Im going to be selling different ball python morphs.

I say get back to us in a couple years... I have big plans for breeding as well but wont be pairing up until 08' so theres no point in me letting everyone know i plan on selling. If your serious work on setting up a website now so it a couple years youll have more backing. Also your pretty young... have you thought about your hobby and your future? If you plan to go to college what will you do with your snakes? What will you do with the snakes your cant sell? I totally support your wishes to breed down the road theres just some things you need to think about before you get that far.

good luck! wanna hook me up with a spider albino? $200 cash!!:D

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Originally Posted by jdmls88

good luck! wanna hook me up with a spider albino? $200 cash!!:D

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hahaha more like $4000

but i do plan on going to collage. i want to go to uc davis to be a veternarian. iv always loved animals. i definatly have my heart set on this. but, formy first 4 yrs of collage i plan on staying at a collage close to my home so i can live in my dorm and go back and forth between collage to my home. then when i (hopefully) graduate:rofl:, i will venture off to davis, and buy an appartment. i know this will be alot of money, but hopefully i can get a job in the meantime and work up from there. and in two yrs when ill be producing some het albinos, ill have some extra cash there. in three yrs i will hopefully be producing hets and albinos, and in 4 yrs i will hopefully be producing all albinos. and then after that i will buy a spider, pastel and... im getting carried away any ways im definatly taking a risk. but i fing that its a good thing. i have a roth IRA, anda banking account. im not going to touch the roth though. only the banking account, you know. so all and all. being a vet is my long term plan. and on the side i plan on breeding snakes. my parents are tottlay supportive and really plan on helping me along the way! so thats all i have to say! woo that turned into alot more writing than expeced.

when in college take some business classes

hey thats a good idea!

I do not begrudge you your wanting to be a breeder. It is a fun thing to do!

BUT! I think announcing this aspect of trying to get customers NOW is a bit premature to say the least.

Best of luck with College. I lived near UC Davis, and it is an excellent Veterinary school.

The best advice I can give you now is to study to get into Vet School. Don't focus on the BPs now. Vet School is VERY competitive, and there are very few schools in the nation.

Once you get that all done, then do what you want to do with BP breeding.

:gj:

Some great advice has already been given, however, I'd add;

- You have to spend money to make money. If you want to do well, I'd suggest signing up for a small business (entrepreneur) course at a local college. There is not usually an age limit on these courses. Maybe you can find a night course in your area. You can learn a lot about the fine points of setting up your own business, how to handle finances, creating a professional business plan model, and all the things that go along with it.

- If you just want to breed them and sell them tax-free at local shows or through classifieds, you won't need to register as a business. Check your local taxation laws, just to be sure you (or your parents, if you are a minor at the time) can't get in trouble for undeclared income.

- Be sure to establish a business policy in writing that is available to your potential clients - something you can realistically live up to.

- Plan to deal with difficult customers and how you will handle those situations. If your people-skills are not what they could be, take a weekend or night course on Mediation. It will pay itself off big-time eventually.

- Don't forget the internet; when it comes time to sell, get yourself a good website or, at the very least, set up some ads and post in forums. Again, you have to spend money to make money.

Good luck.

Well I wish you a ton of luck, because you're going to need it! Breeding is not this easy process where you just toss 2 snakes together and instantly have a bunch of bouncing babies, and people are lined up at your door to pay for them fast. I don't even know where I would begin in advising you.. I would firstly get a top-notch incubator fully set up and regulated with flexwatt and a Helix or comparable thermostat. I would never skimp on a t-stat. I learned the hard way, using a hovabator back in 2006, and you know what I got? A bunch of dead eggs and heartbreak when our power went out and the incubator spiked when it went back on. Good t-stats are not cheap, and flexwatt is eather inexpensive, bit this will still cost you.. This is just for the heating elements, and assuming that you can make an incubator housing itself.. that would be something to research.
Then I would also get the potential hatchlings' housing ready before you even breed. I say this from bad experience.. I admit that I was cynical and did not think that my eggs would hatch. I am just a pessimist like that.. but my incubator kicked butt and I had lots of babies. We were able to put a rack together fast and buy tubs, but this is really somerhing that a potential breeder should have ready beforehand. There again you'll need another top-notch thermostat, flexwatt for all of the little tubs.
Now comes another fun part of breeding. Should you be rewarded with many smiling BP babies.. they need to eat. Small rats (fuzzies or maybe even pinks) or hopper mice. Once a week roughly. Let's say that you get 8 hatchlings, out on one breeding. That's the need for 32 smaller rats or hopper mice, a month. If you breed, it might seem easy to just pluck them out of your rat tanks.. but then you have nothing to grow up into subadults to feed your larger snakes.. this was my fun part here :) I know now to step it up before babies come this year; I am starting that now, running 10 female rats but I don't even think this will be enough and I plan on adding maybe 5? And one more male. If you do f/t, I don't know how you'd feed babies on this. The thing that triggered my babies' feeding response was the movement of the baby mice.
Then... the Joy of Selling! Selling any animal is wrought with stress. You'll get many window shoppers who try to ****er prices down, who want a 50-month payment plan.. who complain about shipping costs. I was extreeeemely fortunate to find two awesome buyers off of this site, but it was tough to sell the rest of my snakes. I finally found a local guy with a shop that will be happy to buy anything I hatch out from now on, so having potential sale venues is what you should do. You should always be financially and mentally prepared to keep everything that you produce until you can find a satisfactory buyer for it that fits with your ethics and ability to pay for the snake.
And.. oh joy of joys! Fedex! It took them 4 months to fully certify us. The only reasn that our rep said that it "only took this long" was because he bumped our legal paperwork up.. otherwise we would still be waiting. It is not easy..
There. I think that I said most of it. I didn't really get into readying the adults or any technical aspects of breeding, because better people than me have already made awesome sites about that (like one Adam Wysocki..) I am just giving you a few words about what curveballs breeding can toss you.

I agree - you're really jumping the gun at this point. Build your reputation here over the next several years, then tack on 2-3 years to raise your breeding stock, you have quite awhile before you'll have your first animal to sell.

Work on the grammar - buyers aren't going to take you seriously if you can't write clearly and concisely. If you're going to be a businessman, you need to present yourself professionally.

And finally, I'd recommend reading this link: http://www.ball-pythons.net/forums/s...ad.php?t=49580