Reptile & Amphibian Forums

The thread below intrigued me about weighing between investing in an awesome new morph female, the costs to maintain her, and the inevitable depreciation of price in the pet market. So I thought I would run some numbers through Excel to see what I could come up with.

Some assumptions:
Price depreciates over time.
All young of year sold. No holdbacks, trades, or lost sales.
All babies same morph as mother or worth equal value.
IE, no $75 normals or $100 males or hets, etc.
Individual is a female, so 1 clutch per year.
Does not necessarily include all costs of maintaining a rodent colony.

First clutch of babies sold for $2000 / hatchling
Price depreciates by $2000 * 1/year of sale.
Example: Year 10 - $2000 * 1/10 = $200 / hatchling

Clutch size derived by randomly selecting numbers between 2 and 10
Live/dead status determined by randomly generating number between 1 and 4. 1, 2, 3 = Live. 4 = Dead.

This is what I got: (Note how current replication resulted in negative net profits!)

I welcome criticisms, adjustments, suggestions, etc. I just meant this to be thought provoking, not argumentative.

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Lincoln, NE
0.1 Pastel, 1.0 Pastel het Pied, 0.1 Pied, 0.1 Cinn, 1.0 Black Pewter, 1.1 Normals, 1.0 Thayeri, 0.1 Thayeri X Alterna, 0.1 crazy cat, 1.0 husband

Forgot to mention I'd be glad to email this or share in any other way this spread sheet if you would like to play with it yourself.
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Lincoln, NE
0.1 Pastel, 1.0 Pastel het Pied, 0.1 Pied, 0.1 Cinn, 1.0 Black Pewter, 1.1 Normals, 1.0 Thayeri, 0.1 Thayeri X Alterna, 0.1 crazy cat, 1.0 husband

Thanks for putting the effort into setting up the basic spreadsheet. Please e-mail a copy of the excel document. I'd like to have it to play with.
Thanks again!
Paul
piedpeddler@aol.com

If I am reading your spreadsheet correctly..

I think your initial depreciation from $17,500 down to 2k happened faster than can be expected. The first couple years a morphs do not depreciate as rapidly as subsequent ones. Also, many times they seem to have a bottom. Albino's where very expensive initially then depreciated by roughly 50% yearly after this. Once they reached $700-$500 they seemed to hold for at least two years at this price. Only now, with the introduction of so many doubles & triples, have they started to dip below $500.

Also, I think the amount of dead animals your formula factored in was a bit on high side.

Don't get me wrong, I liked the spreadsheet alot, but I believe it was on the conservative side of the equation.

Nice work!

So even with exaggerated depreciation and dead clutches, on average this female still makes a profit after 20 years.
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Lincoln, NE
0.1 Pastel, 1.0 Pastel het Pied, 0.1 Pied, 0.1 Cinn, 1.0 Black Pewter, 1.1 Normals, 1.0 Thayeri, 0.1 Thayeri X Alterna, 0.1 crazy cat, 1.0 husband

I did mine a little different - I based mine on actual average market price of the spider from 2003 to present since it seemed to fit the model you worked with.

I did two scenarios - one assuming she bred at 2 years (but had a smaller clutch) and another assuming she bred at 3 years (and had a bigger clutch) I gave her responsibly every 3rd year off.

Assumptions were that no eggs are lost and the morph ratio is 50% morph.

And I used your maintenance numbers.

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Tosha
JET Pythons
Toshas Blog

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

The best bet would've been to breed her for 1-2years and buy a male Pastel w/some of the the profits. Conitinue to breed her until pastel is big enough to breed and then keep one Bee and sell the adult breedable Spider (How much was a female 1,700 gram spider in 06 & 07...think about it?) and the pastel (maybe 800grams by this time) and just keep the bee.

That is where the most profit wouldve been.

It is like the stock market:

Get in and get out when the time is right. Do not get too attached or greedy.

Buying on the market is the easy part - knowing when to sell is the rub!

Quite honestly the model is flawed - I don't think anyone would have bred that spider girl to a normal when they could have gotten a pastel male for under a grand and made bees. But I didn't create the model I just fidgeted with it.
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Tosha
JET Pythons
Toshas Blog

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

The depreciation of a morph is logarithm not linear.

