Do you ever pre-sell snakes?

Tiny bit of background here, I was a BP breeder a few years ago, relatively small collection, 3 males 4 females, nothing big at all. Unfortunately, at the time I had a business partner, who actually introduced me to the whole idea of BP breeding. Sparing you guys the long story, things went south, two snakes died, we sold the other 5 and parted ways as business partners for good.

I'm finally in a living situation where I can consider having snakes again, and what better way to get awesome snakes than to breed them, help make the hobby self-sufficient or make some money along the way. Unfortunately, I don't have the cash to plunk down on the Designer snakes I like, or would need to make it to my end goals for gene combos. To this point I've just figured it will take a few years, no big deal, that's pretty standard, but in talking with a friend who does a lot of start-up/small business/angel investing, he brought up the idea of treating the snakes more similarly to a standard product, and getting money up front to speed things up by doing a crowdfunding/pre-selling campaign.

Apparently this is something he's worked with other companies on, and has had huge success, however he's never tried it with anything living, and certainly not with anything that has the genetic odds involved in ball python breeding, which I fully recognize up front, but it seems worth at least considering.

However, this raised the question in my mind, do any of you pre-sell snakes? Be it a specific gene/combo that someone is specifically after, or batches of normals, anything.

Pre-selling live animals is a LOT harder than any other products, because, well, you can't guarantee anything. You can't be certain you'll have a certain sex or they'll be in good health, and what happens when you just can't produce a certain morph someone pre-bought? Don't count your chickens and all.

It'd be an incredibly risky business.

In manufacturing, you're in control of the product 100%. That's far from the case when living creatures are involved. It sounds very much like a cart before the horse scenario for all but the highest volume breeders ("farms") that support mass retail.

It's hard enough for most people to sell animals when they actually have them to sell! :)

I've heard of Boa breeders having waiting lists for specific morphs or localities. Unless you were producing something very special, I doubt it would work with ball pythons. There are too many of them out there for most people to be willing to pre pay and wait for a BP from you when 10 other people have the same thing right now.

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Never, too many unknown, if it's before they hatch you can't always predict what you gonna get if you do, and once they hatch you can't guarantee anything until you know for sure that the animal will thrive (not all do)

If you pre-sell an animal and you're not able to come through it will be a big headach.

Never put the horses before the carriage.

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Originally Posted by WolfeManRob

Tiny bit of background here, I was a BP breeder a few years ago, relatively small collection, 3 males 4 females, nothing big at all. Unfortunately, at the time I had a business partner, who actually introduced me to the whole idea of BP breeding. Sparing you guys the long story, things went south, two snakes died, we sold the other 5 and parted ways as business partners for good.

I'm finally in a living situation where I can consider having snakes again, and what better way to get awesome snakes than to breed them, help make the hobby self-sufficient or make some money along the way. Unfortunately, I don't have the cash to plunk down on the Designer snakes I like, or would need to make it to my end goals for gene combos. To this point I've just figured it will take a few years, no big deal, that's pretty standard, but in talking with a friend who does a lot of start-up/small business/angel investing, and he brought up the idea of treating the snakes more similarly to a standard product, getting money up front to speed things up by doing a crowdfunding/pre-selling campaign.

Apparently this is something he's worked with other companies on, and has had huge success, however he's never tried it with anything living, and certainly not with anything that has the genetic odds involved in ball python breeding, which I fully recognize up front, but it seems worth at least considering.

However, this raised the question in my mind, do any of you pre-sell snakes? Be it a specific gene/combo that someone is specifically after, or batches of normals, anything.

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Some animals can be sold in the egg. As an example, it can be common for some sellers of monitors where there are no morph odds, no sexing at all of hatchlings, the hatchlings look dramatically different as babies than as adults so selection doesn't really matter, and the seller has a waitlist anyway so customers are okay making a deposit as soon as possible.

