He should crunch numbers if he hopes for a ROI... It isn't easy.

Let's say there's some crazy odds and you hatch five fireflies from that pairing. They are advertised for about $150-250 each. An incubator, home made, costs about $150. Store bought is $150+, and the least expensive well-made incubator (as opposed to reptibator type styrofoam products) I've found is $425. A nice thermostat to back up the incubator is about $150. Incubation medium, tubs, and various husbandry supplies (clamps, probes, etc.) is about $50. A hatchling rack is about $100 home made, and also needs a thermostat - $130+ for store bought racks. Then there's feeding the hatchlings and possibly not being able to sell them right away or ever, which means 5 rat pinks every 5 days for an indefinite amount of time. $2-5/week. Selling babies that need to be shipped - $10-20 for shipping supplies per hatchling (bags/deli cups, heat packs, styrofoam, using a reptile shipping company...). This doesn't include regular maintenance cleaning supplies like paper towels and disinfectants or expenses like electricity to run the incubator and hatchling rack. We might just break even with the estimated costs above if everything goes well. She may have a small clutch, slug out, or not go at all. If the female becomes egg bound, vet bills will be astronomical. If you get normals or a bunch of pastel males, you're in the red. Low quality hatchlings sell less than high quality hatchlings of the same morph - is the firefly female phenomenal looking? To top it all off, many times the listed price for a snake in ads is not what the snake is sold for, even with high quality examples, so expect lots of hagglers and offers for less than you'd assume they go for.

Don't get me wrong, breeding is super rewarding - just not monetarily rewarding for most.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk