Reptile & Amphibian Forums

It seems to me that I see way more adult and larger size Ball Pythins available for sale thasn ever before? Maybe if is the time of year, but I dont think so? Why this is I am not sure, but I have a couple ideas about it. Has anyone else noticed this trend? I have been following this since I started noticing it a few months back..interesting.

It's simple-folks have a finite amount of space and time to devote, and are replacing normal breeders with morphs, and single morphs with combos.
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Brad Chambers
WWW.HCU-TX.ORG

The Avalanche has already started-it is too late for the pebbles to vote....

Maybe your seeing a lot of adult breeder snakes that didn't breed this season up for sale.. A lot of people upgrading their collections... Alot of people instead of breeding balls raising them up from hatchlings to sell as adults for a quick profit.. I just think since more people are breeding ball pythons and prices have came down some your seeing more and more of everything available.. All of this is my opinion and not necessarily fact.
Jbugg

Brad is 100% correct. This year I have sold about 25 normal females I replaced with morph females. Eventually I plan ONLY keeping 10 normal female Balls just to prove genetics if need be. It is pointless NOT to continually improve and increase the value of EVERY clutch.....
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Tom Crutchfield
www.tomcrutchfield.com

Tom,
I agree with what you said about improving. The older large clutch females are still valuable. When you breed a killerbee to a normal, 50% are bees. I know this isn't news to you, but when I thought about it like that I decided to make a little extra room for those big girls to stay.

The normal females to prove genetics was an idea I hadn't really considered, thanks.

Mike

Yea Mike, I have one normal that lays 11 eggs every year like clock work. This year I bred her to a Black Pastel Albino and she's NOT going anywhere. That's a given.

These baby Diamonds hatched last week....
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Tom Crutchfield
www.tomcrutchfield.com

Everyone is replacing their normal breeders with morphs, and everyone with single trait morphs are replacing them with double, triple and quadruple morphs...
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"What is man without the beasts?
If all the beasts were gone,
men would die from great loneliness of spirit.
For what happens to the beasts,
soon happens to men.
All things are connected."

-Chief Seattle (Duwamish Tribe)

Hey,

Yes I think I am noticing what you see. What I see is a lot of snakes around 800 to 1000 grams for sale. I am also seeing a lot of small collections for sale. Like around 15 to 20 snakes. I think a lot of people bought snakes and have raised them up for 2 to 3 years now and very little money has been made on them and they panic and sell off their snakes. They thought they would make a ton of money and as we all see now the money is only made by the people that made this hobby what it is today. I am at 16 snakes and in full production mode. I could easily see myself selling off in a year or two if I do not start making some money back or seeing some solid clutches. Look what pastels are doing right now. Even the nice ones are being sold for nothing. If you want to make any serious money you better have a pastel het for something or forget it. The unfortunate part is that even if you have the cool double gene snakes no one has any money to buy them for what they are actually worth. The other thing that is weird is breeders are putting up really nice snakes for a lot lower prices. But what ever their asking price is I offer usually about 100 bucks less and they will not budge. Than after about a month goes by they lower the price to lower than what I actually offered. We definitely need to think about how we negotiate. We really put a lot of emotion into our snakes but need to realize that a sale is a sale. I guess I am lucky to have a great job and I am able to do this as a hobby. I love it and I would be in trouble right now if this was my only source of money. I think people are scared of our government too. Too many bills coming our way to take away the pets we love.

Regards,
Bill

why should they budge off their price? to satisfy you? I don't think so.... These breeders have put in years, sometimes decades into building this hobby and now have to compete with those people that think 16 snakes is full production mode and don't care how much they sell an animal for since they have real jobs to pay bills. The problem is that hobby breeders don't do it for a hobby anymore.... These little breeders used to produce a few clutches a year and wholesale their animals off to larger breeders thus protecting the reptile market. Now-a-days these few clutches get put up on classifieds for wholesale prices to the public which causes the market price to drop. And since the small breeder doesn't need the money or the animals he is able to further drop his prices to out-compete with actual breeders. It's a never-ending circle..... The thing about circles is that eventually if you follow them long enough you get dizzy and jump off and that is why you see alot of small breeders getting out and selling off normal females. This is counter productive if you want to make money as it only costs roughly $50 a year to house and feed a bp female, you can make that over quite a bit even producing pastels....
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Josh & Krysty Hutto
J&K Reptiles

Various Ball Pythons, boas, dogs, cats, fish, an amel tiger retic female, a couple sulcatas and a few other odds and ends.

a BAD dog is MADE not bred, support the American Pit Bull Terrier as the greatest breed of dogs on Earth!!!!!