None of these criteria apply to ball pythons. This statement pretty much illustrates why this is not a good idea...and he brought up the idea of treating the snakes more similarly to a standard product, getting money up front to speed things up by doing a crowdfunding/pre-selling campaign. I don't buy my ball pythons from sellers who treat their snakes as a "standard product" and I think most here would agree with this. There are plenty of large drop shipping companies out there who do something similar. Would you rather order from them or a breeder who takes pride in their animals? Preselling animals like ball pythons and bearded dragons raises a big red flag.

Similarly, speeding things up is not a good idea. Take the time to learn how to do things properly. Husbandry of animals, breeding goals, interaction with customers... these are things which shouldn't be sped up but rather learned as skill sets and that takes time.

Ok, basically my exact issues with the idea being echoed here, nice to hear.

And Brian, I do absolutely understand your additional concerns relating specifically to people who are not already familiar with the process, and I am new here so I can understand your presumption, however I think it's safe to say that those concerns do not apply here. I have kept and bred ball pythons in the past and am intimately familiar with their care and housing.

To your point though, the person who brought the idea up is not a reptile person at all, he is an incredible businessman though, which was the only reason I even gave it the thought, or put up the thread here to begin with. He would have no way of genuinely understanding the reasons why it would not be feasible to this industry outside of the objections I noted up front to him. His response to that was to offer stickers, t-shirts, hats, etc as rewards on the crowdfunding instead of reptiles, which simply does not seem to me to carry the weight necessary to function.

I would never presell hatchlings because I would not want to anger the egg gods. I mean, not only is it a risk to produce any certain morphs or sexes but you can't guarantee that you'll get eggs at all.

As far as crowd-funding with t-shirts, I think you might be able to offer tshirts or stickers with actual hatchling photos on them. So someone can pick which of the hatchlings they would get on the tshirt/sticker/hat... once the eggs hatch.

Or you could presell by offering to give credit for the money they put in, with a certain amount of discount at the different levels.

So if someone pledges $100, they get $150 credit to spend with you when you have things to sell. But if they pledge $200, they get $250 credit, but ALSo a 10% discount on the price. That way people would have a reason to be paying you start-up money. Since the hatchlings don't actually cost you much, you might make out okay.

The downside to that would be if you didn't have enough hatchlings to let everyone use their pledged money or how to say what order people get to pick hatchlings in.

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Originally Posted by WolfeManRob

To your point though, the person who brought the idea up is not a reptile person at all, he is an incredible businessman though...

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Show him the price of single-gene hatchlings in 2011 thru 2015 for common morphs suchas pinstripe, spider, lesser, mohave, black pastel, enchi... and work that forward with expected returns on the "product". Even assuming no disasters, vet bills, females slugging out, etc. the expected returns for a breeding business just stink. If he understands business at all he will tell you to go into business doing something else.

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Originally Posted by wolfy-hound

I would never presell hatchlings because I would not want to anger the egg gods. I mean, not only is it a risk to produce any certain morphs or sexes but you can't guarantee that you'll get eggs at all.

As far as crowd-funding with t-shirts, I think you might be able to offer tshirts or stickers with actual hatchling photos on them. So someone can pick which of the hatchlings they would get on the tshirt/sticker/hat... once the eggs hatch.

Or you could presell by offering to give credit for the money they put in, with a certain amount of discount at the different levels.

So if someone pledges $100, they get $150 credit to spend with you when you have things to sell. But if they pledge $200, they get $250 credit, but ALSo a 10% discount on the price. That way people would have a reason to be paying you start-up money. Since the hatchlings don't actually cost you much, you might make out okay.

The downside to that would be if you didn't have enough hatchlings to let everyone use their pledged money or how to say what order people get to pick hatchlings in.

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That's a very interesting idea, thanks!

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Originally Posted by bcr229

Show him the price of single-gene hatchlings in 2011 thru 2015 for common morphs suchas pinstripe, spider, lesser, mohave, black pastel, enchi... and work that forward with expected returns on the "product". Even assuming no disasters, vet bills, females slugging out, etc. the expected returns for a breeding business just stink. If he understands business at all he will tell you to go into business doing something else.

