Let me state some facts.........

#1-There are no 800,00 ball pythons bieng imported.(Numbers range from 40-55,000-u.s.

#2 The african goverments have taken the care to only allow 2,000 ball pythons per shipment per day. per day doesnt happen. It is more like shipper ships once or twice per week.

#3 2/3 of these snakes are bought by gourmet rodent, mark bell, and others who set them up for the length of the year. They have contracts with petco and petsmart to sell them ball pythons among other animals they breed themselves. I have personally seen Gourmet Rodent buyy up to 18,000 at one shop. A buddy of mine has been to their facility and every single ball python is in its own tupperware and is fed once a week.

#4 You have to think this. If ball pythons were more expensive that would mean tens of thousands would be left to die in africa as why would importers import them if there are less buyers?? The cheap price facilitates quicker sales and thus the poor balls dont sit in africa to die. Plus supply exceeds demand most of the time except in the very beggining. Why do you think the price goes down by right about now? Ball Pythons in africa are about 4.00ea right now. The longer they sit there the health declines and more babies die. If they were even cheaper it would be great as more and more would be shipped out with more frequency thus reducing the deaths over in africa. I personally went through about 8,000 ball pythons this year. In all the shipments I could only recall seeing about 30 doa's. Out of the thirty 24 were runts which by natural selection probably would have died anyways. The biggest shipment I went through was 1,800 this year(beacuse of the reduction in numbers allowed per day) and there were no doas in that batch.

#5 Alot of people have the view that importers are banking millions off baby ball pythons, when in fact rarely do they make more than 2.00ea with the average only making .50cents to a dollar. The money is in feeding them. That is why lots and lots of people are holding them back till november december and get 25-35.00ea for them then. You cannot hold 2,000 baby balls stuffed in tanks together if your gonna feed them and have a high quality animal that needs to last till the no baby ball season. That takes time, effort, and money to do that. You have overhead(employees, mice, shavings, tupperare, racks, electricity, etc) to house ball pythons in number. You cannot feed 2,00 baby balls by throwing mice in a tank. It doesnt happen contrary to what anyone might say, it just doesnt.



I have for this year set aside 300 baby ball pythons. All are normal, all are fed once a week, all will be sold for 25-35 bucks..the later it gets the more expensive they get.

It is very easy if you have the time, employees(gourmet rodent has 50 of them!), and the space(they have warehouses full fo balls and other animals they personally breed).

After that it is in fact very easy to take care of 1,000 baby balls. In fact Gourmet rodent thius year is rumored to have bought over 25,000 baby balls. Now once petco has them, thats a different story!

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