Josh, Are you serious..? To imply that small hobbyist breeders are in some way responsible for the down turn in the ball python market shows you don't know how markets of supply and demand work. May I suggest you attend Harvard's School of Business and when you graduate you will see the error of your ways. Plus hasn't your argument that a small number of people ruined the BP market been completely rejected by the majority, I think so. Take care and best wishes this breeding season. Andrew

YES I am completely serious. we all know that when one person places an add for some animals at a very low price, people now expect that to be the new market price. this causes the larger breeders to have to lower their prices. If you think this has no influence in the market than you are the one that is blind.
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Josh & Krysty Hutto
J&K Reptiles

Various Ball Pythons, boas, dogs, cats, fish, an amel tiger retic female, a couple sulcatas and a few other odds and ends.

a BAD dog is MADE not bred, support the American Pit Bull Terrier as the greatest breed of dogs on Earth!!!!!

Josh, thanks for the reply and no I'm not blind but I am sincerely touched by your concern for my health. I stand by what I said. Supply and demand, but not amateur/novice breeders posting low ball prices. On a side note I never heard any of the old timers who were doing this decades ago with Burmese Python's crying about the guaranteed yearly decline in the value of their snakes. They new it was all about supply and demand. I guess us old timers possess a little more wisdom than some of the newer generation of breeders. Big shout out to all you fabulous breeders and may your season be bountiful. Take care. Andrew

Josh. First I agree to disagree...As you stated $50 a year for to feed and huse a Ball python female? and you can make more than taht even with a pastel...Wow the prices for bedding and rodent food and even buying rodents at a discounted price adds up to alot more than $50 a year..And where do you see pastel prices this season...? The average clutch for me is 6 eggs...And if you breed a pastel to it you should get 3 say all males this season thats about $150 in snakes..Now you need boxes to ship and the cost of shipping...Its not that feasible to breed low end codom any more..In my opinion...
Kevin Stoltz

Hi,

I am not one of the 16 year old breeders here. I know very few people that have a 1000.00 dollars to spend on anything right now more or less than especially spending it on a ball python. I love when people like you try and make me feel bad for making offers when especially the add saying to make me a reasonable offer. If someone is asking for 1000.00 plus shipping or any reasonable offer and I offer 900 shipped, I think that is a credible offer. The problem is they over price to begin with because who ever sold it to them led them to believe that the longer they kept it and the bigger it got it would be worth more than what they paid. Well unfortunately the only way that is going to happen is HG Wells shows up and takes them back to the year they bought it and lets them put it for sale with the added weight they put on over the last year or two. I bought a full size het albino female in 2008. Do you think I am going to get what I paid for her if I sell her now? Let me answer that...NO. But I never thought I would, so why would I over pay for someones unwanted snakes. And I am really tired of hearing about all the hard work breeders put in. My snakes are the highlight of my day. If I did not have them in my life right now I would have nothing in my life that full fills me anymore than my snakes.

Bill

Yes,
Today's customers are tomorrow's competitors... Even today's competitors. Breeders know that. It is probably the only reason they were ever successful. The number of people spending more than $250 for ball pythons would be pitifully low if not for the potential, and even expectation, that they will raise up these beautiful animals and eventually sell the offspring to justify the extravagance of the original purchase. Big breeders will need to continue bringing cutting edge morphs to the market to continue to be successful or adjust their business model to become a volume producer of common morphs for the pet industry. If I still had all of the breeding females I ever owned, I would be producing hundreds of hatchlings every year, but that's not what I enjoy. I regularly sell off my proven females (and males) as more of my visuals and combo's get up to size.
Paul

blah

One more thing,

Lets see where things are 5 year from now. Unless tragedy occurs in my life I will still be here breeding. I have invested a lot of time in money into a really nice small sized ball python set up. I never got into this to make money. Every time I would say this to anybody in the ball python community they would tell me that is a good thing because you won't make any money. My expectations where to share this awesome hobby with my kids and they absolutely love it as do I. If I can sell my snakes to other upcoming breeders and anyone else looking for an exceptionally healthy snake, than all the "hard work" LOL, will be worth it to me and my family. A day without ball pythons for us will be a day without sunshine.

Bill

Hi,

This post goes out to anyone that bought a lemon blast or a spinner last year. Why do you think they are so much cheaper to buy today? It is certainly not the small breeder because they have not had a chance to breed any out yet. And who is filling petco up? It is not me unless they only need about 0 normals a year from me. The small breeders are the only ones that can afford not to lower their prices. Lets think about it. A breeder with 3000 snakes and a breeder 16 snakes. Who is going to be more pressured to lower their price?