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I didn't go quite into that detail, but did show him a few examples along with my 5 year plan for costs as well as showing the kind of contingency you have to have for when things go wrong and you should have seen the look on his face. :rofl:Thankfully he understands this is a passion project for me and something I've been dying to get back into for about 5 years, so he didn't beat me up about it too badly. And he appreciated that I came to him for advice and info on the business side, without any expectations of him, 90% of the people he talks to every day are in his office for only one reason, to get his money, either for themselves, or for their client.

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Originally Posted by WolfeManRob

Ok, basically my exact issues with the idea being echoed here, nice to hear.

And Brian, I do absolutely understand your additional concerns relating specifically to people who are not already familiar with the process, and I am new here so I can understand your presumption, however I think it's safe to say that those concerns do not apply here. I have kept and bred ball pythons in the past and am intimately familiar with their care and housing.

To your point though, the person who brought the idea up is not a reptile person at all, he is an incredible businessman though, which was the only reason I even gave it the thought, or put up the thread here to begin with. He would have no way of genuinely understanding the reasons why it would not be feasible to this industry outside of the objections I noted up front to him. His response to that was to offer stickers, t-shirts, hats, etc as rewards on the crowdfunding instead of reptiles, which simply does not seem to me to carry the weight necessary to function.

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I probably should have elaborated more on the speeding up part as that's not exactly what I was trying to convey but I am glad that you are experienced with them. While certainly someone unfamiliar with bps would have more of a learning curve, what I meant is that it's easier to get overwhelmed with getting too big, too fast with animal centered business than with a generic widget that your friend is experienced with. All it takes is one season full of unsold hatchlings that dropped 80% in value because you misread the market trends to go heavily in debt. You don't have to feed and provide specialized housing for unsold widgets. We're in the midst of collection sale bonanza full of people like this. People who did things like took a out a second mortgage a few years ago to buy a banana male and 30 normal females. Or bought into desert females. Things that may have looked good on the surface, at the time, but turned out to be a very poor hindsight decision.

My point was more that, even for experienced breeders, it's better to invest money that you have to spare, to expand as you're able and comfortable, than to risk borrowed money in a very uncertain market where even some extremely experienced people have taken a beating.

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Originally Posted by Jabberwocky Dragons

My point was more that, even for experienced breeders, it's better to invest money that you have to spare, to expand as you're able and comfortable, than to risk borrowed money in a very uncertain market where even some extremely experienced people have taken a beating.

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This.... *cough* desert females *cough*.

I know people who have done it, but everyone that I know of has gotten into trouble for it eventually. They're animals not widgets, you can never accurately predict what you're actually going to produce.

I never put any money down in advance but two breeder friends that have double recessive pairings this year and Im first on the list for a female double het...

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Originally Posted by Jabberwocky Dragons

I probably should have elaborated more on the speeding up part as that's not exactly what I was trying to convey but I am glad that you are experienced with them. While certainly someone unfamiliar with bps would have more of a learning curve, what I meant is that it's easier to get overwhelmed with getting too big, too fast with animal centered business than with a generic widget that your friend is experienced with. All it takes is one season full of unsold hatchlings that dropped 80% in value because you misread the market trends to go heavily in debt. You don't have to feed and provide specialized housing for unsold widgets. We're in the midst of collection sale bonanza full of people like this. People who did things like took a out a second mortgage a few years ago to buy a banana male and 30 normal females. Or bought into desert females. Things that may have looked good on the surface, at the time, but turned out to be a very poor hindsight decision.

My point was more that, even for experienced breeders, it's better to invest money that you have to spare, to expand as you're able and comfortable, than to risk borrowed money in a very uncertain market where even some extremely experienced people have taken a beating.

