Jeremy,



Your post makes a ton of sense. To me, when you obtain more and more snakes, and start breeding them annually, as time goes on, and the business aspect naturally grows as well, with selling babies, the chance of that feeling you are describing not being there as much can drastically increase. It is due to the amount of time we have ( limited ), pertaining to keeping, breeding, and enjoying our snakes, while having to deal with life, and all the aspects of it, such as work, paying bills, family, etc..



For some, just keeping snakes and not breeding as much or at all is the best way to go. For others, breeding yearly can be still enjoyable and succesfull, but like you said, the business aspect can get weary, along with the stress of maintaining everything in a healthy way and dealing with the responsibilities of it all.



I decided to get out of breeding back in 1997, and to just focus on collecting snakes I could not live without. I had been breeding CA kings, pueblan milks, sinaloan milks, corns, and speckled kings, and even though I had a complete blast doing it, and was successful in selling the babies, I knew that there were so many snakes out there that I would want to own, and not necessarily need a pair to do so, and I also did not want my collection to grow beyond a reasonable means, so I just decided to stop breeding and collect fine specimens.



To this day, I enjoy doing so, and for myself, I enjoy the hobby more than I ever have.



And like you said Jeremy, do we ever sit down to experience that feeling like we did when we first got into snakes as kids? Are we able to still have those feelings? Great question to ask ourselves!



If we struggle to have that feeling, and it does not come naturally for us, then maybe we have too much on our plate. We should always have that feeling, IMO. For myself, discontinuing buying pairs of snakes all of the time, so that my collection greatly increased, helped me to still obtain those feelings, and to make owning the snakes as enjoyable as possible and not making it feel like WORK, like it can get. I know. I have seen that with many people in this hobby.



To myself and many others I know, that is the point of it all. How awesome is it to own these fine animals?
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Genesis 1:1

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