Bill

Bill,

I hope your season is going great.

your comment "Every time I would say this to anybody in the ball python community they would tell me that is a good thing because you won't make any money", what exactly is considered no money from breeding ball pythons? when I read these comments I can not help but wonder what that really means. People do make money from breeding ball pythons.

keep us updated with your clutches and again have a great season.

sincerely, Kyle

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Proud supporter of USARK and Kingsnake.com
“We stand together or we fall apart”

Kyle
www.royalvariations.com

"be safe, be happy and dont let anyone make you afraid"
David Coverdale

Hi,

I know I have not made any money yet? And I know that many people have left breeding ball pythons because they did not make any money either. If I am alone in my feelings on this then please let me apologize right now to anyone I have offended. I would not want anyone thinking this hobby or business venture is not a good one. I love it and anyone that I have dealt with seems to like me. I am a difficult negotiator I know that and I admit that, just ask the guys at repti-racks and ask them what they think of me. But I work very hard for my money and I want to feel like I have done everything in my power to get the best deal possible. I think one of the reasons I am thriving in this is because I have never thought this would become a viable business. I am just hoping to breed killer snakes and hopefully be able to sell them for a fair price and recoup some of the thousands of dollars I have spent over the last two years. Taking care of ball pythons is a really fun hobby for me and my kids and I am really looking forward in getting many nice clutches over the many years ahead. My expectations have been met on every level so far and have no intention leaving this fun hobby any time soon. Although, if I do not get good clutches each year I will definitely stop breeding and sell off most of my snakes and just keep a few of my favorites. I failed this year in getting a clutch, but I did a lot things wrong. And I admit this. This year I should be doing everything right and I think it will pay off for me. The funny thing is everything I am going to be breeding are pretty worthless in today's market but again the money was never the motivation for me in this hobby. The snakes are why I am here. I love them as much my own blood children.

Regards to you, and to anyone else with this passion for balls...

Bill

Bill,

I always enjoy your post and you sound like a great guy. It is true that producing clutches and hatching them will make more money for you than not. Everyone’s collection is different in regards to what they purchased and why and what their goals are. It is also true that if you work hard at it you CAN make money breeding ball pythons.
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Proud supporter of USARK and Kingsnake.com
“We stand together or we fall apart”

Kyle
www.royalvariations.com

"be safe, be happy and dont let anyone make you afraid"
David Coverdale

what i want to know is if anyone is buying the high end morphs right now. how many people have bought a $3500 pastel calico? or a $3000 kingpin? i'm not trying to knock the prices or anything, i just want to know if people are still spending big bucks on morphs.

Hello,

Well I try and not to spend over 1000.00 for any snake. But I would buy a good snake for around 1000.00 right now. I offered a guy the other night 150 less than his asking and he laughed in my face. Well maybe not laughed but did not take my offer and it is still for sale. I will not say how much the price was but I would have taken the price I offered in a heart beat. The expensive snakes in my opinion are going to be hard to sell now because we see how they get dumped out in droves once they get put out in any kind of quantity. Look at pieds and lemon blasts in just one year from early 08 until now. I rest my case. All I know is that I wish I was in this back in the early 90s. Those people are total pioneers and I am blown away on how much information they have put out for people starting out in breeding. Man, talk about money being made. Anyway, just my very minimal opinion. I am in no way really that educated in supply and demand. But if you look at KS on a daily bases you would see how prices have been falling fast. But this morning I went down to clean some tubs and I never get tired of looking at my snakes. They really make me smile, and their is no price you can put on that.

Bill

Recently spent a chunk of cash plus trade for a double-recessive visual. I respect the amount of work it takes to produce such an animal and I don't mind paying for it. There is also a reality in that it probably took less work for me to produce the pieds I sold last year to generate those funds than it took the breeder to produce the double-recessive... See... Customers always come up with a rationale to justify spending thousands!!!
Paul

Customers are competitors. Competitors are customers...
Paul

I spent $30K over the last year. Yellowjackets, chocolate pin, chocolates, pastel lesser, pied females, fire spotnose, etc. It adds up. I finally have a good base of morph females to make buying some key morphs to mix in more appealing. Everyone has their reasons for breeding balls. To me, it's more addictive than crack. Will I make money someday? Maybe, but if so I'll just keep buying nicer balls. My goal is not to make money, it's to have the nicest collection I can manage and produce some animals nobody has ever seen until they are formed in my incubator. Now that's cool.

Scott

Well I'm not buying up the $3K babies - but I'm spending a fair share these past few months to pick up a bunch of those adult morphs to make them $3K babies.
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Tosha
JET Pythons
Toshas Blog

Herp Medicine does not equal a bottle of Baytril - Dr. Scott Stahl

Hey Tosh,

You better hurry I think they are already down to 2.5K. Sorry 2.0K now. Get those eggs in the incubator. When they get down to 1.0K give me a call. LOL.

