Collection Size vs. Time

I've been keeping a few snakes for awhile and recently have really been thinking about taking my collection to the next level in terms of both quality and quantity. When I have a system I notice it takes significantly less time to care for my snakes, and seems to get more efficient every month.

That led me to wonder what kind of time requirements people have when it comes to taking care of their snakes. How many snakes do you have? Do you breed? How much time per week do you spend taking care of them, on average?

At around 50 animals I am at on average 15 mins a day. Yes I breed. When I have hatchlings, depending on how many I can go up to about a half hour a day. This is the time it takes for maintenance. I probably put it a couple more hours a week just playing around with them.

About 90 slithers. Figure an average of two man-hours a day since my husband helps. That includes caring for ten retics though, when one of the bigger ones needs a full clean-out it's a two person job.

A little over 50 snakes of various species, I average 1-3 hrs a day every other day for feeding, cleaning, various prep work.
I do not include feeder thawing time in this since I do other things around the house or game while they are thawing.
I'm a hobby breeder, every other year or so I pair things up, if I was breeding multiple pairs each year I'm sure there would be quite a bit more time spent in caring as well as taking photos and advertising for sale.