What would you do with $10K?

this is what i would get.

go for a humblebee male breed them to female ghosts, pastel ghosts, or whatever kind of ghost you want.
you'll get ghosts, spider ghosts, hypo ghosts, more humblebees, hypo super pastels and, your target, super humblebees.
(i really think this option is cool because you can't get any normals as long as you DO NOT breed a HET ghost to the humblebee male)
OR
you can get a queen bee male and try breeding that to pastels, super pastels, lessers, or super lessers
for super pastel female
you'll get pastels, bumblebees, super pastels, lessers, queens, lesser super pastels, killer bees, and maybe a five gene animal.
for super lesser female
you'll get lesser bees, lesser pastels, supers lessers, queens, i think killer queens(i might be wrong)
OR
spinner blast male and breed to pastels or super pastels
you'll get pastels, bumblebees, lemon blasts, super pastels, killer bees, killer blasts, spinner blasts, AND the super spinner blasts
OR
super lesser male and breed to a bunch of lesser females or more super lessers.
basically you're trying to make a bunch of white snakes with this option.

and you can do any combination of the above. but seriously breed what YOU like. i want to breed these guys not for the money but because i absolutely love the morphs.
most of your offspring are going to be top dollar morphs. i think you would make your money back, minus time, energy, and maintenance fees, pretty quickly.

p.s. if you use the not super form of the females i listed you will produce normals.

:banana:I'd put a down payment on a house

Brian from BHB did a snakebytes episode on this topic. You can see about finding it onhttp://www.bhbreptiles.com. I don't really remember the name of the episode, but it was pretty good. :gj:

hmmm if u want to make ur money back in 5 years ur best bet would be to buy only 2 or 3 Super Duper high end male morphs and the rest would all be Normal Females or Pastel Females that way u can have alot of production of those high end morphs

If I had 10K free I would invest 7K and only do 3K on snakes. I've kept my snake expenses under 2.5K(this is my first year) and I have 13 snakes(soon to be 16), DIY Racks, thermostats, and a small feeder rat colony.

What I would do with 10k=TOP SECRET ;)

lol really though I would do something you like, and I wouldn't spend it all at once, maybe open a "snake account" with the money you wanna spend on snakes, and buy few now, sit on them a little while, buy a few more so on and so on. That way you have room to change your mind on projects.

Do it for passion, not for profit; you'll have a much more enjoyable time if you treat the hobby less like a money pit/tree and more like a research lab.

That said, I'd start an axanthic queen mojave bee project of some sort, and probably get a retic for a companion animal. The resulting "not what I was going for" crosses would be interesting and profitable in some small way, I'm sure, but I'd rather trade them straight across for other animals that would further my breeding goals. And that's what it's all about, YOUR breeding goals. If you just want white snakes and want to skip the recessive genes, get a pair each of mojaves and lessers...between the four of them, you'll produce a fair amount of blue-eyed leucistic animals, and can breed the resultant BELs of both types to keep producing them, as mojave and lesser share the same space in the genome.

(someone correct me if I'm mistaken here)

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Originally Posted by BbyBoa

lol really though I would do something you like, and I wouldn't spend it all at once, maybe open a "snake account" with the money you wanna spend on snakes, and buy few now, sit on them a little while, buy a few more so on and so on. That way you have room to change your mind on projects.

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x2. I do this to fund my track/weekend car enthusiasm, and it works amazingly well. I should probably start a snake account as well.

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Originally Posted by Domepiece

:banana:I'd put a down payment on a house

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x2 or I would do the snake account or have a spread sheet. also go and look up prices see what snakes you like or dont like.

Guys, this is disposable income. I already have a house, a retirement fund, college money for the kids and savings. I make pretty good money with my day job. My goal in all of this isn't to make money, and I'm not being irresponsible.

Like I've said, I've been a BP owner for nearly a decade. I love these snakes, and I absolutely love the variety of morphs that are available. However, if given a choice, I'd rather have the snakes with multiple genes. Like all of you, I would love to produce the snakes that the big guys are producing, but I'm not willing to invest *that* much money in what will hopefully end up being a hobby that simply pays for itself. My ultimate goal is the satisfaction of accomplishing successful breeding, along with being able to own the various morphs I desire.

Think of my question as, if I were to hand you $10k and tell you that you have to spend all of it on ball python morphs, along with my list of goals and criteria, what would you buy?

Thanks for all the responses! I'm getting close to deciding what I'm going to go with.

I stand by my previous post. I'd get myself a female killer bee and super pastel, and a male axanthic spider, probably a lesser mojave as well.

I'd still buy the reticulated python, too. Way too gorgeous and intelligent to pass up, and I think it would all clock in under 10k.