After buying my second BP I know I may not be the authority on this but this is a free country so I have the right to voice my opinion (within reason). I think I prefer dealing with small time breeder more than big time breeders. It has been my experience that they seem to do a much better job of answering the phone, returning emails, and they seem to be less strict about prices and will work with you.

This stems from my most recent experience looking for a nice female pastel. I tried contacting a certain big time breeder in SE michigan area multiple times and found it extremely difficult to get a hold of him. I called his business once a day for about a week straight and not a single time did someone answer the phone. I left several voicemail messages and no one called me back. I had to message him on myspace before I ever heard anything from him. He said they had one female pastel left and I asked him to send me a picture to my email address and he never sent it. When I finally did an email from him it was a response to something I filled out on his contact me page the first time I every visited his website. By then he said they were out of female pastels.

I continued my search and was able to get what I was looking for from a small time breeder in cali. Would have preffered to have purchased locally in michigan but we will see how delivery goes later this week. My communication with this breeder was excellent and she sent me several picture of the snake along with a pic of the mother.

Here are definitions of Small time and Big time:

Small time= Breeding snake is not their main source of income or it is part of another business that they own. They take care of all of their snake or at most have one other person helping them. They usually have a snake room in their house and not huge facility.

Big time= breeding snakes are there only source of income (not including those who have retired from other jobs). Have a staff of 4 or more people. Have Huge breeding facilities the size of a small department store.

So what type of breeder do you prefer to deal with?