making money from pythons

[billye1982]

So I have been reading a lot of different posts over the last sveral weeks and the theme seems to be that this is a hobby, and you will be lucky to break even by breeding ball pythons. Maybe I have not done enough research, but I dont see how that is possible, if a person makes wise decesions on the animals he (or she) purchases, profit should be made after the first year or two. For example, I bought 2 racks on craigslist, a 3000 gram normal female, and a breeder spider male for less than $600. I also bought 1.1 pieds and .2 het pieds, paid way more for these 4, but around $2500. One of the hets can be bred this year, so my pied project is a little ways off, but I can pick up a .1 breeder pastel for around $600 (I think) and sell two clutches of spiders, pastels, and possibly bees early next year and pay for everything (excluding pieds, I know that will take a while to pay for).

On another note, I enjoy these snakes very much, it is not just a dollar sign to me, I have a full time job, make good money, and have some disposable income. I just started a rat colony so I know I will be buying them from the store when I need them though, so my only costs from here out is rat food, an occasional rat, and electric right? I know there are possible vet visits, and clutches that dont happen, but it all seems pretty idiot proof to me? Maybe that makes me the idiot , anyway, just wanted to see what everyones thoughts were

[Adam Chandler]

I would highly recommend reading this article by Colin Weaver. It is a very well written artical about costs and profits in the BP business. http://ballpythonbreeder.com/2010/04...thon-breeding/

[kitedemon]

Time, you forgot the time. So 2 hours a week cleaning feeding ect. 104 hours of labour maybe more. Say ten animals a clutch, so spiders, say you get lucky and have 7 spiders at 300$ each and can sell them all reasonably quickly. The costs of power and food for the breeders for a year is 200$ The normals you have are basically a loss you make nothing on them by the time you can sell them at 40 bucks they have cost you close to that. 1400 - 200=1200 ignoring the cost of the initial investment and materials you are making 11.54 an hour. That is conservative if you expense 30% capital a year it is now 9.81 an hour, that is basically minimum wage where I live. That is just the spider and normal and a capital of 600.

A friend and breeder where I live took 9 years to break even and that is not counting an hourly wage at all. The next kicker is sooner or later if you keep expending you will need more time than you have, and that means expand again and give up your day job or stay small and not really pay your self. It can be done but not as easily as it seems.

[JNballs]

Hi,

in my opinion making money out of breeding only is possible with some start up capital, to buy expensive morphs with "future". I dont`think its possible to break even if someone starts for example with some 2010 Pastels, Spiders,...
The prices for these and alos combos out of them are falling much too fast.
On the other side, if you maybe buy an Toffee, and work on combos with it, there will be maybe a profit in 6-7 years, when you have the first clutches of the second generation.

[PitOnTheProwl]

Not to mention, if you have any hold-back females, you are talking 2 to 3 years of upkeep before they are breeding ready

[NewParadigms]

The article linked to was an interesting read, but I see some fundamental problems with the calculations used to come up with the eventual profitability. The main reason why the venture proved to lose money was due to the decline in value of the original snakes. Obviously we all know that our morphs will drop in value, however, he specifically states that the NexGen animal he's using in the plan is a theoretical Recessive morph. This morph drops in value from 2500 to 100 in 6 years. Sorry, don't buy that for a recessive gene animal. How long has pied been around, 13 years? You see any $100 pieds at your local show. What about albino, they've been around for a damn long time, still around $400. I'm not saying they aren't going to decline in value, but assuming that every morph will drop by half each year until being near the price of a normal seems extreme. If you use all of the same figures, but assume that the animals drop in value by 40% each year until getting around $500 then dropping 25% each year, which seems to be a more accurate representation of recessives (though still a more aggressive decline than has been historically demonstrated by the popular recessive morphs) then it actually shows a slight profit overall. Not to mention this plan assumes that at no point will the breeder ever attempt to introduce double gene morphs, which greatly increases the pricing, especially with recessive gene animals. Who breeds only one morph endlessly without introducing other combinations?

[Alex.B]

food, most people forget how much these things cost to keep alive a 4$ rat a week for an adult adds up when you have more then one.

[98bcobra]

food, most people forget how much these things cost to keep alive a 4$ rat a week for an adult adds up when you have more then one.

If your breeding or have over 10 snakes you should really breed feeders. Yes it cost you money to get that set up (I built a 20 bin Rack that cost around $300) but in the long run it is WAY cheaper than buying feeders from a store. I have 10 snakes say I payed $40 a week to feed them thats $160 a month were it only cost me $40 in food every couple of months and Bedding cost next to nothing and water the same. Maybe a total of $60 every couple of months and that is with 8 colonies of 1.3 or 1.4 rats.

Not to mention when the rats get to big I use them as breeder or sell them to people with bigger snakes/or want pet rats. And that goes toward more food/bedding.

[Dave Green]

It can be done...

[Twisted Reptiles]

food, most people forget how much these things cost to keep alive a 4$ rat a week for an adult adds up when you have more then one.

If you're in it for the profit at all what so ever, you're not paying $4 a rat. You're either buying in large quantities at wholesale pricing or you're breeding your own. Neither of these options come anywhere close to $4 a head.