I think the clutch size is not that good. A clutch size of around 6 (that goes higher after a few years) with a Standard deviation of 4 would be better.

The actual "death" % seems quite high. 25% is high, but if that takes into accounths the slugs etc... may be then.

Like others have said, you might want to think of adding a "male" this this formula. But at the same time, the male can reproduce way more time.
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love this world, don't hate it.

1) I am working on a model for a male.

2) I made the assumption that I was estimating the value of the mother based on her ability to create more morphs of her own phenotype because that was the primary basis of the argument below. "I paid $**** for my albino/pied/spider/pin/etc female and now they are only worth $****"

3) The exaggerated death rate was done on purpose.

4) The exaggerated depreciation in clutch value was done that way on purpose. It does decay logarithmically, depending on what you mean by that. I graphed the depreciation value (1 / year of clutch) by year below.

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Lincoln, NE
0.1 Pastel, 1.0 Pastel het Pied, 0.1 Pied, 0.1 Cinn, 1.0 Black Pewter, 1.1 Normals, 1.0 Thayeri, 0.1 Thayeri X Alterna, 0.1 crazy cat, 1.0 husband

I am having far too much fun with this.

I re-ran the model with lower death rates (1-8 Live, 9 Dead) and a higher initial hatchling profit ($8,000). Much prettier numbers.

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Lincoln, NE
0.1 Pastel, 1.0 Pastel het Pied, 0.1 Pied, 0.1 Cinn, 1.0 Black Pewter, 1.1 Normals, 1.0 Thayeri, 0.1 Thayeri X Alterna, 0.1 crazy cat, 1.0 husband

Did you consider crosses with the morph such as Bumlebees that bring more money ?

If you look at the actual depreciation on the spider you'll see that you aren't depreciating the offspring at market rate. If you bought your female spider in 2002 for $17,500 your first possible clutch in 2004 would be $7K/spider an average clutch of 6 eggs would most likely give you 3 spiders for a total of $21K for your first year which is a far cry from the $48K that you have figured. By 2007 you have them figured at $2000 when they were actually selling for $500.

2003 12-15K
2004 7k
2005 3k
2006 1.5k
2007 500.00
2008 300.00
2009 200.00
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Tosha
JET Pythons
Toshas Blog

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

This is just a model, it isn't meant to mimic reality in the closest sense of the word. It is based on extrema and estimations. It's only purpose is to paint a picture of "what ifs" based on the averages of market fluctuations, price depreciation, and overall costs. It is not supposed to be an absolute accurate image of how the depreciation of the Spider morph actually occured, but an example of how *any* of the morphs could depreciate.
If you would like to run the model with your own parameters I would be glad to send it to you.

I ran the model assuming the female's morph genotype was dominant since every keeps telling me (and anyone else who asks this forum) that Spider is/can be dominant. I am working on a models for males, and for females and males of codominant and recessive genotypes. I might not post them here unless requested though.
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Lincoln, NE
0.1 Pastel, 1.0 Pastel het Pied, 0.1 Pied, 0.1 Cinn, 1.0 Black Pewter, 1.1 Normals, 1.0 Thayeri, 0.1 Thayeri X Alterna, 0.1 crazy cat, 1.0 husband

First I think you need to know what dominant means. Yes, Spiders are dominant - that doesn't means there is no difference in the phenotype of the homozygous and heterozygous animals. It does not mean that they only produce morph offspring - when bred to a normal they will produce half normal offspring and half morph offspring.

Second, I would think if you wanted to model the market you would at least want to aim for something close to reality, would you not?
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Tosha
JET Pythons
Toshas Blog

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

Sorry should read:

"that means there is no difference in the phenotype of the homozygous and heterozygous animals. It does not mean that they only produce morph offspring - when bred to a normal they will produce half normal offspring and half morph offspring. "
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Tosha
JET Pythons
Toshas Blog

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

It does mean they would only produce morph offspring if the female is Homozygous. I am well aware of what dominant means.

