Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Hello all, my name is David Brown. I live in Southern California and have the whole 34 years of my life. I have always had snakes and other reptiles. Such a love for them, that a dream of mine has been to breed snakes. Here now in my life, i find myself ready to dedicate time money and space to a hobby interest of mine, in attempts to create a profitable, educational and open business within the community i have grown to love like family.
Me and my family are at a time in are life were we have an opportunity to purchase land and build a home with a large facility for this idea. Ive been researching the numbers and the math, but with out the advice from real people in the trade, im kind of lost. Im looking to spend anywere from 50 to 100k on the business itself, the buildings will be owned outright. Im wondering if this is enough to start. I would like to make about 30 and up k a year in the business after its up and running. How might i make this possible? Any one out there able to talk to me, to help me, or maybe even partner with me here in the next year?
Thank you for anyone who took the time to read this and to anyone who might find the time to respond with your input, all criticism is welcomed!!!!

I think you need to ask yourself the basic business questions: Who are my clients? What do they want to purchase? Why will they buy from "me"? How often will they buy from me? Who are my competitors? How will my business be better than my competitors?

If you're in this for a profit then you have 2 avenues to choose from. "In my opinion", you either need to breed for volume, or for specialization. If you breed for volume, you need to have a buyer for every offspring you produce. Breeding for volume will require more labor, time, equipment, and space. If you breed for specialization, you'll need much more than $100k as start up costs. You'll be taking higher risk by purchasing extremely expensive animals, but you'll have less labor, equipment, space, and time tied into production.

If I were in this for the money, I'd probably borrow about $500k and purchase a bunch of ball pythons, lol. But I'm not, so I work with the animals I love most. Best of luck with your endeavor-

Anthony

I would like to specialize in bci high end morphs, my market would be internet alone most likely and shows. I will be investing in top end snakes, are there insurence policys that i can buy for the health of the animals in question? I think the most i would be able to really go is 150 tops, depending on market. I appreciate your comment and your time.
Do you have experience in internet sales within the market? that might be an avenue i explore the most, has it worked well for you? Has anyone heard of a person who you can hire to design a facility?

Dude, if you are thinking of starting from scratch,Land, Buildings, Utilities, Permits, Breeding Stock, Supplies, Caging, Food, etc... $100,000.00 ain't gonna get ya far at all. A fusion 450 rack is $1900.00, buy 50 of them, and that alone is $100,000.00.

You said you would like to make 30K and up? What's that? You can get a $14.00 an hour job and make that. $30,000 wouldn't even pay your bills.

You also want to know who to hire to design a facility. Dude, the Contractor you hire to build it will have his own design team, or engineer for the job. If you just want someone to draw up some plans for you so that you can present them to different Contractors, you should be able to find them easy enough right in your own area with the internet, or yellow pages, for only a few grand.

For that much money get yourself 15 good breeding females, a half dozen good males, and use a room in your house, and get yourself a good reputation with healthy and decent looking animals, and some sort of a customer base. In a hobby such as this where people can shop buy internet, and have it shipped to their door, reputation is eveything.

But really, unless you have experience with everything that these big breeders face, I wouldn't want to see someone make that huge of a jump just to start without growing and building into a facility of that size.

Ah yes...the only down side to the forum...you should have read better and made less assumptions...the land and the building will be separate, paid for in full by myself. { so i can lease the property to another business in the future should this endeavor fail.} Also, i am not a dude, i am a sir. Thank you sir. Looking to spend 50 thousand dollars in the initial start up{another 50k towards the investment of the snakes to start}, than can buy enough racks to house 12 adult females, 6 adult males, and be ready for over 500 babies, 300 juveniles and 25-50 keeper sub adults at once, two commercial freezers and misc supplies. My question was, to people IN THE TRADE, was the 50k good to make initial invest at working towards 30 k a year, because that's all i want these days to live on....thats all i need, Since house's for myself and my children are already counted for....Childish behavior for us all to read....lol, good job kiddo.

Thank you to the great emails today from a few of you. Thank you even more to the email trashing me, obviously this forum has come a long way since i first started using it. I worked hard and long, payed my dues to my kin, im ready to fufill a dream, and you guys just hate on it...keep it real at least like the fist comment here.

Not sure if you were referring to my post earlier, I didn’t mean to ruffle your feathers Dude. I was just stating a few of the costs that you would be encountering on the project you were asking opinions for. I guess I should have just replied, “Nope, need a bit more money, have a good day”. Geez Dude if your spending money to make money, you’re going to be moving into the business world, need to get a tough skin if you don’t get the type of answers you like.