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Ok, thank you for the clarification! I absolutely see what you mean! I can imagine someone trying to go from 0 to 30 clutches getting into a whole mess they can't handle, especially when the babies turn out to be $200 snakes instead of $4000 snakes. My version of speed up would simply be to get a clutch out in the 2016 season, instead of not being able to produce until 2017 and having feeding and possible vet bills for an entire extra year with nothing coming in at all. I suppose if I suddenly had $10K, I would do 2-3 clutches the first year, but that's still as much as I'd be comfortable doing.

I do appreciate the point of trying not to chase trends as well. That's less an issue for me thankfully as I absolutely Adore Axanthics, just about all of them(axanthic coral glow/banana does nothing for me ironically) so the trends there are much more subtle and much less fly by night it ha seemed. Some people love them, some people just don't get it, and doms and co-doms with the axanthic come and go, like Fires right now being huge with them, but nothing like any of the new genes that have really bit people in the ass over the last few years. The recessive market is a harder one because of the odds, but it also seems much more stable.

You also have to make sure you are prepared for all the possible hatchlings. What if EVERY female you breed lays a viable clutch? Do you have incubator space for that many clutches? What if every clutch is extra large? What about the hatchlings? Do you have space for all the needed individual heated tubs for each baby that could result? Do you have a market and a way to advertise and sale and ship that many potential babies?

What if you have health issues with a large number of snakes all at once? Are you prepared to deal with that and/or the vet bills that would occur? Are you prepared for a bad clutch? What if all the babies hatch out normal?

All these things end up cropping up and if you haven't thought about them, you'll be panicing suddenly. It's always better to think ahead and figure out the how's and such before the issue arises. There's so much that your friend would never think of if he's dealing in widgets versus live snakes and breeding.

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Originally Posted by wolfy-hound

You also have to make sure you are prepared for all the possible hatchlings. What if EVERY female you breed lays a viable clutch? Do you have incubator space for that many clutches? What if every clutch is extra large? What about the hatchlings? Do you have space for all the needed individual heated tubs for each baby that could result? Do you have a market and a way to advertise and sale and ship that many potential babies?

What if you have health issues with a large number of snakes all at once? Are you prepared to deal with that and/or the vet bills that would occur? Are you prepared for a bad clutch? What if all the babies hatch out normal?

All these things end up cropping up and if you haven't thought about them, you'll be panicing suddenly. It's always better to think ahead and figure out the how's and such before the issue arises. There's so much that your friend would never think of if he's dealing in widgets versus live snakes and breeding.

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Absolutely appreciated. I'm building the rack now, and since I'm sticking to one female, I'm making room for at least 8 hatchling tubs, but could pull out one of the adult male tubs that will be empty and make it 10 hatchling tubs. Incubator is pulled together but not built yet, as I have some time there. It's a mini-fridge that should hold 5 shoebox size tubs with eggcrate in them, so more than enough room there. For now, I think I'll actually use up the bottom space, just have room for 4 clutches, and do a submersed heating element, fresh air bubbler and mist generator in a dedicated tub in the bottom to control heat, humidity and air circulation. I actually have some experience making small scale commercial grade chiller units and with that experience, have done some thermal control units for homebrewing and two meat curing systems, which actually require extremely similar control to an incubator, but have to be even more tightly controlled, so they have heat, cooling, humidity and smoke controls all in on system, built into a full sized fridge or freezer.

I have found local reptile specific vets both up here on the mountain and down in the valley where I'm moving in a few months(hey a hurdle that hasn't been mentioned yet, I'm moving literally right before breeding season, going to cool them off just after moving, hopefully that can re-normalize them as quickly as possible just before getting them breeding). Vet bills will obviously suck, but can do it, and I have personal experience in both hunting and having to put down one of my own pets in the past as well, so as much as it's horrific, I can do that too.

Marketing and distribution are in the works, but are coming along nicely IMHO. I'm set of with my site(see sig) and a facebook page and I'm getting as active as I can here, BLBC, facebook etc. to get my name out even before I have hatchlings to sell, and have a couple local friends that ALWAYS have tables at the local shows, and they'll consign in shop, or sell me a couple feed of their table to sell anything not worth shipping.

