making money from pythons

So I have been reading a lot of different posts over the last sveral weeks and the theme seems to be that this is a hobby, and you will be lucky to break even by breeding ball pythons. Maybe I have not done enough research, but I dont see how that is possible, if a person makes wise decesions on the animals he (or she) purchases, profit should be made after the first year or two. For example, I bought 2 racks on craigslist, a 3000 gram normal female, and a breeder spider male for less than $600. I also bought 1.1 pieds and .2 het pieds, paid way more for these 4, but around $2500. One of the hets can be bred this year, so my pied project is a little ways off, but I can pick up a .1 breeder pastel for around $600 (I think) and sell two clutches of spiders, pastels, and possibly bees early next year and pay for everything (excluding pieds, I know that will take a while to pay for).

On another note, I enjoy these snakes very much, it is not just a dollar sign to me, I have a full time job, make good money, and have some disposable income. I just started a rat colony so I know I will be buying them from the store when I need them though, so my only costs from here out is rat food, an occasional rat, and electric right? I know there are possible vet visits, and clutches that dont happen, but it all seems pretty idiot proof to me? Maybe that makes me the idiot :), anyway, just wanted to see what everyones thoughts were

I would highly recommend reading this article by Colin Weaver. It is a very well written artical about costs and profits in the BP business. http://ballpythonbreeder.com/2010/04...thon-breeding/

Time, you forgot the time. So 2 hours a week cleaning feeding ect. 104 hours of labour maybe more. Say ten animals a clutch, so spiders, say you get lucky and have 7 spiders at 300$ each and can sell them all reasonably quickly. The costs of power and food for the breeders for a year is 200$ The normals you have are basically a loss you make nothing on them by the time you can sell them at 40 bucks they have cost you close to that. 1400 - 200=1200 ignoring the cost of the initial investment and materials you are making 11.54 an hour. That is conservative if you expense 30% capital a year it is now 9.81 an hour, that is basically minimum wage where I live. That is just the spider and normal and a capital of 600.

A friend and breeder where I live took 9 years to break even and that is not counting an hourly wage at all. The next kicker is sooner or later if you keep expending you will need more time than you have, and that means expand again and give up your day job or stay small and not really pay your self. It can be done but not as easily as it seems.

Hi,

in my opinion making money out of breeding only is possible with some start up capital, to buy expensive morphs with "future". I dont`think its possible to break even if someone starts for example with some 2010 Pastels, Spiders,...
The prices for these and alos combos out of them are falling much too fast.
On the other side, if you maybe buy an Toffee, and work on combos with it, there will be maybe a profit in 6-7 years, when you have the first clutches of the second generation.

Not to mention, if you have any hold-back females, you are talking 2 to 3 years of upkeep before they are breeding ready

The article linked to was an interesting read, but I see some fundamental problems with the calculations used to come up with the eventual profitability. The main reason why the venture proved to lose money was due to the decline in value of the original snakes. Obviously we all know that our morphs will drop in value, however, he specifically states that the NexGen animal he's using in the plan is a theoretical Recessive morph. This morph drops in value from 2500 to 100 in 6 years. Sorry, don't buy that for a recessive gene animal. How long has pied been around, 13 years? You see any $100 pieds at your local show. What about albino, they've been around for a damn long time, still around $400. I'm not saying they aren't going to decline in value, but assuming that every morph will drop by half each year until being near the price of a normal seems extreme. If you use all of the same figures, but assume that the animals drop in value by 40% each year until getting around $500 then dropping 25% each year, which seems to be a more accurate representation of recessives (though still a more aggressive decline than has been historically demonstrated by the popular recessive morphs) then it actually shows a slight profit overall. Not to mention this plan assumes that at no point will the breeder ever attempt to introduce double gene morphs, which greatly increases the pricing, especially with recessive gene animals. Who breeds only one morph endlessly without introducing other combinations?

food, most people forget how much these things cost to keep alive a 4$ rat a week for an adult adds up when you have more then one.

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Originally Posted by Alex.B

food, most people forget how much these things cost to keep alive a 4$ rat a week for an adult adds up when you have more then one.