Bill

It's all good -- ya just gotta prepare for the drop and plan accordingly. At minimum that's thousands of dollars I don't have to spend next season because I'll already have some kick ass offspring to hold back and/or trade. Bout everything I make out of this hobby I put back into it anyway -- keeps the tax bill low.
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Tosha
JET Pythons
Toshas Blog

Herp Medicine does not equal a bottle of Baytril - Dr. Scott Stahl

I've spent around 5k in the past ten months on new balls, including one I've pre paid for and am still waiting for it to hatch. Part of that came from money I made selling 08 offspring, part of it came from me justifying the purchases with "well, this card has a low interest rate on it, and I can't breed it if I don't have it". I could have saved myself some money by buying hets for some of my purchases, but I wanted to have the visual morphs in my collection. I know damn well that their offspring won't be worth what I paid for them-that's just the nature of the beast. But if selling babies pays for a years worth of rats and leaves me a little left over, I feel like I'm coming out ahead.

Hey,

Have you bred or ever thought of breeding your own rats. It is really cool and makes breeding snakes come full circle. It is easy to do and you can sell live rats all day long in your local classifieds. I think it rymes with begs list.... and it pays for all the expenses of breeding rats. Just a thought. Than you are fully self sufficient without hardly any costs.

Bill

I've attempted breeding mice before without much luck. I'd like to try breeding my own rats, but right now I just don't have the room. The other half and I are looking to get a house in the next 2 years or so, so maybe I'll have space to set up a rat colony then.

I say this without trying to sound like a jerk, but you have contridicted yourself multiple times in this one topic. You state that you are not part of the reason for dropping prices than say that you don't care if you make money and just want to help others to come into this hobby. Then you say that if you don't start to make money you will sell off alot of your snakes. This turn around makes no sense to me. My wife and me have spent roughly $50k on ball pythons and do plan on making our money back, not enough to quit our day jobs (we are both RN's) but enough to pay for my habit of keeping and breeding these awesome animals. The cool thing is that I have advertised publicly very little and only have 1 animal left from last year that is being given away to a friend as a favor since he is not working with that morph yet. I could easily put that on the market and make a couple hundred bucks off of it, but why? I could easily drop it $100 less than the market value, but why? I have never sold an animal for less than what I was asking for because my asking prices are fair to me and that is what matters. I do not offer less than asking prices because any snake I'm interested in is a top notch animal and worth every penny people sell them for. I guess the cool thing is that I have an incubator full right now and am looking forward to adding some more very cool animals to the collection this year, and yes, I am still more than willing to spend more than 1k on an animal right now.
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Josh & Krysty Hutto
J&K Reptiles

Various Ball Pythons, boas, dogs, cats, fish, an amel tiger retic female, a couple sulcatas and a few other odds and ends.

a BAD dog is MADE not bred, support the American Pit Bull Terrier as the greatest breed of dogs on Earth!!!!!

Hi,

I have two words for you. Gaylord Focker.

Bill

The only reason I said I would get out of breeding was that is if I could not get consistent clutches. I am not going to take care of 16 snakes each year just so I can have no viable eggs to hatch. 5 to 6 snakes will be plenty for me to enjoy if they are not giving me clutches. I have 16 snakes so I can find out which ones I enjoy. Eventually I want to about 8 to 10 females that really make me happy and about 3 to 5 males that have multiple genes for making really cool morphs. My wife and I make about 200K a year in our jobs. I could care less about what the ball python industry has to offer me financially. I do it because I love it. I have been around reptiles my whole life. I never in my life have looked at an animal as a way to feed my family and believe me I never never never never never will..........Period. Ask anyone that knows me and ask them if I have any intentions other than breeding really nice healthy snakes.

Good luck in getting your 50K back,
Bill

Josh I don't get it. You stated you get whatever dollar amount your asking for your animals. Then why do you complain about people posting low ball prices..?? Take care and sounds like your going to have a tremendous breeding season. Andrew

Actually I never once complained about the prices dropping, I was just giving additional reasons for them dropping and the increase on adult animals for sale. We all know that supply and demand is the driving force behind the market price but one must not ignore other influences as well.
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Josh & Krysty Hutto
J&K Reptiles

Various Ball Pythons, boas, dogs, cats, fish, an amel tiger retic female, a couple sulcatas and a few other odds and ends.

a BAD dog is MADE not bred, support the American Pit Bull Terrier as the greatest breed of dogs on Earth!!!!!

Josh, We agree to disagree. Take care. Andrew

why keep pastels when you can use bees or killers,or lesser/spider /pastels.....or ghost killer bees?.....we all upgrade all the time....we run out of rack space.....

in years ago.....people were filling racks, even with normal females.....3 years ago you could have gotten 500$ for a big proven normal female....now....we might have to set them free in TX or FL just to get by???....joking, just joking....really, they aren't really worth enough to feed them anymore....

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