Breeding

You know, honestly, I've been thinking about this. I have two sons: one is 13, one is 15.

If either one of them started talking business ventures with breeding snakes, I'd actually be pretty aggravated. Not because of the financial outlay - but because those kids are not going to be in my house forever. 3, 4, years -maybe as many as 8 or 10 I guess, and they're gone.

Ball Pythons live 40 years or so. Getting them to maturity/breeding ages takes a couple of years/a few years. I don't want to breed snakes. I sure as heck don't want to be left with a lot of breeding snakes when they go to college or move out. Moving out with 2 snakes - do able. Moving out with a breeding process? NOT SO MUCH.

My advice to them is what my advice to you is going to be:

Save up. Get a baby or two that you really love. Focus on raising them. When you move out they'll be ready to breed and you'll be more financially stable and can pump more into your venture.

And none of that even touches on how impossible it is to take a couple of low end snakes and breed them to make super high end ones. You've got a passion and a plan and a desire for a project and that's great, but You're not recognizing thatt his plan of yours? Gonna take years, and years, and maybe decades to make happen and depends a TON on your parents investment and support of space and time, if not money.

Also? I have 4 snakes. I average about 50.00 a month on food. That's not bad, but when you realize that I spend that little because I buy in bulk online, and have a dedicated freezer for the food (and have to because space) and how much more it would be if I bought locally it would be a lot more. This month I bought a corn snake and got her set up - just one. *THAT* cost me over 100.00, probably closer to 150- and she lives in a plastic tub with a cardboard box for a hide and we had a spare bowl that was suitable. Snake, food, heat pad, t-stat. Bare minimum stuff.