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If your breeding or have over 10 snakes you should really breed feeders. Yes it cost you money to get that set up (I built a 20 bin Rack that cost around $300) but in the long run it is WAY cheaper than buying feeders from a store. I have 10 snakes say I payed $40 a week to feed them thats $160 a month were it only cost me $40 in food every couple of months and Bedding cost next to nothing and water the same. Maybe a total of $60 every couple of months and that is with 8 colonies of 1.3 or 1.4 rats.

Not to mention when the rats get to big I use them as breeder or sell them to people with bigger snakes/or want pet rats. And that goes toward more food/bedding.

It can be done...;)

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Originally Posted by Alex.B

food, most people forget how much these things cost to keep alive a 4$ rat a week for an adult adds up when you have more then one.

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If you're in it for the profit at all what so ever, you're not paying $4 a rat. You're either buying in large quantities at wholesale pricing or you're breeding your own. Neither of these options come anywhere close to $4 a head.

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Originally Posted by NewParadigms

This morph drops in value from 2500 to 100 in 6 years. Sorry, don't buy that for a recessive gene animal.

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Just a bit of info from my own research on BP prices, the little bit of digging I've done on fauna going back to 2004 and earlier has had a steady decrease in morph prices of very close to half price every 2 years, and I remember I looked into three or four distinct morphs (including pieds).

While that can't be a sure predictor, that's the number I've been using to try to estimate the potential shortfalls or profits in my own BP ventures for the next 10 years.

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Originally Posted by billye1982

So I have been reading a lot of different posts over the last sveral weeks and the theme seems to be that this is a hobby, and you will be lucky to break even by breeding ball pythons. Maybe I have not done enough research, but I dont see how that is possible, if a person makes wise decesions on the animals he (or she) purchases, profit should be made after the first year or two. For example, I bought 2 racks on craigslist, a 3000 gram normal female, and a breeder spider male for less than $600. I also bought 1.1 pieds and .2 het pieds, paid way more for these 4, but around $2500. One of the hets can be bred this year, so my pied project is a little ways off, but I can pick up a .1 breeder pastel for around $600 (I think) and sell two clutches of spiders, pastels, and possibly bees early next year and pay for everything (excluding pieds, I know that will take a while to pay for).

On another note, I enjoy these snakes very much, it is not just a dollar sign to me, I have a full time job, make good money, and have some disposable income. I just started a rat colony so I know I will be buying them from the store when I need them though, so my only costs from here out is rat food, an occasional rat, and electric right? I know there are possible vet visits, and clutches that dont happen, but it all seems pretty idiot proof to me? Maybe that makes me the idiot :), anyway, just wanted to see what everyones thoughts were

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At the end of the day the point is in your definition of "make money". In order to "make money" you need to do a lot right, get a little lucky, and put a lot of blood, sweat, tears and investment cash into it. I have read a lot of threads and my family (parents, and their parents) made a living with animals (horses). I think that the point of so many of the posts you will find is that if you are in it to make money there are far better ways to make money. Breeding snakes has to be a love of yours and something you are willing to get paid relatively little for the amount of work you put into it. I can easily make 50 to 100 dollars fixing a single computer. Why don't start my own business? Because the business is not just fixing computers. Its talking to customers about stuff they don't know. Its about keeping financials, ordering supplies, dropping off and or picking up computers. Same goes for snakes as it does for any business. There are lots of things that you need to be good at/willing to do in order to turn a profit. Can it be done? Of course. There are lots of great breeders out there as examples. Ask any of them if it was as easy as they thought it would be. I am guess every one of them would tell you it was much harder than they ever imagined. Not to mention that for every example of someone who made it there are countless others who failed. This post and the others like it aren't about discouraging people. If you have a dream by all means go for it. If you are discouraged its probably for the best though, as you need to be single minded in your pursuit of your dream to make it work.

Read this transcript Kevin McCurley did on Kingsnake back in 2004.

http://www.kingsnake.com/articles/KevinMcCurley.html

They talk about how Mojaves were going for $11,000 and how Spiders were going for $4,000. You can now get both for around $600 combined.
Think about how much that sucks for breeders who spent that much for these two morphs back in 04' to what they are now:O
Sure some big name breeders might have made some money, but who could also put up that kind of money and time!! Think about how many people though lost a ton of money who couldn't sell the offspring right away!