As far as the “Dude” part goes, Sorry, just my term of endearment for people. I seem to say it many times a day. But quite frankly with how you worded your first two posts, I had no idea you were a “Sir”. I guess you’re a little too young to have heard some of the jokes about being called “Sir”. Some of the fellow military people in here may have heard some.

Lastly why I felt I had the right to answer your post is that you, yourself finished your original post with this statement: “Thank you for anyone who took the time to read this and to anyone who might find the time to respond with your input, all criticism is welcomed!!!!” All criticism is welcomed??? Is it really??? Never ever put anything in writing that you can’t honor or back up.

But that’s all I have, just have a good day, and smile sometimes…

LOl, i guess i should have stated things better. All advise from people over 30 years of age please!

I'm not in the business, merely a hobbyist so take my points with a grain of salt, but here are my thoughts... and pardon the discombobulation of this post. It's almost 1 am here and my brain is fried for the day!

A couple of things to consider in your start up costs:
- possibly flooring
- possibly specialized insulation
- caging and thermostats
- possibly a misting system if you decide to go that way
- a utility sink w/ an attachment for a hose (use the hose to go around and fill water bowls)
- possibly a restaurant quality dishwasher (good investment if you intend to have 850 babies/juveniles/sub-adults) plus 18 adults. Look into a used model to save quite a bit of money.

Caging for 500 babies would best be accomplished with something like a freedom breeder rack. You'll need 7 at $2,889 each as they each house 75 animals. $20,223

Caging for 300 juvies would best be accomplished with freedom breeder racks as well. You'll need about 9 (rounding down) as they house 33 animals each at $2,299 per rack. $20,691

Caging for up to 50 sub-adults - freedom breeder once again. You'll need two racks that house 30 animals each at a cost of $2,399 per rack. $4,798

Adult caging for 18 animals of various sizes. Assuming some will be larger, some will be smaller, we'll go with 2 48" wide racks with 6 levels each for males and smaller females. $2,120. And one rack that's 66" wide with 6 levels for the larger females at a cost of $2,521. Total cost for adult caging: $6,761

Water bowls - more expensive than you think. But, buying in bulk would probably allow for a substantial discount. You'll need 2 bowls for every cage because opening each cage, removing the bowl, then washing it and replacing it will cost a TON of time. So, 1,732 water bowls even at $1 each (which I think would be a good deal) will run about $1,732.

Substrate - cost will depend heavily on what you use. And, this will be a recurring cost. $Variable

Rodents - best bet is to breed your own. This will cost money to start (breeders, racks, watering system, substrate, food) but will pay for itself many times over for a collection that large. Rodent breeding racks (freedom breeder again) for mice are $2,000. You'll probably need just one. You could supplement with a rodent supplier for any shortages unless purchasing another makes sense. Same with a rat rack at $1,615. Total for rodent housing $3,615 (conservative I think as you may need more caging for more rodents). Add in the watering system (lots to total up and I'm not doing the math so a guesstimate is) $500. Variables are cost of breeders (go high quality so expect to pay a little above average), substrate, and food (again, high quality). Total cost is $4,115 plus variables.

Thermostats - herpstat pro is the best, IMO. $300 each and they have 4 outputs. A total of 5 for the babies, juvies, sub adults, and adult male rack (one output per rack) then 3 more so each female has independently controlled heat. 8 x $300 = $2,400.

Flexwatt is relatively cheap. You can probably buy everything you need for $500.

Then, supplies. You'll need things like spray bottles, hemostats, pinky pumps, tubes, syringes, mite spray, bleach, Nolvasan, etc... Let's guesstimate $1,000.

Tax and shipping hasn't been included in any of these prices and I'll leave them out and use those numbers as your "volume discount" that you'd likely get (probably conservative).

Total with just the things I thought of off the top of my head is: $62,220

Who knows how much it would cost to design everything, run proper electricity, a back up generator if necessary, permits (look into this), a website, staff (unless you plan to work 24 hours/day every day), phone, computer, digital camera if you don't already own one, office furniture, dishwasher, utility sink, a couple of freezers, etc... My guess is your $100,000 is tied up in start up costs before you even get around to buying animals - if you go with high quality "tools of the trade". You could probably shave off a substantial amount of money if you bought second hand racks, etc., or just cheap imitations - but still probably not enough to get it down to $50,000.