I have a set of 6, 5 year plans, each one with automatic calculating rodent volumes and projected costs per quarter, quarterly misc expenses like damaged hides, paper towels, broken water bowls, replacement tubs, etc. Annual costs, like one complete temperature/humidity control unit going bad per year. They also include clutch projections year over year with manually entered holdbacks per year, with year over year variations based on genetics odds, and include minimum sales price of the clutch(based on ~3/4 survival, minimum expected egg count(4 first year, increasing by one egg per year to a max of 8, and the minimum genetic possibility, which is typically a normal, priced at $20) a median, which uses an algorithm I put together based on genetic possibilities, getting a full clutch and what would statistically be a resonable, but middling clutch, and what I call the hand of god, still using an algorithm based on genetics, if I were to a FANTASTIC, but still genetically reasonable clutch. Then extrapolating out year over year with those three variances and what information I tell it for what, if any snakes I were to keep. It's obscenely complicated, but gives me three scenarios based on varying luck for costs, income and potential growth.

I'm sure I haven't covered every eventuality, but I've been planning for this day to come for almost 5 years now, spending all that time learning, planning, designing, learning, re-planning, learning, re-designing etc.

Sounds like you've done all the homework a person could do. I really look forward to a lot more information and posts from you in the future. I can't imagine you won't do well!

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Originally Posted by wolfy-hound

Sounds like you've done all the homework a person could do. I really look forward to a lot more information and posts from you in the future. I can't imagine you won't do well!

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Thank you VERY much. I do appreciate that. I've failed as a breeder before, and I've failed as a businessman before, and you learn a LOT more from failures than victories, even if it's just about yourself, so I do like to think I'm well prepared going into this, but it's very good to hear from others who are in the industry and succeeding.

And I will likely be posting a lot, possibly bordering on too much, but it doesn't hurt much to put out more information than anyone really needs and have it ignored, than to not put it out there.

I'm really excited about seeing how my humidity system works out, I should have the rest of the parts in for it this week and I can get it running and see how it does. I have a feeling that if anything, it'll be overkill, but that's ok, it will just decrease run time on it.

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Originally Posted by WolfeManRob

Absolutely appreciated. I'm building the rack now, and since I'm sticking to one female, I'm making room for at least 8 hatchling tubs, but could pull out one of the adult male tubs that will be empty and make it 10 hatchling tubs. Incubator is pulled together but not built yet, as I have some time there. It's a mini-fridge that should hold 5 shoebox size tubs with eggcrate in them, so more than enough room there. For now, I think I'll actually use up the bottom space, just have room for 4 clutches, and do a submersed heating element, fresh air bubbler and mist generator in a dedicated tub in the bottom to control heat, humidity and air circulation. I actually have some experience making small scale commercial grade chiller units and with that experience, have done some thermal control units for homebrewing and two meat curing systems, which actually require extremely similar control to an incubator, but have to be even more tightly controlled, so they have heat, cooling, humidity and smoke controls all in on system, built into a full sized fridge or freezer.

I have found local reptile specific vets both up here on the mountain and down in the valley where I'm moving in a few months(hey a hurdle that hasn't been mentioned yet, I'm moving literally right before breeding season, going to cool them off just after moving, hopefully that can re-normalize them as quickly as possible just before getting them breeding). Vet bills will obviously suck, but can do it, and I have personal experience in both hunting and having to put down one of my own pets in the past as well, so as much as it's horrific, I can do that too.

Marketing and distribution are in the works, but are coming along nicely IMHO. I'm set of with my site(see sig) and a facebook page and I'm getting as active as I can here, BLBC, facebook etc. to get my name out even before I have hatchlings to sell, and have a couple local friends that ALWAYS have tables at the local shows, and they'll consign in shop, or sell me a couple feed of their table to sell anything not worth shipping.

