to money time and energy so I've had to reconsider things. I have a significant amount of curiosity with breeding ball pythons. I really want to see what I can do with line breeding after several years. For instance imagine an Enchi paired to a super bright top quality pastel but it happens to have a "jungle" pattern or instead a mid quality Pastel with a standard coloration but unusually reduced and with great blushing and flames. I want to work on my own personal cook book to bring out what I consider to be the best and unique qualities in not only single genes but in multi gene animals. For me it's all about pairings to enhance something specific. Right now I have some ideas that I want to work with for Pastels, Black Pastels, and Ghost. I'll be breeding other morphs but my focus at the moment is just to breed for very specific traits and see what happens. I thought I wanted to breed reptiles as a business but that will take many more years as I have way too much going on in my life right now. If anything I will turn half of my house into a rat breeding facility to not only save me 150 dollars a week buying petco feeder rats but also to make some extra hobby money on the side.