considering starting breeding.. need help

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Originally Posted by Mhavens

i have been considering breeding too and my question is about the cost. I'm not looking to be a big time breeder like NERDs or BHB. I'm looking to do it as a hobby because I love the snakes and its something my daughter and I can do together. I want to just break even. If I happen to make a profit that's always good and it would allow us to possibly buy new morphs to breed.

So is it realistic to think I can breed balls and brake even? Or is this not realistic.

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it takes some time to start getting your investment back. it's not a get rich fast thing. you can make a profit, most of mine goes back into the hobby.

Breaking even, probably not... Someone else broke down the cost, and I think it's in stickies, but roughly, first year no morphs...

3 years to raise a female on rats, first 6 months on pinkies, conservatively .50x4x6=12 (though there are some five week (pinkies are cheap in my area...). She converts to small mice. Say, maybe 2 dollars each? Til she's a year old? 2x4x6= 48 dollars

Converts to small rats, in my area that's roughly 3 dollars each. 3x56 weeks in a year. 168 dollars. Maybe less if she goes off feed during the winter... sometimes happens even when the temps aren't lowered. (My female ball doesn't for the majority of the winter, but my thamnophis did)

Vet costs... 100-400 depending on your area and your vet.

If you breed her in her third year with the weight of 1500. You're looking at a deficit already. Add in the male, and you get him up to 500 grams, and he's a normal, at 25 dollars, conservative bought as a hatchling, and a whole lot of feeding, and there is no way that you'll get all your money back. If you're lucky, your female is healthy, doesn't have impacted eggs, nothing freaky happens to the snakes in the process, you will at max probably get about 5-6 healthy eggs. Then you have to feed the hatchlings until they are sold. The selling rate for a normal is about 25-40 dollars max? The math isn't hard. You aren't getting your money back. Even with a codom homogeous male (which is expensive), your chances aren't always better. They may not lock, you may need a second male, etc.

Then you have the incubator costs, the herp stat, the heat pads/flexwatt, the electricity for running all that stuff.

Plus there is that saying about don't count your eggs before they hatch. Freak stuff happens. You make mistakes. God acts. There aren't guarantees.

I breed my ball pythons because I love it. Because I would have fed them and loved them anyway. Because I enjoy finding good homes for the hatchlings. And also because my female ball python takes it well. I hope to get her to a weight to do maternal incubation some day... I think she'd be quite good at it. She was underweight this and last year though, so I didn't want to risk it for her sake. Thinking about giving her a break, if she'll let me.

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Originally Posted by Mhavens

Ill definitely do that and good luck with your first year. I'm sort of lucky because a good friend of mine breeds BPs, bearded dragons, and geckos so I have been talking with him a lot. He also gave me my first normal. I figure ill plan for the next year and keep seeing how others are doing.

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I'm in the same situation my buddy breeds bps beardies Australian water dragons and a few others. I got 2 normal female babies a year ago and he gave me a couple for breeding and I've bought through his ppl for killer deals and a few on my own. But it's def nice to have good friends

If you decide to start breeding BPs, there are a ton of hidden costs like racks, tubs, food, heating, etc. It will take a while to build up your name and start making money. Now with that being said, I say do what you feel is right. For me, our business is a family operation and all of my kids are involved from the cleaning to pipping eggs. BPs have really brought us together as a family unit.

But if I didn't make a dime I'd be happy just the same :) honestly I might be selfish and keep all my babies next summer :p

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Originally Posted by GoldSheep

Breaking even, probably not... Someone else broke down the cost, and I think it's in stickies, but roughly, first year no morphs...

3 years to raise a female on rats, first 6 months on pinkies, conservatively .50x4x6=12 (though there are some five week (pinkies are cheap in my area...). She converts to small mice. Say, maybe 2 dollars each? Til she's a year old? 2x4x6= 48 dollars

Converts to small rats, in my area that's roughly 3 dollars each. 3x56 weeks in a year. 168 dollars. Maybe less if she goes off feed during the winter... sometimes happens even when the temps aren't lowered. (My female ball doesn't for the majority of the winter, but my thamnophis did)

Vet costs... 100-400 depending on your area and your vet.

