Sweet Deals on Other People's Problems

[ColinWeaver]

Pull any breeder aside and they will tell you that there is no better way to build an excellent reptile collection than to produce your own babies and raise them. The problem is that it usually takes forever to build a collection worthy of note when you do it this way. Producing new morphs of your own is an incredibly gratifying accomplishment, though. It's a big part of the reason that so many of us are in this business. Pretty much every breeder holds back a few animals each year but it's often a tough call to to determine which ones and how many to set aside. Producing something cool and deciding to keep it means your pocket is ultimately missing some cash. Sell it and your collection is not as cool the following year. It's a constant battle. Unless you are financially well-to-do from other sources you do, at some point, have to take the money. But that point is different for each of us. People who know me know that I am a notorious ball python hoarder. I hold back a lot of production each year. It is an addiction for which I am unable to find a cure.

The next best way to build a great ball python collection is to buy babies from other breeders and raise them. Other people always have something you don't and there are tons of animals out there just dying to fit perfectly into your collection. Bring your wallet (or purse, as the case may be) and be prepared to spend. Building a nice, high-end ball python collection is not for the financially feint of heart. Buying a baby pastel genetic stripe is definitely faster than taking the six or so years it would take you to make them from scratch for yourself. The premium you pay on such an impressive animal is, in part, compensation for the fact that the person from whom you are buying the animal has already paid the six-year price to produce it. That investment of time and the risks associated with it are worth money. And we all must pay for it. Now that you have this wonderful animal in your collection you are still stuck waiting for it to grow up. If you're lucky you can get your male up to breeding size in less than a year. Females are going to take no less than 18 months, most likely 24-36 months before you'll be able to do anything with them. Once again you have to hurry up and wait for your collection get to the next level.

Being patient sure is hard sometimes...

Don't want to raise babies? Want a shorter path to being a baller in the ball python business? Simple enough: buy adults or subabults from someone. That shaves the time down to less than a year in many cases. Or does it? Before you drop cash on an adult ball python you need to seriously ask yourself why the person is selling it. There are many legit reasons, of course. But a huge number of ball python adults that get sold are animals that have problems of some sort. I'm not suggesting that they are sick, though. The problems I'm speaking of are more subtle. When you buy these adults you may be unknowingly paying someone else for their problem.

What are some of the legitimate reasons that adult ball pythons get sold?:

1. The breeder is decreasing the size of his/her collection. This is often done because large collections are very expensive and very time consuming to maintain. Scaling back from 1,000 breeder females to 750 means that there are going to be 250 perfectly good girls coming into the marketplace. It is, however, almost an industry standard that these girls get dumped into the marketplace shortly after laying eggs. This means their weight is down greatly from its norm and if you don't get them early enough in the season you are going to be hard pressed to get them to lay eggs again the following season. If someone sells you a 2,100 gram het pied female you might be thinking, "Sweet!". But what you don't know is that she weighed 3,000 grams 5 months ago, laid eggs a month ago and has only had 2 meals since laying. Females that were 3,000 grams last year aren't often going to lay eggs the following year when you only get them back to 2,700 grams. The seller of the animal is not obligated to tell you this, of course. It would be nice if they did rather than letting you have unrealistic expectations for the coming season.
2. The seller is having some sort of financial crisis/hardship. They don't want to sell the animal but they need money for some imminent need. You can often get some nice animals this way. But keep in mind that when the going gets tough breeders aren't going to go through their collection and pull out the best animals to sell. They are going to pull those that were not quite as good as the others. Maybe they are often reluctant feeders or have laid eggs each year for the past three years. The chances of going (laying eggs) four years in a row are lower than they are for going three years in a row, aren't they? The first adults someone is going to sell are going to be the least cool their collection has to offer. Don't get me wrong, though. This won't always be bad. Selling the worst animals in an awesome collection may still mean that you are getting some exceptional creatures.
3. The animals have been upgraded. I have an outstanding male spider het albino that I raised from a baby. He is a fantastic feeder, a great breeder and doesn't have even the slightest head wobble that many spiders often have. He aggressively courts and breeds multiple females each year and has produced several albino spiders for me. I held back the first albino spiders males I produced, of course. They are now adults. Why do I need a spider het albino when I have multiples of the real deal? I don't. So it's time to offer him for sale, let him go to work for someone else. I'm not getting rid of a problem animal. Quite the contrary. He is a rockstar but my collection has moved on. These are nice animals to find when they come along.
4. Proven hets are being replaced with the homozygous form. A breeder may have 50 adult albino het females. It makes sense to replace them with albino females (at the very least). Once the breeder has raised up the replacement albinos he/she will often look to sell the hets. He is managing the size of his collection to a consistent and stable size while increasing its genetic quality. There is absolutely nothing wrong with the albino het females; they were good enough to be the breeders for several years but now its time for them to move on to make room for a new crop of albino females. While these are good animals to add to you collection be sure to keep in mind that they are likely to only hit the market just after laying eggs (as discussed earlier).
5. A breeder bought an entire collection from another breeder who is getting out of the hobby and they are liquidating it to make money or they are getting rid of the animals that they don't want to add to their own collection. This happens a lot. Like many business ventures, many wanna-be breeders just don't make it. A large number of people get big into reptile husbandry with dreams of an easy and large payday. And they are frequently ready to get out of the business in less than two years. Because of this, entire collections get bought and sold on a regular basis. I have purchased entire collections more than once. When I do it I usually have my eye on a few choice animals in the collection and sell off everything else at a profit. Doing so helps to offset the cost of the animals I want to keep. In many circumstances you reclaim all (or more) of you investment and still have the animals you wanted to keep. Having it work out this way is not a slam dunk, though. Collection flipping requires a little bit of skill and is logistically a lot of work. Not everybody is good at it. I've seen people get completely burned doing it. I have made my share of mistakes, too.

