Female age/weight, Male weight/female Ratio? Estimating Profit of Pairings?

You could also buy a breeder sized or sub adult male. You wouldn't have to worry about growing a baby.
Unless they're a more rare or high end gene male, most males are priced relatively the same as their hatchling counterparts.

I'm always glad to see new people in the hobby, but I wanted to add a note of caution here.

From your question about the profitability of pairings, and your plans to get a pretty fancy male, I get the sense that you are entering ball python breeding with the hope to make a profit.

It is a lot of work, patience, and heartache. Ball pythons are picky eaters, and may go off feed for months, causing you to pull out your hair because you thought they would be ready this season. Or they might just not feel like breeding. If the deal is sealed, you may not get the best odds with your hatchlings, or you might miss the female ovulating.

Another thing to keep in mind is that the price of ball python morphs drops every year. A snake that you spent $5,000 on this year may end up being worth half that when you finally get him breeding.

I guess what I am trying to say is that this is not the best hobby for making money. If you are truly passionate about the animals you keep, then it might be worth it for you. But for just plain profit, you could probably do better working at McDonald's.

No offense intended, not trying to imply that you are not passionate about your animals. Just food for thought. :)

Quote:

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Originally Posted by meowmeowkazoo

I'm always glad to see new people in the hobby, but I wanted to add a note of caution here.

From your question about the profitability of pairings, and your plans to get a pretty fancy male, I get the sense that you are entering ball python breeding with the hope to make a profit.

It is a lot of work, patience, and heartache. Ball pythons are picky eaters, and may go off feed for months, causing you to pull out your hair because you thought they would be ready this season. Or they might just not feel like breeding. If the deal is sealed, you may not get the best odds with your hatchlings, or you might miss the female ovulating.

Another thing to keep in mind is that the price of ball python morphs drops every year. A snake that you spent $5,000 on this year may end up being worth half that when you finally get him breeding.

I guess what I am trying to say is that this is not the best hobby for making money. If you are truly passionate about the animals you keep, then it might be worth it for you. But for just plain profit, you could probably do better working at McDonald's.

No offense intended, not trying to imply that you are not passionate about your animals. Just food for thought. :)

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No offense taken, I'm new here and you folks don't know of us at all, I run TheLizardHorde.

I mostly hang out over on the Repashy Forums. We are mostly branching out into BP's to make money off of them which is why we are spending the extra cash so we can actually make some money off of them in 2-4 years. We keep and breed Uroplatus, Nephrurus, Correlophus ciliatus, and T. fasciata.

Our business is kind of a hybrid between business and hobby at the moment. We run the money making side of the business (Nephrurus, ciliatus, fasciata) to support the hobby side of the business (the preservation of Uroplatus). Both myself and my girlfriend Kodie have other employment so this is more or less just a way to subsidize our hobby and boost our income a little.

I also really enjoy all of the challenges that BPs bring to the table in terms of breeding. With having experience in Uroplatus we know exactly how hard this hobby can be at times and how heartbreaking. For instance just this last year we lost our female U. pietschmanni due to a cyst on a follicle, we would have been added to a handful of people who captively got these animals to lay but that got shot down by a freak accident. Considering there is probably less then 100 of these animals in the country and their native habitat is being destroyed at an alarming rate this was a very hard death for us to deal with.