To breed or not to breed?

[cinderbird]

This is what a lot of people are going to tell you:

Breed because you love the animals, not because you want the next cash cow.

Remember, these are living animals. They need clean water, clean enclosures, food, etc. Unlike a product that can sit on a shelf for months (or years) without any additional maintenance cost, live animals are very expensive to take care of. People that get into the hobby for the wrong reasons get overwhelmed. They sacrifice things like feeding their animals or cleaning their cages, etc.

Many people are hobby breeders that breed their animals because the love them and want to produce more, have morph animals and want to make combos, etc. And sell them to help offset the cost of keeping them or make some money on the side. The breeders who make breeding animals their business take it on as a huge financial and time investment. I'd guarantee you that most full time breeders spend more than 40 hours a week tending to their animals in one way or another (be it cleaning and feeding, working with rodents, answering emails and sales questions, shipping out animals, etc).

For a lot of it, you get out what you put in. You aren't going to become rich by breeding sub-par examples of single morph animals. Even a lot of the double gene animals have become very affordable. If you want to make money breeding ball pythons you need to spend money first. Even then, while there are a TON of people who want deserts and ultramels in their collection, they aren't willing to pay premium price for them, they'll wait until they come down. If you want to "make money" i suppose that is where you would start. With those rarer morphs and triple gene animals. Of course you'll have to have money to buy those animals.

I think like any other business, it takes solid business plan.