Question for those of you with large collections

Have to realize bhb is a full time business with employees. It's not a hobby any more in that scale. You could probably care for several hundred snakes l, but you'll have to put all of your time into it tho

After my babies hatch out this year I'll have about 350 ball pythons, I also have several Boas, a blue tongued skink, a black and white tegu and a 12 foot long male albino Burmese python. I like to use deli cups inside larger bowls that I get at the dollar store for my ball pythons. I don't even think about humidity and never have, I can't remember the last time I didn't get a full shed. I produce between 300 to 500 rats per month to feed my snakes, this saves me between $15,000 to $20,000 a year.

I don't keep feeding records and the only shed I'm interested in is the POS (post ovulation shed). I keep all of my reptiles on newspaper that I get for free. I have a wash basin inside my breeding facility and all of my ball pythons are in racks.

The walls and ceiling are totally insulated with R-30 batting and this is probably the most important thing, everything in my breeding facility is on wheels. I have a wash basin in the snake room that I couldn't live without.

I clean between 30 and 40 cages a day and will clean and replenish 40 to 50 water bowls per day. I like to change out all of my water bowls atleast once every 3 days. Keeping the water bowls clean will go a long way in keeping my snakes healthy.

I use provent-o-mite every 30 days in my snake room to proactively keep a mite free environment.

Because I am a California State certified animal health technician I can take care of most minor health issues that happen with my animals. Depending on your husbandry vet bills can add up pretty fast.

I also do between 200 and 300 educational reptile presentations a year at schools, libraries and birthday parties in the San Francisco Bay Area. I do all of the correspondence and scheduling of the reptile programs.

Because this is what I do for a living it's very important to keep the over head as low as possible, my labor is pretty cheap.

I hope this helps.

Brian

I actually live in Northern Nevada - the high desert, with horribly low humidity most of the time. But I don't spray my snakes at all. I just keep a water bowl in their tub, use a rack, and the humidity takes care of itself. Sometimes, if it's particularly dry, I may splash a bit of water from the water bowl toward the warm end of the tub, but usually I don't. I only have seven BP's right now, though. Most of them had poor sheds the first time after I got them, some for one or two more times after that, but after settling in they all have perfectly good sheds. Maybe not in a perfect whole, but that's just because they tend to split the front of it in half while removing it. I just use heavy pottery bowls... harder to wash, but without having a huge number of snakes, I'm more worried about having something that they can't tip over - since Shasal LOVES to dump her water. Then sits on top of a hide waiting for me to dry the tub out for her.

My ambitions are pretty small, though. A few more snakes, but mine are pets first. Not very many more.