I kept reptiles about 20 years before I had any interest in breeding. For me it was another aspect of husbandry I never delved into until one day deciding to give it a shot. Nowadays you see a lot more people coming fresh to the hobby with the sole purpose of producing offspring. I personally sell more pairs and groups of snakes than I do single animals. Heck, even with the singles everyone seems to be after a specific sex because they're planning on breeding. I don't believe I've ever sold a snake where the buyer wasn't interested in the sex, or asked about it as an afterthought. I only know why I breed snakes: it's darn interesting, and fun, and I can make a bit of extra money to offset keeper costs. There does seem to be a good portion of people getting into breeding with tunnel vision for the dollar signs, and it's not entirely their fault. I'm sure for most it starts with at least a passing interest/fascination but then they see such gimmicky sales slogans as "make your money back in 1 clutch".. It was definitely sellers who started that whole line of reasoning and it kind of snowballed. Now everyone in the hobby is an aspiring reptile breeder. I'm not saying it's a bad thing to be per se, just something that deserves considerable thought and planning if you're going to do it right, and do right by the animals. I see a lot of people trying to run with it before they're even crawling, let alone walking.
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