I have a set of 6, 5 year plans, each one with automatic calculating rodent volumes and projected costs per quarter, quarterly misc expenses like damaged hides, paper towels, broken water bowls, replacement tubs, etc. Annual costs, like one complete temperature/humidity control unit going bad per year. They also include clutch projections year over year with manually entered holdbacks per year, with year over year variations based on genetics odds, and include minimum sales price of the clutch(based on ~3/4 survival, minimum expected egg count(4 first year, increasing by one egg per year to a max of 8, and the minimum genetic possibility, which is typically a normal, priced at $20) a median, which uses an algorithm I put together based on genetic possibilities, getting a full clutch and what would statistically be a resonable, but middling clutch, and what I call the hand of god, still using an algorithm based on genetics, if I were to a FANTASTIC, but still genetically reasonable clutch. Then extrapolating out year over year with those three variances and what information I tell it for what, if any snakes I were to keep. It's obscenely complicated, but gives me three scenarios based on varying luck for costs, income and potential growth.

I'm sure I haven't covered every eventuality, but I've been planning for this day to come for almost 5 years now, spending all that time learning, planning, designing, learning, re-planning, learning, re-designing etc.

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If your various automatic calculations and algorithms could be set up in a user friendly system, I could see that easily being a sought after tool by new keepers/breeders. Or even converted into a reptile breeder simulator game. Something to think about.

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Originally Posted by SmoothScales

If your various automatic calculations and algorithms could be set up in a user friendly system, I could see that easily being a sought after tool by new keepers/breeders. Or even converted into a reptile breeder simulator game. Something to think about.

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I did consider publishing it here, however I'd really like some(a lot) more time testing it, and it currently only can calculate based on manually input variables. For example, when I put a clutch into the database, I have to manually list the possible morphs that can come from it, and in the next column, list the percentage chance of getting that particular morph, then one algorithm spits out a randomly generated clutch based one the number of eggs I anticipate, and the odds at getting each level of morph, then the odds of each morph within that level, and an off the shelf randomizer. For the clutch values, I have to go one further, and input whether or not each morph would be held back, or sold, and based off of that, I have three calculations set up. One is the bare minimum, taking the lowest number value in the price category and multiplying it by the lowest number of eggs I could/should expect and spitting out that number for me, one that takes the randomly generated list and prices it out and spits out that number, and one that takes the highest dollar amount listed, multiplies that by the highest number of eggs I could/should hatch and spits that number out, that's the one called hand of god, basically impossible, but a fun number to see, and a fair comparison to the bare minimum and the "Median" which includes randomized offspring. Adding sex in will make it substantially more complicated, but entirely do-able as part of the randomizer.

The system should work great as is for up to 3 gene snakes. However I have a feeling it needs tweaking for any clutches with more than 4 genes involved. Also, if I could integrate an existing database, especailly one with name recognition like the new one on Morphs Market, I could have it generate clutches without all the manual work, however that is frankly beyond me currently, mostly because I haven't even begun to look into doing it due to a lack of time and number of things on my plate. I do have a friend who is loosely involved in android game programming who has said he could probably make it into an app, but he's busier than I am.

I totally understand the lack of time thing. Just thought I'd suggest it as I could defiantly see that being a useful program from a planning/projecting stand point. Would it be possible to plug into WoBP for the clutch outcomes? If you ever decide to further develop this I would love to be a beta tester.

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I've looked at the coding used on most of the calculators out there and it's really amazing the amount of work that has to have gone into them, especially recognizing specific combinations that make up "designer" morphs and spit out just the designer name, not the gene combination. Plugging into it is not really a possibility. Just in the realm of software I know, setting up a MS Access or similar database with really pretty front end would be the most efficient way to do it, and it would be relatively easy to set up a front end where you can plug in what you have, move to another screen to set pairs for breeding, it could spit out the possible incomes, and include a check box for holdbacks, but it's an incredibly large number of permutations to force it to go through, I can't imagine it being something that could be done real time, online without serious issues.