What about the illegitimate and hidden reasons many adult ball pythons get sold?

1. The snake is a poor feeder. Maybe it only eats once per month. Better still, maybe it only eats mice. A 2,500 gram female ball python will need to eat mice like Pez in order to get them to a good weight for breeding. One medium rat can easily was as much as 6-8 adult mice. Not only is it a chore to feed that many food items it is also comparatively expensive. Eight mice will cost you about $4 on the low end. A single medium rat is more in the $1.75 range (depending on how you get supplied). Mouse feeders will more than double your food cost in addition to the time and energy spent. Heaven help you if you are buying your food items from a pet store.
2. It prefers gerbils or African soft-furred mice. Just what you need; a snake on a special diet. Not only do gerbils and ASF mice tend to be quite a bit more expensive they are both notoriously more aggressive than typical lab rats (and mice). There is a stronger need to chaperone the feeding event when the predator is at increased risk of becoming the prey.
3. She's a 3,000 gram girl, nice and big. She has laid eggs two out of the last three years. Sound good, right? Problem is she only laid 4 eggs each year. Big girls who don't lay lot of eggs get farmed out quick. They are genetically weak and have a low return on investment. The best decision is to move them out and replace them with new animals that produce larger clutches. It's simple math on behalf of the breeder.
4. A beautiful adult male comes up for sale. He appears to be a great shortcut to breeding success. The only problem is that he's a crappy breeder. He shows absolutely no interest in females. I know several breeders who have gone through multiple males before they found one that was a good breeder. What happened to the seemingly gay males? They disappeared into the collection of some other aspiring breeder, of course. I can guarantee you that the ad listing them for sale didn't read, "Beautiful Adult Male Pastel Lesser - Crappy Breeder". How can you tell the difference between this male and the great breeder who is being replaced by a better animal? You can't. The only thing you can do is trust the seller.
5. It's stolen. I'm always amazed how many ball pythons get stolen. They get stolen at trade shows and they get stolen right out of people's collections. It happens with some regularity. I suppose there may be nothing physically wrong with the animal; you're just getting it at the expense of someone else. You have no way of knowing this, of course. At trade shows where I am a vendor I am often offered animals for oddly low prices. I know what the animals sold for two years ago and now they are offering me what appears to be a healthy animal for a price that is way below what they would have paid for it and certainly less than it is currently worth. How can I not wonder about its origins? Wouldn't you? If I buy it and post if for sale on-line am I going to get an email from someone telling me that the snake was stolen from them? That has never happened to me but it has happened to others. In an industry that is largely based on personal reputations I'd like to avoid ever being wrapped up in a situation like that.

The moral of the story is that there is no substitute for starting with babies, investing the time and earning good results with quality animals. The temptation to take the short path and buy adults is too much for speculative breeders to avoid. Unless you personally know the seller and have detailed and accurate knowledge about the origins of the animal you are doing little more than buying a scratcher lottery ticket when you decide to buy and adult ball python. You might win big. You may also get screwed and come to realize that you actually paid someone to take their problem off their hands. Fortunately, I think it's true that you won't lose the majority of the time. Most ball pythons are perfectly good animals. All I suggest is that you take the time to question and prod. Does the story being offered with the sale make sense? Can you handle the result of the animal not being a producer for you? If so, speculate your heart out. If not ...buy babies and invest the time.

