Question for those of you with large collections

[stickyalvinroll]

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

[For Goodness Snakes]

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

[Caspian]

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.