My First Year Breeding Recap and Rant

[MasonC2K]

So last year was my first year breeding. And I was excited. I was initially only going to have 3 clutches tops. But through some unexpected circumstances I ended up with 7. Which yielded over 50 babies.

Now I was super dupers excited every time a snake poked it's head out an egg. Especially the first clutch! I had glorious odds resulting is the 1/32 chance Pewter Albino hitting! I felt like I won the lottery with that one. But once it hits you that you have 50+ new mouths to feed, reality kicks you in the nuts. It was a PITA to feed and clean them all on top of all the adults. And on top of that, some of them wouldn't eat. I can deal with adults not eating. But babies are frustrating! Even with assist feeding some never ate or hardly ate and about 7 died to just not eating enough. It seriously turned from a fun little hobby to overwhelming not fun work.

And on top of that, I learned that hard way that the prices people post, for the most part, are nowhere even near what they will actually sell for. For example, I have a female kingpin still. KS over the months has had equivalent aged and sized Kingpins for anywhere from $700-1400! What kind of absurd range is that?! And my policy was always to undercut the lowest price I saw because I wasn't in this strictly for the money. I just wanted to move them out without being low balled. But that only led to sells twice.

I sold a few through Craigslist oddly enough. About 8 that way.

I really really just lucked out with a chance encounter with a guy who over heard me talking about my babies who ended up buying about 30 of them which put me down to the 10 babies I now have. 8 of which I am for sure keeping.

I have just recently started to feel like this isn't a second job I don't get paid for again. And I am not actually contemplating breeding this year. Just on a much smaller scale.

So if you take anything from this, don't dive head first even if you think you know where the bottom is. The waters can distort the truth.