Making Money Without Ball Pythons

We breed Quarter Horses! :gj:

Just over this weekend we went to 2 different shows. Made more selling our baby Nic boas and baby blood pythons than we did selling ball pythons. As a smaller scale breeder of ball pythons you have a lot of competition at shows. At least 8 out of every 10 tables starts the day off with a ball python on it. At most local shows people don't walk in the door with $500.00+ in their pocket and 95% of the people that come through the doors just can't, won't, or shouldn't afford animals that are $250+. They tend to look and possibly get their kid an inexpensive normal ball python if they even get a ball python. In the mean time your trying to capture that 5% of business from all the other breeders when in most cases multiple breeders will have the same single gene stuff on their table as you have on yours. So now your dependent on having a multi gene animal that is nobody else has that someone coming through the door is going to want, having better enough quality that it is easily noticable, or having cheaper prices.

Boas being the second biggest item at shows only appear on about 50% of tables, but with then you can compete based on locality and temperment which are qualities you just don't have competition on in ball pythons.

Then you get into blood pythons, Short tail pythons, and the rest and generally only 10% to 20% of tables will have any of these. Not so much competition, but a smaller clientel base for now.

I made more with people wanting rodents( feeder and such than I did with my actual snakes. this season,) I end up trading and adding money to trade to get a couple mutli gene snakes ( I still cout a super form of a snake as a single gene ) . that being said i been I am trying to sell a couple larger breeding snakes (ball pythons)off to help offset the cost of the wedding. ( fiance and I are trying not to rely on family to help cover the cost ) WE only letting her mom help ( a little ) cause she feels she being left out lol)

I luv my fiancee but man why does everything wedding wise seem to double the price ? gown and altering yeah ok. but simple things like cakes and or flowers it like want a dozen roses it 30 bucks ( same roses for a wedding seems like they triple the cost )

I plan to start with bps, but I've already discussed with the hubby and started learning about other species I would love to work with aswell. Hoggies will be my next species I think, when we get more room I would love to get a BTS or two. I've been looking for a smaller boa species to work with aswell.

I may not ever have the biggest table at a show, but I hope to compensate by having the highest quality animals I can find. If that doesn't make a little profit, so be it. I get my giggles caring for reptiles, if they support themselves, awesome. Make me a small profit? Woot, bonus! But I'm not banking on it.

If you decide to stay with snakes other than BPs, I would go with cornsnakes and/or hognose snakes. Corns are especially easy to breed and raise. As far as other types of reptiles, leopard geckos are pretty cool. Good luck!

Thanks for everyone who chipped in! I was really just curious I breed a few balls, leopard geckos, pictus geckos, and this will be my first year for hogs and children's pythons...so fingers crossed!

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Originally Posted by sorazme

Thanks for everyone who chipped in! I was really just curious I breed a few balls, leopard geckos, pictus geckos, and this will be my first year for hogs and children's pythons...so fingers crossed!

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Hey just wanted to chime in, don't let people tell you that you can't make a living doing anything reptile related. So many times I see breeders who sell $20,000 snakes give the old "it's a hobby that pays for itself, I barely break even". I don't know if it's to discourage you from becoming competition, an attempt to limit the amount of people who get involved with breeding because the market is extremely flooded or any other reason. If you have passion for something and enjoy what you do, you'll find a way to make it happen.

There are a lot of high end geckos out there and many colubrids that produce large clutches with high end morphs. You can do it.

A lot of people use geckos and other herps to fund their ball, blood, GTP, etc. A buddy of mine breeds Geckos, corns, and bearded dragons to fund his ball projects. He also breeds rats and sells them. He makes more off the small stuff all year long than he does the high $$$ stuff. He gets his name out there this way and gets repeat business NEVER FORGET ABOUT THE LITTLE MAN!

Once I get into an actual house and not my trailer, I plain on expanding my balls a little but I also want to do something with carpets, SD retics and maybe some gecko stuff but not sure there maybe scorpions instead haha and I also want to get into breeding dogs, sled dogs mainly, ill be looking for land when it's house time so I can have a sled dog pack and breed the puppy's train them and sell them :)

The biggest thing here is that you have to spend money to make money. If you want to make enough money in breeding geckos to quit your day job, you have to drop a big stack of cash to do so. Same with the BP's for the most part. You can't just have a few pairs of geckos and expect to make a living off them. It takes a lot of money and a lot of time to make enough to live comfortably off of any business venture, no matter if its BP's, geckos, frogs, whatever it may be.