Does breeding pay the bills?

[pbenner]

More "small scale" breeders fail than succeed. This is why you see collections coming up for sale so frequently. It's a HUGE investment just to get into breeding, not to mention the increase in food that is hard to get in some places when your snakes are young.

I put a lot of thought into the planning of this, and I made a few decisions that I've VERY happy to have made.

1) I breed all my own feeder rats. I've got (12) breeding tubs and (3) grow out bins that I use to maintain a steady supply of rats for my collection. We're working towards (48) breeding females across all the bins, but until that point, we're selectively holding back female rats. Understand that I bought pet quality rats and breed for Temperament as well as appearance with the rats, so on top of providing feeders to locals, I also sell some of my prettier rats with amazing temperaments to pet homes locally. The people buying Feeders at this time are paying for all the food I need for the rats + a little profit, so I feed my 15 snakes for $0 per month.

2) Timing Considerations. You really should have your entire setup ready to go that encompasses "Laying to Sale" empty and ready to go in advance of putting a male and female in the same tub. Your Incubator should be stable and cycled, you need to have 125% of the space for total average clutches for females, etc etc. For me, this means I need to have space for (6) clutches in every stage at any given point. My incubator will hold 12 boxes of eggs, the rack I'm buying for babies will hold a substantial number of tubs, I'm making sure that I have tubs for hatchlings to go into as groups pre-shed. All of this rack space will sit empty when there aren't hatchlings.

3) Sales - How are you going to handle sales? Are you going to try to do local shows? What do these shows cost? How to do you display? How do you provide comfort for your animals at the show? Sales Displays are not cheap. Lighting is not cheap. Show space is not cheap, plus you'll want power. Facebook is no longer an option. MorphMarket accounts are $300/year if you're listing more than 2 animals.

4) Target Market - The animals you're producing, do you have a market for them? Remember that everyone and their cousin is breeding single and double gene snakes to who laid the chunk. Most of these snakes are bought by kids and families with no clue and left to die. Can't tell you how many death sentences I saw at the show this weekend.

There are literally a TON of expenses just getting off the ground with breeding. You'll need to produce a large number of snakes to even break even on the costs. One decent clutch might get you there if you have buyers.

In the long run, if you're not going to make a run at being a wholly serious about it, a hobby breeder probably spends more than he or she brings in...