Then, you get into animals. Are you buying adults and hoping they'll produce for you, or buying babies and raising them? Whichever you decide on will impact the quality you're able to purchase. Adults = lower quality as adults usually go for more money. On the flip side, buying babies = no income for several years (which may be ok if you want to raise them at your house and put off the separate facility for a few years while you raise your 18 breeders).

Personally, I think you overshot the number of animals substantially, unless you plan to buy other people's animals and resell them. Room for 500 babies would mean that ALL of your females produce every single year and produce, on average, 42 babies each that live and need housing. Personally, I think production at 30% of your females per year would be good as you'd be best served (as would the females) to breed females every other year and not every female produces when bred. And that's assuming 20 babies per litter which would be fairly good. I think you're looking at around 75 babies per year. With numbers like that, $50,000 start up costs for the facility is EASILY attained. But then, that probably messes up your $30K profit you were hoping for.

So, that's the way the numbers work in my head. Hope it helped!

Good luck David,
jb
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What's written above is purely my opinion. In fact, MOST of what you read on the internet is someone's opinion. Don't take it too seriously

Jonathan Brady
DeviantConstrictors.com Site received a complete makeover! Check it out!

Thank you for your input, it was awesome of you to take that much time and lay it out there for me, really really cool of you =).
It is looking like the start will need to go to 100 to 150 k to be serious in all aspects. The building will be built with these animals in mind. The building and the cost of it is not as important. I actually have a large number that i can work with, would like to keep it practical, the 50k just wasnt there, lol. As far as the 30k goes, that was throwing some of you off...i only need the 30k a year to consider it worth the time.I live a modest Life. Money is NOT an issue here. I want to turn a hobby, into a full blood business, for the pure love of operating businesses and the pure love of the red tail...so, ty so far for the input everyone! The building will be brand new, steal building, build with 6 inch insulation, home rating for the insulation as well. It will have 2000 square feet on the bottom floor for the business, the bills will be paid without problems, heated with no problems, the floor will be heated. I plan on putting 100 to 200 k into the building alone. I have chosen a mix of vision racks and ARS caging. I have found insurance quotes now, good god....I want to work with the Blood Boas and Moonglows...Would love to see a moonglow leopard, a Harvest Moon boa....wish me luck, any more advice is super appreciated too!

You may also want to consider having a few separate rooms at your facility. Many of the large commercial breeders keep babies in separate rooms from the adults, and then they have an additional room for animals that are in quarantine or sick. If money is no object, you may want to look into a separate building for raising rats (they stink, lol). I would also recommend cement floors with radiant heating and water drains for easy cleaning. If you can walk into your facility and just hose the place down, it will make for faster clean up. You may also want to consider small windows that are well insulated. This will help keep energy costs down while allowing a natural photo period for the snakes.

Whatever you decide to do, please post pics of the facility here on the forums so we can all see

Anthony-

I think building the facility is the easy part.... Especially if there is plenty of financing..... It's marketing that is the challenge
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Marc Duhon
Lafayette, Louisiana
SURINAMBOAS.COM
kaiyudsai@SURINAMBOAS.COM

It seems like a much better approach to start smaller and grow..... from large hobbyist and evolve into a business.... You arent going to be seeing any real profits for a few years.... This industry is reputation driven.... So you can't just bust on the scene and expect people to drop top dollar on your product.... Especially since you want to go with the specialty market,.... Specialty buyers are alot different than volume buyers... They are VERY picky about who they buy from... Especially when you see all the shananagins going on with some breeders with poor quarantine...

I would invest alot in web design... and do alot of forum time... start cultivating your name... and purchase a smaller group of really high end boas... When the specialty clients see that you are passionate about your craft... then you can develop a market for yourself. But it definitely isnt a "BUild it and they will come" industry...

Unless you get established on the international export side of the business.... You will have to work hard to get customers here in the US market... Alot of travel time networking... going to all of the big shows... It is alot harder to sell the high end specialty boa stuff... You really need a name to back up prices.

I think the first place to start is to analyze the market. Keep in mind the endless onslaught of legislation scares always casting the boa constrictor into a high risk investment category..
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Marc Duhon
Lafayette, Louisiana
SURINAMBOAS.COM
kaiyudsai@SURINAMBOAS.COM

ABSOLUTELY FANTASTIC AND 100% SPOT ON! For best results, grow and develop.

