Breeding start up issues , Housing , wife etc

[Daigga]

I would work on convincing your wife to let you use a spare bedroom. Outside temps aren't steady enough for a breeding setup, and you're going to throw a lot of money at building a proper area in your garage.

As mentioned, breeding for extra income is going to take a while to see any return. Some factors to consider; Breeding size animals come with a hefty premium, even normal females of breeding size are hard to find for less than 100$ (normals and het adults are also likely to be all you'll find as far as breeding-sized females, as most breeders don't give up their girls easily, with the possible exceptions of pins, pastels, and spiders). You can find anything you want as a hatchling for fair prices, of course, but it'll be between 3 and 5 years before your girls are up to weight. You can occupy that time by purchasing those ready-to-go females and a yearling male, which are fairly common, but even having two snakes ready to produce eggs, you'll need to factor in quarantine time (you don't want to build a collection only to watch it come down with parasites, do you?), and the lengthy process of the female actually ovulating and laying, which she very well may decide not to do (best laid plans and all that). Besides time, there's of course the cost of the enclosures (I build a nice 7 slot rack for around 200), The cost of materials (bedding, thermometers, thermostats, scales, cleaners, little things you don't think about until you realize you don't have them), the cost of feeding (you can buy bulk frozen or raise food yourself, which is surprisingly pricey to start up but pretty cheap to maintain), and of course the cost of the snakes themselves (doesn't have to be too much, I have 8 snakes in my group and I didn't pay more than 100 for any snake before shipping).

Love of the animals should be your first reason for getting into breeding. If you're willing to spend the time and money and adjust to the learning curve, I'm sure you'll see a profit eventually, but I wouldn't count on extra income right away. I recommend getting your wife involved and interested; show her what your wanting to do, ask for her input (and value it!), and make her feel like part of what your doing (but don't ask her to help you clean, as this is counter-productive). I've taken to letting my husband name the snakes, which makes him more involved and therefore interested in what I'm doing upstairs.