Quote Originally Posted by janeothejungle View Post
Weeeeell. I'm a micro breeder, but here is my take. Quite a few people seem to think it is more prudent to invest 5 or 10K in quantity (ie 10-20 snakes at the low end of the morph spectrum) they seem to reason that producing volume will make up the deficit in having lower end animals. Nothing wrong with that approach, except that you will then always be at the lower end of the spectrum. By the time you get ovulations and eggs and then incubate then raise the little buggers for at least a month, half the year has gone. For me, I started out a few years back with 4 normal females and a lesser male that cost me $4k and was not quite breeding size. SO, lets say 5k total invested. Within a year, that investment, in turn, brought in ~11 wee lessers that were then going for around 2200-2500 each. I held back 2 and let the rest go and then traded up for another single male around $4k, a few more girls and also made back my initial investment. (See where I'm going with this?) I think ultimately, it is a bit of a gamble trying to decide which mid-level morphs to bet on, but you still need to keep an eye on the business end if you want your hobby to at least pay for itself. With that said, the market is also changing as more morphs flood in, so it requires an even keener eye nowadays. Too many in the hobby seem to think you need to build up a large collection and start cranking out offspring, when I think it is almost the opposite. Start small and be good at what you do. Start out with the anticipation of earning $0 for your first year or two (cause lets face it, even if you sell a baby or two it likely barely offsets your food costs). When you get the rhythm, then you start building and working for it.

My .02


Cheers,
Kat
Very very well said