A model is a semblance of reality that will approach reality with an increasing number of variables. However, eventually the information gained by additional variables is so minimal as to make adding it a veritable waste of time. I'm currently using multivariate model analysis to try and sort out some real life data. Believe me, this model is amazingly, fantastically accurate compared to what modern science usually wants us to use to make decisions.

"All models are wrong, some models are useful." ~George Box.
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Lincoln, NE
0.1 Pastel, 1.0 Pastel het Pied, 0.1 Pied, 0.1 Cinn, 1.0 Black Pewter, 1.1 Normals, 1.0 Thayeri, 0.1 Thayeri X Alterna, 0.1 crazy cat, 1.0 husband

My apologies - I didn't realize we had our heads in the clouds, thought we were being realistic - carry on.
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Tosha
JET Pythons
Toshas Blog

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

I'll throw that pretentious word out there again. Take the spreadsheet for what it is worth, no reason to antagonize. Seems like you enjoy it though, I guess we all have to be good at something, right?
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What's pretentious about not enjoying someone spreading misinformation around on the forum? I don't see the use of using a model based on an animal that isn't proven to exist, unrealistic scenarios and false numbers? It's bunk - he might as well just put up numbers on the depreciation of a volvo.

But like I said if the object of the game was just to see how outrageously off base one could go I obviously missed the concept and I apologized.
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Tosha
JET Pythons
Toshas Blog

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

So there aren't any homozygous Spiders? Not arguing, I am seriously asking this. Has it been confirmed that the Spider gene is lethal when homozygous? I was still going on the assumption, like a few breeders have suspected, that there are homozygous Spiders that produce all Spiders when bred to a Normal.
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Lincoln, NE
0.1 Pastel, 1.0 Pastel het Pied, 0.1 Pied, 0.1 Cinn, 1.0 Black Pewter, 1.1 Normals, 1.0 Thayeri, 0.1 Thayeri X Alterna, 0.1 crazy cat, 1.0 husband

I haven't heard of any if they do exist.

to achieve an accurate spreadsheet. There are just too any variables. Cool to look at and consider though.

I think people are thinking to hard and trying to crunch to many numbers. If your are in this buisness purely to make money then you are in it for the wrong reason. This is a buisness created out of passion and as a hobby so in my opinion that has to still be the main focus, with the opurtunity to make money as a plus, i believe all the big successfull breeders all started out with breeding reptiles as a hobby and had a strong passion for it witch led them to financial success. There are to many people who just seen someone sell a snake for a large amount of money and said "Damn thats what i need to be doing" and go out and buy 20 grand in snakes and then scratch there head and pout when the return is coming rite back in. Lets remember how this buisness got started and appreciate the animals that make up the buisness more then the profit it generates.

Let me preface my analysis with some background, I have a degree in accounting an MBA and after roughly 18 years in corporate, public and government accounting. Suffice it to say, I know a bit about of what I am about to say.

The analysis: Overall, not a bad crack at analyzing the business of breeding. However, you should adjust your analysis to factor the following in your analysis:

- Factor in productivity to every other year, not ever year.
- Factor in present value of money since money costs money and revenue and expenses 10 years from now does not equate to the same value today.
- You need to factor in the cost of care on an annual basis such as electricity, water, etc.
- Initial investment in housing and space. Think of this like a business: you rent or buy space to run a business. Even if it is in your house.
- Labor is a factor, but as an owner, the labor cost is your profit: i.e. paycheck.
- Labor is an issue after a certain amount of effort/volume. How many snakes are you willing to care for in a week/year?
- You need to factor cost of offspring from hatchling to sale date with factor for returns/credits on warranty.

This is a lot to factor and difficult to summarize. I applaud your effort to calculate this and wish others learn from this. A couple years ago, I developed a spreadsheet that does a Return on Investment. For those intersted I have the example available for free download (require Microsoft Excel).

Again, good thought provoking post.
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www.richcrowleyreptiles.com
Support your local herp society
www.chicagoherp.org

The following is the link to the spreadsheet I created for ROI in the reptile business.

Return on investment

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================================
www.richcrowleyreptiles.com
Support your local herp society
www.chicagoherp.org