Selling BP's as your only source of income is a hard life I'm sure. You will probably have your good months but more often than not you will have more bad months. Especially if all you have is the Norm... (Pastels, Spiders, Pinstripes, etc.....)

You will need to drop a few thousand dollars to get yourself 1 amazing morph, then try to get it to breed, then hope to god the price doesn't drop before you can sell off the offspring all the while keeping some holdbacks to continue your bizz. But then your looking at another 2 to 3 years to do it all over again......

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Originally Posted by mainbutter

Just a bit of info from my own research on BP prices, the little bit of digging I've done on fauna going back to 2004 and earlier has had a steady decrease in morph prices of very close to half price every 2 years, and I remember I looked into three or four distinct morphs (including pieds).

While that can't be a sure predictor, that's the number I've been using to try to estimate the potential shortfalls or profits in my own BP ventures for the next 10 years.

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Half price every 2 years equals about 30% drop a year, that's significantly less than the 50% average drop used in the article.

Making money from breeding ball pythons is a secondary thing for me. the first is making sure the snakes are happy and healthy. Don't get me wrong making money from something you enjoy doing is a great thing and no one should feel bad making money off of ball pythons. Thats just my opinion.

Honestly you can "make money" from just about anything. Should you "get into pythons" to make money? I would say no. Unless you have some exp with breeding and marketing. Also it depends on what you think of as making money. I spend around 6-8 hours a week cleaning feeding and just looking at and holding 15 snakes. I spend about $150 a month caring for them. If I hatch something and sell it for $ I'm ahead. Because I would have spent the money and time anyways.

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Originally Posted by NewParadigms

Who breeds only one morph endlessly without introducing other combinations?

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Thank you for taking the time to read what I wrote.

The profitability question should not have to be answered through continuous re-investment. The question I want to answer is whether or not an investment in a single group of animals can be profitable. If the answer only becomes yes if we continue to buy, year after year, more animals with different genes then we are tainting the question.

It goes without saying that almost all of us will breed our morphs into other morphs in order to take things to another level; that is the nature of what we do. But is it required? If spending additional hundreds or thousands each season is what it takes to put profitability within reach then I hope people who are doing this for money will understand that. That has to be part of the business plan.

A requirement for continuous reinvestment is not the nature of other forms of investment. If I invest in gold coins I do not have to buy more gold coins the following year in order to make money on the ones I already have. The same is true for stamps, stocks, diamonds or many other things in which people choose to invest. To suggest that this is an absolute requirement for a successful ball python husbandry program is an important thing for every for-profit breeder to understand.

To me, profit really is not an issue, and any money that I may make, is honestly going to go into MORE Ball Pythons :lmao:
But, if you do want to make profit, more power to you, many people have tried and been successful!

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Originally Posted by Monster Dodge

They talk about how Mojaves were going for $11,000 and how Spiders were going for $4,000. You can now get both for around $600 combined.
Think about how much that sucks for breeders who spent that much for these two morphs back in 04' to what they are now:O

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But you have to think long term. Lets say this year I buy a '10 banana male for $15k. He first breeds for me in '12, and lets say prices have fallen to $4k for banana males by then. Lets say I breed him to a pastel female and two normals. The pastel gives me 6 eggs, and the two females give me a total of 9 eggs (being conservative here). Lets say I get one banana pastel that I hold back and a total of 4 other bananas that I sell (again I'm being conservative here with the odds being hit).

I'm able to sell the 4 bananas for $4k a piece and end up with $16k. $15k is for the investment in the banana bp, then lets say $1k for food, heating, misc other costs for that year. Now I've broken even with my investment, so even if in '13 I'm able to hatch out 5 more that I can sell for $2k (prices have fallen again), that's still $10k. Then maybe the following year your banana pastel is up to breeding size, so now you can make super pastel bananas or sell your original breeder male, etc.

Lets say even if you lost a clutch the first year, and only made $8k, then the next year you could make it back up. Or if he doesn't breed the first year and you have to wait a year, you could still end up on top.

