Does breeding pay the bills?

[bcr229]

Not all true, quality will speak for itself, I do not price my animals below big breeder' s prices and I have been breeding and selling competing with the big breeders for over 10 years.

Hey girl you may not realize it but you've become one of those big-name breeders with a good reputation and a decade of experience.

[Stewart_Reptiles]

Hey girl you may not realize it but you've become one of those big-name breeders with a good reputation and a decade of experience.

I may have two out of 3 but I am not a big name, I still have people thinking I have been doing this for 2 to 3 years or that never heard of me.....which I am fine with because I do not do this to be famous, just to be able to fulfill my expensive taste in snakes.

[albertagirl]

Wonderful information. I also have expensive tastes. LOL. Thank you so much for the responses, so much to think about! I am just starting with researching morphs, sale prices, what I personally find attractive, and learning everything I can. I'm thinking now, when buying new snakes, get things that are a little more expensive and have a few more genes/hets, just in case I ever decide to do something about this one day. But previously it was never my intention, so pretty well all of my snakes so far are just "pretty". My goal until now has been more of a "have one of everything" than anything else.

The rodent idea just might be brilliant. I'm allergic to mice, but if I'm around other animals regularly, I do develop a tolerance to them. I wonder if the same would be true of rodents? I regularly break out in a rash after feeding my snakes. At first I thought I was allergic to my snakes and my heart almost broke. Rats are illegal in Alberta. We have to ship ours in, already frozen, from Saskatchewan, but there are ASF's here.
Actually, Maybe I should look into this. I had thought about rabbits at one time as well, which are marketable as people food, snake food, and pets. I'm on an acreage with no neighbors, so the sky is kind of the limit, but I love the snakes, so working with them doesn't feel like work.

Whether I'm dealing with snakes or rodents, I do need to look into shipping. I live just outside of a small town with no door to door delivery, and no FedEx or anything. I assume shipping anything fast would require an hour drive into the nearest city, every time. That would add a fair bit to shipping costs. Overall, the thing that I hadn't really thought of, but that's been mentioned a few times now is the idea of selling snakes to others who just aren't as interested in proper care as I'd like them to be. Selling snakes when I know that some of them will be mistreated is definitely difficult for me to process ethically. I will have to give that more thought.

I really appreciate the time you all took to give your input.

[Stewart_Reptiles]

Wonderful information. I also have expensive tastes. LOL. Thank you so much for the responses, so much to think about! I am just starting with researching morphs, sale prices, what I personally find attractive, and learning everything I can. I'm thinking now, when buying new snakes, get things that are a little more expensive and have a few more genes/hets, just in case I ever decide to do something about this one day. But previously it was never my intention, so pretty well all of my snakes so far are just "pretty". My goal until now has been more of a "have one of everything" than anything else.

The rodent idea just might be brilliant. I'm allergic to mice, but if I'm around other animals regularly, I do develop a tolerance to them. I wonder if the same would be true of rodents? I regularly break out in a rash after feeding my snakes. At first I thought I was allergic to my snakes and my heart almost broke. Rats are illegal in Alberta. We have to ship ours in, already frozen, from Saskatchewan, but there are ASF's here.
Actually, Maybe I should look into this. I had thought about rabbits at one time as well, which are marketable as people food, snake food, and pets. I'm on an acreage with no neighbors, so the sky is kind of the limit, but I love the snakes, so working with them doesn't feel like work.

Whether I'm dealing with snakes or rodents, I do need to look into shipping. I live just outside of a small town with no door to door delivery, and no FedEx or anything. I assume shipping anything fast would require an hour drive into the nearest city, every time. That would add a fair bit to shipping costs. Overall, the thing that I hadn't really thought of, but that's been mentioned a few times now is the idea of selling snakes to others who just aren't as interested in proper care as I'd like them to be. Selling snakes when I know that some of them will be mistreated is definitely difficult for me to process ethically. I will have to give that more thought.

I really appreciate the time you all took to give your input.

As far as shipping if you have a FedEx hub than you can ship and receive easily, the average cost a breeder charges is usually around $55, sometime it cost more but some of the cost you to absorb to offer a shipping cost to your customer that is not too high.

As for selling it is not easy you have to have faith that people will take proper care of their animals, and be willing to turn down sales which I do all the time when something tells me that the potential customer will not do so or is not willing to listen (for example I had one wanting to house two 100 grams hatchling together in a 100 gallons tank, and when told it would not work was clearly not wanting to listen so I pass)

Some breeders would not care I do and have quickly learn to weed out certain customers.

