Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I was just curious as to how some of you got started in this business, I know that not everyone can just buy, sell, and breed snakes for a living, but you have to start somewhere. Ive been considering putting some of my cb animals on the market and see if I cant start some projects of my own. Im not looking to get rich or anything, I love snakes and would just like to see some of my bloodlines in the fray. Kind of a proud parent sort of feeling.
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Dustin Smith

I do not breed for money at all.If I produce something extra that is a bonus to trade for more awesome snakes.To be a breeder all you need is a male and a female and the right conditions.The most of us are exactly the same.Tho I have one money project but I doubt I will make much.The key to money is to have something no one else has with that you have to spend a chunk of change to get it.Then there are breeders who produce variates of common pet shop snakes and whole sale them out or place adds here .Common snakes such as atrox morphs also bring some money you can do this cheaply by buying hets.One thing is it takes time to raise babies and then produce offspring.If you produce babies out of those copperheads the babies should go quick but the price is small those are nice snakes.Another thing is some locality snakes bring more cashola.For me it is the pure love that keeps me going not any thing else.
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Archie Bottoms

I second what Archie said.
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Tim Cole
www.austinherpsociety.org
www.AustinReptileExpo.com/
www.AustinReptileService.net
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Conservation through Education

I'll third that. I decided that rather than being a breeder, I knew early on I wanted to focus on conservation education, exhibition and field research - now I have the Wildlife Discovery Center which is all three wrapped into one. I still breed but as Archie said, strictly for the joy of it. I see so many breeders who have forgotten that the animals residing most of their lives in deli cups are living, breathing creatures. To many, they just attach dollar signs to the animals and forget about how much fun it is to focus on creating the ultimate habitat....I just saw a family in our community who built a 10 foot x 4' foot x 8 foot (w x d x h) for their...don't laugh...corn snake!! You wanna talk about the nicest looking corn snake I've ever seen? This thing was huge and was cruising around at all levels. Pretty inspirational. When I told this family about "racks" they shook their head and said, "how do you keep them from crawling to the floor" - we should all look outside of the "rack box" every now and then. Sorry, I think I got off topic from the post!

>>I second what Archie said.
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>>Tim Cole
>>www.austinherpsociety.org
>>www.AustinReptileExpo.com/
>>www.AustinReptileService.net
>> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~<
>>Conservation through Education
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Rob Carmichael, Curator
The Wildlife Discovery Center at Elawa Farm
Lake Forest, IL

Rob that is so cool to hear about the corn cage.I am in the process of makeing all my snakes natural set ups bio soil and live plants.After 30 plus years of sterile set ups it is time to expand my view.News paper is practical yet boreing.I posted this in another forum but it does not hurt to do it here as well.

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Archie Bottoms

That habitat is cool! I just got my first (and probably only hot) he is an albino het hypo C. Atrox. As I live in Az I can't sell babies and don't want to breed him (I do have corns ball pythons and GBK's for breeding and selling) but most all are in racks. That is one of the several reasons I got the Atrox I am builing him a custom habitat with cactus skeletons cow skull and sandy washes I've had this habitat in my head forever and am very excited to have a fiancee that will let me do it finally as well as enjoy it also.
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Brian Hettinger
480 Pythons
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