My First Year Breeding Recap and Rant

Almost all of my sales have come just after the new year. For the last 4 years, I have tried to sell animals after the 3 meal mark. I have moved a few here and there, but most have come at the change of the year. This year I had 11 snakes for sale. I sold all of them within 2-3 weeks of each other. I think some of it has to do with people shopping around to see what is available, and some of it has to do with Tax money. As far as pricing goes, I price middle to high in the market. Let's face it, we all do this for the same reasons. Love of the animals and to make a little extra money. What bothers me is the lowball offers, especially in the public view. Feel free to to PM me an offer, I may take it, I may not. If I chose not to, feel free to go to whomever it is you saw that had it cheaper. I price my animals for what I see they are worth. You learned this year that it is a lot of hard work. The lowballers learn that as well then "dump" the animals so they don't have to do the work. I'm all for wholesaling animals; less work, and you get to keep what you want. My piece of advice for people just starting out. Babies are hard work and eat a lot. Start out with a clutch or 2 to see if it's something that you want to expand. I read a story once of a guy that was going to make some cash in one season then expand. He bred 2 males (I think a Spider and Pastel) to something like 30 normals. Most laid eggs and hatched. He couldn't house them all or feed them all. He dumped the babies off for what he could get and had a lot of babies die. He then complained that no one was buying anything from him (nobody even knew him). He has since left the hobby altogether. Mason, don't get down. Just pick and choose what you really want to work with each year. Nobody says you have to pair them all. Just have fun doing what you do and the rest will work itself out.

Great points for many to consider, raising those babies can be expensive and is definitely time consuming and ends up to also be a lot of work.

One of the things we do to keep our numbers down is to wholesale the normals as soon as they've gotten 3 meals in them.
Getting your name out there and producing quality animals will help tremendously.
If you are picky about what you breed you will find that they sell well.
We've been able to sell out fairly quickly the last few season even with a down economy, but not everything sells in a week or two so one must be prepared for that.

I am lucky to have a partner that I can share the work with, it makes this endeavor so much easier for both of us :)

You do need to develop a reputation in order to sell the animals. Marketing your snakes and yourself is just as important as setting the price properly. When you think of the work and needs for marketing, you need to make sure you figure in display cases, banners, table covers, business cards, etc. for vending at reptile Expos. You can sell strictly on the Internet, but I've found it is much easier to sell the babies if people have met you face-to-face or know you by reputation. I sell about half locally and about half I ship out. This year, I have not done a lot of marketing on the Internet because I wanted to hold some stock back so I could vend local shows early in the year.

I don't find caring for the babies that difficult. I have plenty of feeders to get them started, then I switch them over to f/t. I buy f/t in bulk to save money (hint - you will need freezer space to accommodate feeders for several months). If you have a good hatchling rack, it doesn't take much time. I can clean my baby rack in about an hour to an hour and a half (my wife helps - we have a routine and method that we have worked out over the last few years). The key is to get the right tools for the job.

I do think that people getting into this hobby to make a little money needs to start out small and grow each year. I've developed methods for cleaning, feeding and care of my large collection that took me a lot of time to figure out. By starting out small and growing each year, the education process wasn't overwhelming, nor was the care for the colony overwhelming. A tweek here and a tweek there to save some time and money.

This hobby/business is capital intensive where it takes a lot of money up front and if you jump in too fast, you will find that it becomes a big chore. When it becomes a chore and you put all of that money into it up front, you will start to look at it as a lost investment. So, my advice would be to buy quality animals, plan your genetics work, don't go into debt, build each year, grow only as fast as you have the time to work with the animals.