[303_enfield]

As already posted, rats, mice an ASF. For a small scale hobby breeder, rats will pay the bills. Your in the Great White North, people are crying for frozen rodent dealers. Even small scale you'll make money an feed your snakes. I clear a few $100 USD when I try to sell ASF or rats at $2 for adults an .50 for pink or hoppers (live or gassed). Rats grow fast ASF are sloooooooow.

Breeding snakes:

Are your clutches large enough to make money?
Are your snakes the "in" thing?
How many years will it take for your snakes to mature?

Hobby breed for what you like. Show the snakes your willing to sell at small local shows an face book groups.

Enjoy your noodles!

[67temp]

Someone once told me a story about the American gold rush that stuck with me. A lot of the miners that were all out searching for gold lost a lot of money in the quest. The ones that made goods or sold the goods to the miners are the ones that actually got rich.

People will dump crazy amounts of money into something they are passionate about. Just look at football as an example. The amount of money put into season tickets, tailgating, superbowl parties, and team paraphernalia.

I'm stable in life and am just breeding for fun. If I was looking to make money I would look for some kind of product or service that the current market is missing. Feeders are always needed. If you have land you could grow plants such as grapevine for reptile enclosure. If you lived near water you could hunt for and process driftwood. Produce hides that are a different style than currently on the market..etc. You would still have to market yourself but you wouldn't be just another person selling the same thing that everybody else is.

[dr del]

Really good thread.

I don't really pay attention to the reality of making my hobby pay for itself.

I buy the snakes I think are outstanding ( not so much recently because of work commitments ) examples.

I've cut back a lot recently but when I get the chance to expand the collection again I will probably again be looking at the morphs that blow me away rather than those which are the best commercial choices.

If you have quality animals that produce quality offspring you may well make some income from your hobby.

From my limited perspective it's just a way of buying more snakes.

[Reptilius]

Thank You Everyone for this awesome thread. We had a similar debate about 2 weeks ago here in South Africa, among a group of the small recreational breeders as I call myself. The Conclusion reached was that what you put in is what you get out, for example, using South African Currency, I buy a pair of Classic BP's as hatchlings at R1000 for the pair, it takes me 3 years to get to the stage of the female laying her first clutch of 5 eggs, my cost up till now has ballooned out to about R4000, if all 5 eggs hatch and the babies are perfectly healthy, eating etc, i can expect to make R1250 off of them because Classic hatchlings now only sell for R250 each, I have lost R3000.

Take the same scenario and I purchase a Banana Spider male and a Lesser Enchi female hatchlings, they will cost around R5500, to get the female to the egg laying stage, cost will have ballooned out to around R8500. If the female lays 5 eggs, all fertile, all hatch perfectly healthy and eating etc, and I hit the odds somehow with a 2 gene Banana female, and a 4 gene Banana male, with one of the others being a 3 gene animal and the last 2 being 2 gene animals, I can get around R25000 if I get them all sold. I have nearly tripled my initial investment, even if I don't hit the odds spectacularly, I will still at a minnimum double my initial investment.

This is exactly what Deborah was saying, in the second scenario, I invested quadruple what I did in scenario 1, but made the profit instead of loss.
What you put in is what you get out.

[Godzilla78]

You can make money if you design and execute a good business plan.
I’m not going to go into all the details of what makes a business profitable, as we could all just go to experts, MBAs and business gurus for that info. (Highly recommended btw)

To make a profit breeding royal python morphs in 2019 requires copious sums of money invested upfront, and/or years of dedication breeding your stock. The risk is much higher, but if you are an expert at marketing, and you hit the right odds, the rewards can be profitable.

Breeding snake food on the other hand, is simpler, it is much faster, it is much safer investment, it requires a lot less money upfront.
If you want to make your hobby pay for itself, breed feeder rodents and market them to reptile keepers.

If you want to take thousands of dollars and speculate on ball python morphs, knowing you could lose it all, but willing to take the chance of hitting it big and producing some amazingly rare beautiful animals, then ball python breeding is for you.



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[Godzilla78]

I may have two out of 3 but I am not a big name, I still have people thinking I have been doing this for 2 to 3 years or that never heard of me.....which I am fine with because I do not do this to be famous, just to be able to fulfill my expensive taste in snakes.

You are a highly respected, knowledgeable, experienced and successful breeder to the people that do know of you...


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