If you breed her in her third year with the weight of 1500. You're looking at a deficit already. Add in the male, and you get him up to 500 grams, and he's a normal, at 25 dollars, conservative bought as a hatchling, and a whole lot of feeding, and there is no way that you'll get all your money back. If you're lucky, your female is healthy, doesn't have impacted eggs, nothing freaky happens to the snakes in the process, you will at max probably get about 5-6 healthy eggs. Then you have to feed the hatchlings until they are sold. The selling rate for a normal is about 25-40 dollars max? The math isn't hard. You aren't getting your money back. Even with a codom homogeous male (which is expensive), your chances aren't always better. They may not lock, you may need a second male, etc.

Then you have the incubator costs, the herp stat, the heat pads/flexwatt, the electricity for running all that stuff.

Plus there is that saying about don't count your eggs before they hatch. Freak stuff happens. You make mistakes. God acts. There aren't guarantees.

I breed my ball pythons because I love it. Because I would have fed them and loved them anyway. Because I enjoy finding good homes for the hatchlings. And also because my female ball python takes it well. I hope to get her to a weight to do maternal incubation some day... I think she'd be quite good at it. She was underweight this and last year though, so I didn't want to risk it for her sake. Thinking about giving her a break, if she'll let me.

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Thanks for the info. You have basically broken down what's in my head about cost. My thoughts were that after building and purchasing all the equipment and snakes I would not make that money back for a few years. I have a friend that breeds rats and mice that I can get at a good price from him. He actually gives them to me free right now (I only have one snake though).

Even if I don't make back the initial investment but the breeding years pay for themselves that would be awesome. I'm not looking to get rich. I'm not even looking for this to be my full time job. I really just want to do it as a fun hobby and because I love the snakes.

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Originally Posted by S.I.R.

If you decide to start breeding BPs, there are a ton of hidden costs like racks, tubs, food, heating, etc. It will take a while to build up your name and start making money. Now with that being said, I say do what you feel is right. For me, our business is a family operation and all of my kids are involved from the cleaning to pipping eggs. BPs have really brought us together as a family unit.

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I agree, this is something my daughter and I have been talking about doing together. We are not looking to be a huge NERDs type breeder. We are only looking to be a small local breeder. May daughter and I love our snake and we have really spent a lot of time together with this hobby. Making money isn't really our goal. Breeding snakes and the enjoyment of it is really our goal. But we would need to come close to braking even. Braking even after the initial cost of equipment ect. If we never recover those costs that would be fine. Braking even during the breeding years would be important.

I am going to explain to you how I feel you should go about your choice of starting to breed your Ball Pythons (this is going based off the assumption that you are trying to either break even or simply have a self-sustaining hobby).

In my opinion, if you want to be successful with breeding you need to look at things a certain way. The first thing you should do is determine how much money you are willing to spend on startup costs. Although it is possible to make this startup money back, you should look at this initial investment as a sunk cost that you might not ever get back and you should be fine with never seeing that money again (after all, if this is a hobby of yours that you love, you shouldn’t be bothered by investing money that you may never see again anyway). By doing this you won’t put yourself in a situation where you may start to struggle financially if you don’t seeing a return of this money as soon as you would like. These startup costs should include all your enclosures (rack system), your initial snake investments (your first project), your incubation method, and other various essential supplies you will need at the start your breeding adventure.

After you have figured your initial investment out you will then want to break down your monthly fees such as feeding and bedding. Once you have estimated what you may need to spend monthly you should then start tracking your profit margins. I will explain what I mean below based solely on one twelve month period to make things simple.

Let’s say your initial investment is $5,000. To keep things simple let’s only calculate for food and bedding as your additional costs for the twelve month period. Say you spend $100 a month on food and $100 a month of bedding supplies. For the twelve month period you will now have invested another $2,400 on top of the $5,000 initial investment. This means your total investment that you will be trying to gain back just to break even is now $7,400. Now let’s say all of your snakes are ready to breed there first year so that you can get a return on investment your first year. With that said, say you end up with a total of two clutches your first year with five good eggs in each clutch giving you a total of ten new snakes when they are all born for you to sell. If these ten snakes each sold for $300 that would mean you would receive $3,000 dollars back in your first year making your total loss for your first year only $4,400 (this is if you decide to include your initial investment in your calculations).

