Importing Ball Pythons?

[Spiderfly]

Hey all. I'm looking into a large purchase of around $3000 in ball pythons from a US breeder. What I didn't realize is that ball pythons are on CITES. I'm in Canada by the way.

Now my question is, does anyone know the channels you have to go through to import these snakes? I want to do everything properly, by the book. And I don't think the breeder himself is overly willing to help out. But if I can do the leg work I'm willing. Or does anyone know of anybody else that is willing to get the snakes across the border for me?

Thanks in advance!

[munding]

why dont you just buy them from mark mandic or corey woods?

[Stewart_Reptiles]

The breeder will take care of all the paperwork, which sometimes can take a while due to the government.

[Somed00d]

like munding said there are many canadian breeders that likely have the same snakes and i know many breeders prices are in line with US prices. To get cites snakes into canada from US there is about a 6 month wait for permits and will cost you an extra$300-400 bucks. on top of that if the breeder doesn't do it already you will likely not have a good experience at least if your going to do cross border deal with a large breeder that ships to canada.

also the snakes will have to be inspected by US Fish and Wildlife.

[Spiderfly]

Yeah I've been looking around for the past few days. Only a few months ago Canadian breeders prices were almost double on some morphs. And now it seems as if they've come down a bit which more than makes up for CITES/exchange/shipping etc.

So I'm blocking out an email to send to a couple different breeders now! Thanks everyone