Opinions On Breeding Male Normal BCI (Aberrant) From A Business Standpoint?

[cchardwick]

Since we are talking about this from a business standpoint you need to figure out what your expenses and bottom line are going to be. Let's for example look at the low end snakes at $40 each, depending on what kind of snake it is and how old it is you will get more or less eggs. A boa can have between 10 and 65 young, a ball python from 3 to 11 eggs, and retics up to 90! Let's look at a boa and an average clutch of 25 eggs. If they all hatch and you can sell them at $40 each that's $1,000 per year per female snake. Don't forget to factor in the male as well since he is a non-producer and with boas you may have a significant number of females that don't lay every year.

From that number you have to subtract your feed costs, bedding costs, and if you are doing the work yourself the time is free but if you scale up then you'll have to hire employees and that costs money. Don't forget rent for the building and heat / electricity / trash service / internet. If you are breeding in your basement and doing all the work yourself all of this is basically free besides the bedding and feed (maybe other small things like rubber gloves, trash bags, disinfectant, spray bottles, etc..). Other big expenses will be advertising, and boxing / shipping snakes, booth setups at shows, etc...

A good business person will look at each expense and try to come up with ways to cut costs. For example, I started out buying all my rodents from the pet shop but quickly found it wasn't cost effective for a large collection. So now I raise all my own rodents in an ARS rack system. It was a significant expense up front but saves a lot of time breeding and caring for them and my rats really seem to like the rack system, they are safe and secure and have plenty of water and food and are kept clean and dry. Most people breeding rats are buying wood chips or wood / paper pellets as a substrate. I switched to free shredded paper from work, it cuts my rodent costs in half!

Also, I prefer to use coconut husk substrate for my snakes, but most breeders now are switching over to newspaper or just plain old butcher paper. It takes more time to clean with paper but I imagine the money savings would be huge. But that's not an expense I'm willing to cut, I like the humidity and odor absorbing quality of coconut husk and accept the high price I pay (it reduces the labor cost and that's hard to calculate since I do everything myself). However, I can still cut costs and buy coconut husk by the pallet and cuts my costs by 50%, just have to come up with the initial $1,000 for the pallet! But I figure that pallet would last me three years, so that's a reasonable expense for me.

Even keeping all of that in mind I see some of the big breeders losing money on some of their projects and selling some snakes at a loss. But over all they come out way ahead. Personally I don't think you have to make a profit on every snake you sell, you just need to make enough money to keep the business going.