Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I'm new to the business... so asking this about wholesale buyers. Sometimes I see their ads in the classified, stating that they will buy your lots of baby boas. Has anyone sold to these wholesalers? Do you think it's a good thing to do? (I'm wondering do the boas just go to the pet stores as fodder for amateur snake killers?) Is this a good way to sell off your normals or neonates you can't sell otherwise? would you do it? Why or why not.

Donna
1.0 Chihuahua mix
2.0 Cockatiels
1.1 Boa constrictors
0.4 Andalusian horses
0.1 Clydesdale/paint horse

Donna,
....I think this is an excellent topic for discussion. I do not sell Boa Constrictors but I do sell Rainbow Boas. I sell many of them one or two at a time to people who seem to be enthusiastic and knowledgeable and I wholesale a bunch of them. What I have noticed is that people who seem to be knowledgeable and enthusiastic here on the forums often are not posting and in many cases not even keeping snakes as soon as a year after they have had a big presence here on the forums. Selling wholesale and having some of your snakes go to petstores is perhaps not any worse for them in the long run. BTW, many of the snakes sold at wholesale do go to excellent brick and mortar and internet reptile stores.
....Snakes are prolific animals. They reproduce at a fairly young age and have relatively large litters. In the wild this is necessary because so few of them do make it to an age and size where they can reproduce. I am sure that some of the snakes I sell go to people who see them and just have to have the pretty snake but never learn enough to properly care for them and do kill them. I try to look on the bright side and consider the fact that my captive born baby snakes have an enormously better chance of living a long productive life than if they had been born in the wild.
....When I first started keeping Rainbow Boas there were many more of them available as wild caught animals than were available as captive born animals. Over the years that difference has completely reversed. Today the majority of Rainbow Boas sold in the USA were born here. The CITES import export data also indicates that the number of baby Rainbow Boas produced here in the USA and then exported to other countries is growing. We may soon reach the point where the US exports more Rainbow Boas than it imports. We breeders are taking some pressure off the demand to take them from the wild and we should be proud of that. Of course if we could be sure that all of our baby snakes went to the right people we could be even more proud of our accomplishments.
....There is another aspect to consider. When we bought or captured our first wild snake we each personally added to the pressure to collect them from the wild. We have a responsibilty to try to produce enough captive born snakes to offset that continuing economic pressure to collect them from the wild.
Jeff

>>I'm new to the business... so asking this about wholesale buyers. Sometimes I see their ads in the classified, stating that they will buy your lots of baby boas. Has anyone sold to these wholesalers? Do you think it's a good thing to do? (I'm wondering do the boas just go to the pet stores as fodder for amateur snake killers?) Is this a good way to sell off your normals or neonates you can't sell otherwise? would you do it? Why or why not.
>>
>>Donna
>>1.0 Chihuahua mix
>>2.0 Cockatiels
>>1.1 Boa constrictors
>>0.4 Andalusian horses
>>0.1 Clydesdale/paint horse

LOL... you gonna open up a big can of worms with this one. But seriously, any product or service has a wholesale and retail value and yes, that includes animals. Your statement , "I'm new to the business" , put's a focus on the rules of supply and demand and everything good and bad that goes along with those rules.

~~

I'm interested in learning more about how the wholesale business works - or how the buying of large lots of neonate snakes works...and thought this forum would be a good place to start. There is plenty of discussion about new people getting in, about the contrast between big name breeders and new people unknowns...etc etc. But haven't seen much about selling to wholesalers. Just their ads once in a while.

I purchased my first boa about a year and a half ago. (I've been raising/selling/breeding/advertising exotic horses for over 10 years). So buying/selling animals is not new to me - but certain facets of this reptile business are still a mystery. I think you need to learn as much as you can about the industry as a whole in order to be successful.

A good point was made about how domestically-bred snakes enjoy a better chance at survival than wild-born snakes. But that still doesn't make it right to over-breed and flood the market with tons of un-wanted animals. In any animal breeding situation, there is always the question, are we producing too many?

>>I'm interested in learning more about how the wholesale business works - or how the buying of large lots of neonate snakes works...and thought this forum would be a good place to start. There is plenty of discussion about new people getting in, about the contrast between big name breeders and new people unknowns...etc etc. But haven't seen much about selling to wholesalers. Just their ads once in a while.
>>
>>I purchased my first boa about a year and a half ago. (I've been raising/selling/breeding/advertising exotic horses for over 10 years). So buying/selling animals is not new to me - but certain facets of this reptile business are still a mystery. I think you need to learn as much as you can about the industry as a whole in order to be successful.
>>
>>A good point was made about how domestically-bred snakes enjoy a better chance at survival than wild-born snakes. But that still doesn't make it right to over-breed and flood the market with tons of un-wanted animals. In any animal breeding situation, there is always the question, are we producing too many?

Donna,
...It seems to me that we are not producing too many until there are enough of them available at low enough prices that there is no longer a financial incentive to collect them from the wild. I admit to being biased about this but I think that a living specimen in the wild has much greater intrinsic value than any captive born animal we produce. If breeders can produce enough animals that there is no longer a need to collect them from the wild then they have done a good thing. The fact that some of their captive born animals will die is not as important as increasing the probability that wild populations will survive. I do realize that the survival of wild populations is much more seriously effected by man and his land use than our captive breeding.
...I have owned (bought them for my daughters actually) horses and I imagine for a horse breeder it would be unthinkable to consider that an animal you produced would be mistreated but it does happen. With snakes which are much more prolific and usually much lower priced the probability of having one of them mistreated is much higher though. It seems to me that the buying and selling of snakes is much less complicated than the horse business. If you want to learn about the reptile business you could go to one of the larger reptile shows and talk to reptile dealers there. Afterwards you could do "research" about them here on the internet and get a very good idea about which ones you would want to deal with. IMO the very best way to sell snakes is to get your own table at one or more of the bigger shows and sell face to face to customers. You can usually get a much better idea about people that way than through the internet. If you priced your animals low enough you could sell all of them that you could produce at one or two of the bigger shows. If you live close enough to one of the wholesale dealers you could probably talk to them and arrange to visit their facility and could then get a very good idea about whether they are the ones you want to deal with.
...We do need more shouting and name calling in this thread LOL.
Jeff

>>>>I'm interested in learning more about how the wholesale business works - or how the buying of large lots of neonate snakes works...and thought this forum would be a good place to start. There is plenty of discussion about new people getting in, about the contrast between big name breeders and new people unknowns...etc etc. But haven't seen much about selling to wholesalers. Just their ads once in a while.
>>>>
>>>>I purchased my first boa about a year and a half ago. (I've been raising/selling/breeding/advertising exotic horses for over 10 years). So buying/selling animals is not new to me - but certain facets of this reptile business are still a mystery. I think you need to learn as much as you can about the industry as a whole in order to be successful.
>>>>
>>>>A good point was made about how domestically-bred snakes enjoy a better chance at survival than wild-born snakes. But that still doesn't make it right to over-breed and flood the market with tons of un-wanted animals. In any animal breeding situation, there is always the question, are we producing too many?