Now take that same situation I just explained above and eliminate the initial investment from your profit margin. If that is done, you would only be $2,400 in the hole for your first year. That means that once you hatch your ten snakes and sell them at $300 each, you will again receive $3,000 which will now put you at a profit of $600 (this is if you do not include your initial investment in your calculations).

With those calculations you now have a self-sustaining hobby that even made you profit for the year. This profit could be used to fund part of your food and bedding costs for your next year, it could be used to help fund a new project, or it could simply go back in your pocket.

With those calculations you now have a self-sustaining hobby that even made you profit for the year. This profit could be used to fund part of your food and bedding costs for your next year, it could be used to help fund a new project, or it could simply go back in your pocket.

Now obviously these numbers I used are just filler numbers and are not actual calculations but if you track your costs in this fashion without getting tied up in worrying about your initial investment to get your hobby started, I think you will see a better result in the end. I hope everything I said makes sense and is useful for you in your future plans regardless of how you go about your plans. Also if I did seem to make any errors in this post or something I said wasn’t clear enough to understand, please let me know and I will explain it more clearly. Good Luck.

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Originally Posted by boyer.michael.s

I am going to explain to you how I feel you should go about your choice of starting to breed your Ball Pythons (this is going based off the assumption that you are trying to either break even or simply have a self-sustaining hobby).

In my opinion, if you want to be successful with breeding you need to look at things a certain way. The first thing you should do is determine how much money you are willing to spend on startup costs. Although it is possible to make this startup money back, you should look at this initial investment as a sunk cost that you might not ever get back and you should be fine with never seeing that money again (after all, if this is a hobby of yours that you love, you shouldn’t be bothered by investing money that you may never see again anyway). By doing this you won’t put yourself in a situation where you may start to struggle financially if you don’t seeing a return of this money as soon as you would like. These startup costs should include all your enclosures (rack system), your initial snake investments (your first project), your incubation method, and other various essential supplies you will need at the start your breeding adventure...
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thank you. This is exactly the way I have been looking at it. If I never recover the initial investment that would be fine. I would like the breeding years to come close to break even. I really want to breed for the enjoyment and time with my daughter. Thanks for the post it confirms my thoughst and expectations.

Get your self a couple female pastels and a male spider and try for some bumblebees. Or male and a female pastel and work on some super pastels. Relative low cost morphs to start with and can produce some super awesome snakes!!!


1.0 - Spider / Ball Python
1.0 - Pastel, Het Orange Ghost / Ball Python
0.1 - Pastel, Het Orange Ghost / Ball Python

0.1 - German Shepherd (Kahlua)

1.1.0 Dendrobates Tinctorius “Azureus”
1.1.0 Dendrobates Auratus "El Cope"

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Despite what many say i feel there is still ways to make money, but every year people breed more snakes and produce better stuff and ball pythons can live for a very long time so supply in demand has and will take affect especially in this hobby. In 2008 i bought a early Mojave female ball python unstarted for 400$. She bred for me in the middle of 2010 and produced a clutch of 6 eggs, one slug, one lesser (died in egg) one mojo 2 normals and a Bel. I lost my job as a vet tech at the time (company went bankrupt) so i had to sell most of my snakes but that one specifically i made a profit on. The Bel i sold for 650$ (female) the mojo 100, and the normals i gave to friends or people who came over to talk about snakes and ask for help. I then was forced to sell her as cause she was my most $$ snake in the collection at the time and got about 1800$ for her. After food, bedding, and rats i still cleared about 2k in profit. Now do i think u could do the same with a mojave female now? no, cause ur payout will be smaller especially in 3 years. Do i think u could buy a banana male for 20k and make a profit in 3 years? yes but who the hell has 20k to spend on a snake? Do ur research on what stuff u like and try to remember the more u spend, the more money u prob will get out of this hobby (risk and reward) and supply in demand. And ask a ton of questions!! There are many med sized breeders who love to just talk about snakes, projects and what not to buy and so on. Just with anything too watch out for the "douche bags" and check the BOI on FC to see who not to buy from, just cause its cheap doesnt mean its a deal (if ur in this hobby long enough someone is going to try and rip u off)