Now, let me clarify, this is purely hypothetical. And by no means is it this easy. But if you plan carefully, and long term, then it is quite possible to break even or come close to breaking even. With bps, I'm to the point where they are able to pay for themselves, I'm not making any money, but I'm not losing any money either (now the cornsnakes, they're a money pit, but I still love them!).

So again, if people are looking to make back all their money in a year and be rolling in the dough, guess again, but if you come up with a 5 year plan, and are conservative and factor in all of the costs and potential costs and losses, then its feasible to at least have the hobby pay for itself.

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Originally Posted by Blue Apple Herps

But you have to think long term. Lets say this year I buy a '10 banana male for $15k. He first breeds for me in '12, and lets say prices have fallen to $4k for banana males by then. Lets say I breed him to a pastel female and two normals. The pastel gives me 6 eggs, and the two females give me a total of 9 eggs (being conservative here). Lets say I get one banana pastel that I hold back and a total of 4 other bananas that I sell (again I'm being conservative here with the odds being hit).

I'm able to sell the 4 bananas for $4k a piece and end up with $16k. $15k is for the investment in the banana bp, then lets say $1k for food, heating, misc other costs for that year. Now I've broken even with my investment, so even if in '13 I'm able to hatch out 5 more that I can sell for $2k (prices have fallen again), that's still $10k. Then maybe the following year your banana pastel is up to breeding size, so now you can make super pastel bananas or sell your original breeder male, etc.

Lets say even if you lost a clutch the first year, and only made $8k, then the next year you could make it back up. Or if he doesn't breed the first year and you have to wait a year, you could still end up on top.

Now, let me clarify, this is purely hypothetical. And by no means is it this easy. But if you plan carefully, and long term, then it is quite possible to break even or come close to breaking even. With bps, I'm to the point where they are able to pay for themselves, I'm not making any money, but I'm not losing any money either (now the cornsnakes, they're a money pit, but I still love them!).

So again, if people are looking to make back all their money in a year and be rolling in the dough, guess again, but if you come up with a 5 year plan, and are conservative and factor in all of the costs and potential costs and losses, then its feasible to at least have the hobby pay for itself.

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x2 I like the way that you put it. I agree with you.

Keeping and breeding BP to make profit = infinite hope
keeping and breeding BP for the passion = endless fun

Sure, there is still money to be made. But nowhere NEAR the amount that was available to be made when these animals were in thier "prime" back in the later 90's and early 2000's.
Example: when I bought my first male spider back in 2002, they were $8000. I got seven clutches from my one male the following season, producing 39 eggs and 21 spiders. They sold for $6000 each at the time (had I sold them all). That's a profit of $118,000 on an initial investment of $8000.
That's just spiders.
Pastels, mojaves, etc. same deal.
Those days are gone.

Now, in order to make money;
1. You NEED to breed your own rodents.
I keep roughly 80 ball pythons these days and breed almost enough rats to maintain my entire collection. I spend roughly $450 a year on bedding, and another $650 on high quality rat lab diet. That eleven hundred dollars yields me roughly 5000 rats per annum, or 22 cents per rat; roughly a tenth the cost if I were to buy them even wholesale.
2. You need to start out with triple and quad animals, both co-dom and recessive. Note: I said animalS, not animal. Putting all your eggs (so to speak)in one basket on a single high dollar animal is foolish. Great way to hemmorhage money.
3. ZERO normals.
In order to keep your heating, bedding and misc. expenses down, you need to hold as small a number of breeding stock as you can, while still optimizing your potential for high dollar value animals. All these breeders who have hundreds of breeder animals with a bunch of normal females; crazy. They're in debt.
Where is the intelligence on heating and feeding a bunch of normal females all year to get a clutch that has a bunch of normals in it? When you're breeding doubles, triple and quads to double, triples and quads, you'll likely produce zero normals thereby increasing the dollar value of your average clutch.

Like every other business, there are tons of stupid people who try to make tons of money on ball pythons in this economy.
Like every other business, only the ones who have a plan succeed.
Be smart, have a plan and you can make a bunch of money.

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Originally Posted by Blue Apple Herps

Lets say this year I buy a '10 banana male for $15k.

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I know it was hypothetical, but banana male for 15K?! You let your provider know I'll buy them all at that price.