Cheers,

Colin Weaver

[771subliminal]

great post man

[Jay_Bunny]

Great post!

[Mitch21]

ALWAYS enjoy reading your posts Colin!

[rabernet]

It doesn't surprise me that this is a post worth stickying (and I have done so).

Great post Colin - I always look forward to your insightful posts!

[MarkieJ]

Thank you for sharing your knowledge and experience. There is so many things that go into this hobby/business that a person can miss out/get burned on. Only through the sharing of our experiences and the willingness of big breeders to share their knowledge, can myself and others make better decisions. Once again thank you Mr. Weaver!

[West Coast Jungle]

Great post Colin, I have been in several categories you posted. I have bought collections, gotten great deals on missexed and even stolen animals without my knowledge. Now I raise babies and enjoy the ride. I'm in no hurry to buy some elses bad deal/karma. We see posts all day about how cheap some deals are but not many about the crappy experiences the folks who have been around have dealt with from said "great deals".

My dad told me when I was a young boy, you get nothing for nothing in this world. Yeah bargains come around sometimes but more times than less, if it isn't someone you know, you probably inherited somebody elses problem.

[WingedWolfPsion]

Well...I have to say I don't agree. If you are running a business, and not just a hobby, it doesn't pay to raise up hatchlings until you're well established down the road. Adult females produce for you immediately, allowing you to expand your business sooner. Holding back a few--sure, of course. But selling most, and using the money to buy adults, pays off quick. Yes, there are risks in it, but they don't outweigh the gains, particularly if you're buying larger numbers of animals each year.

Get a girl who lays 4 egg clutches? Oh, well, replace her the following season. Maybe you'll get less than you paid for her, but at least her clutch will have you breaking even. Male is a poor breeder? That's too bad, pair his girls with your other males, and replace him later. Or maybe he just needed a year off, or some more profound stimulus to get him going. (I have yet to encounter a male that won't breed--young males that need another year, yes, but not a male that just isn't interested. I'm sure they exist, of course).

Buying adult females, and hatchling males, tends to work out really well in the long run.
Once you're well established, and your few holdbacks from each season are coming to maturity, you have a better idea of what you're working with.

The main problem with buying hatchlings is that you don't REALLY know what you're buying--it may be a good eater, or not--it may lay a lot of eggs, or not. It may breed well, or not. And on top of that, you don't know what it will look like as an adult, because many morphs change dramatically between hatching and adulthood.

You can hold back what you think are the best examples of a morph from what you hatch, but until they mature, you don't know whether you picked right. You still don't know if it will be a good breeder, or how many eggs it will lay if female. It would suck to spend 3 years nurturing a pretty female, and then find out she only lays 3 eggs every 2 years.

If you buy from a reputable person, they will give you feeding records, clutch records, and all the other data on the adults you're buying. I would say that the risk may actually be less than raising your own. If you buy from any random guy at a show, of course, that's not the case.

So, my opinion is there is a place for buying adults, for holding back the best of what you produce, and for occasionally buying promising hatchlings as well. If you have to stick to just one, though, buying adults from reputable breeders will bring a more certain payoff.

[Kevin_Hornby]

2. It prefers gerbils or African soft-furred mice. Just what you need; a snake on a special diet. Not only do gerbils and ASF mice tend to be quite a bit more expensive they are both notoriously more aggressive than typical lab rats (and mice). There is a stronger need to chaperone the feeding event when the predator is at increased risk of becoming the prey.

I can't speak for gerbils, but in my experience of breeding/feeding ASF's they seem to accept the fate of being fed to a snake a lot more than your typical lab rats. Whenever I feed rats I constantly have to babysit and make sure that the rat is not chewing on my snake, whereas with ASF's I can just toss them in and wait til I hear a thump. They don't scream, i've rarely seen them bite the snake, and in general they stay pretty calm and just wait to be eaten. I will freely admit, to people ASF's can and are mean, but in general they fear the snake and more often than not when actually struck, their tongue sticks out and they can't bite even if they wanted to. Now maybe I just have some really nice ASF's but I don't believe what you've posted is fair or accurate to say about them.

[ColinWeaver]

...they seem to accept the fate of being fed to a snake a lot more than your typical lab rats.

Experiences vary. As they often do. Thanks for the input.