Honestly, the approach recommended by Marc as well as the idea of buying babies and growing them up would probably be the very best combination you could go with. Buy from top quality breeders (not necessarily the biggest - sometimes the SUPER smallest are the best), keep your receipts and maintain/grow the relationship. Good guys in this industry do NOT have a problem recommending other good guys. Jerks will NEVER recommend another breeder unless they have something to gain. Do not call up a breeder inquiring about a specific animal. Just call and talk to them and keep your interest to yourself. If you get the vibe (or perhaps they just say outright) that they don't have time for you, move on and buy elsewhere. Also of equal importance, if they talk trash about someone else, move on. Because eventually, they'll talk trash about you too. Everyone has had bad customer experiences so if you inquire about theirs, pay attention to how they describe the situation. If they're overly inflammatory, make a note of it. If they get upset while recalling the situation, but don't insult/call names, etc, that's likely a "good guy". They're likely just reliving the emotion of the situation. These are the people you want in your network if they have the stock you want.

Also as Marc said, do NOT underestimate the importance of networking via forums. So, if you don't already know how, learn how to take at least "good" pictures of your boas. Share them often! Consider video as well - if not of your animals, of you. Shows will be crucial as well. Even if you're not ready to vend yet, go to network. Check out your local herp society as well. Some BIG names that often don't participate on forums attend herp society meetings (and are often the President, VP, etc.) - more great networking opportunities.

Finally, as Marc mentioned, potential regulation is a possible knife to the heart of this hobby. There's one MAJOR hurdle that could still be in our way. The USFWS. The Senate and US House legislation is done (for now - unless reintroduced in the current session). They could effectively end our industry with their ruling. This would be another reason to start out small, with babies, and hold off on the facility.

jb

>>It seems like a much better approach to start smaller and grow..... from large hobbyist and evolve into a business.... You arent going to be seeing any real profits for a few years.... This industry is reputation driven.... So you can't just bust on the scene and expect people to drop top dollar on your product.... Especially since you want to go with the specialty market,.... Specialty buyers are alot different than volume buyers... They are VERY picky about who they buy from... Especially when you see all the shananagins going on with some breeders with poor quarantine...
>>
>>I would invest alot in web design... and do alot of forum time... start cultivating your name... and purchase a smaller group of really high end boas... When the specialty clients see that you are passionate about your craft... then you can develop a market for yourself. But it definitely isnt a "BUild it and they will come" industry...
>>
>>Unless you get established on the international export side of the business.... You will have to work hard to get customers here in the US market... Alot of travel time networking... going to all of the big shows... It is alot harder to sell the high end specialty boa stuff... You really need a name to back up prices.
>>
>>I think the first place to start is to analyze the market. Keep in mind the endless onslaught of legislation scares always casting the boa constrictor into a high risk investment category..
>>-----
>>Marc Duhon
>>Lafayette, Louisiana
>>SURINAMBOAS.COM
>>kaiyudsai@SURINAMBOAS.COM

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What's written above is purely my opinion. In fact, MOST of what you read on the internet is someone's opinion. Don't take it too seriously

Jonathan Brady
DeviantConstrictors.com Site received a complete makeover! Check it out!

Great advice.........I am not a very good typer, but my .2 cents is that you do buy babies or yearlings and grow from there. The results you get from raising the babies to adulthood and into breeding and reproducing from them far outweigh that of buying the adults, both finacially and from a emotional standpoint.

Best of luck.

Chris Nicholas

What the hay, I will put in my two cents on this question. Just some obverservation and advice, mind you Ive owned and operated a reptile business since 1992 and worked in 7 pet stores before that.

#1.- This is NOT a good business to get into using big time debt..

Now, you said you would own your building outright, Im guessing you have the cash to pay for it. Thats great. I would NOT take out ANY loans to start in the reptile business. Its TOO risky at this time. Living things do die, leaving you with nothing to show for your debt. Trust me I've lost plenty of animals that were $2500, $3000 etc. that were on a credit card that I had to pay off before they ever bred and made money. Loved my boelens...any how.

#2.- I have made 30 thousand in a year breeding boas. I have also made $2,000 in a year. Nothing is ever constant with animals. Boas dont breed every year for long. I have had females die during ovulation. One female would have net me 20 thousand I believe on her clutch I was so excited, she had a giant ovulation and was dead the next morning. Things like that happen. So you can never count on any income from your animals. The old saying you cant count your chickens before they hatch goes with snake eggs and boa babies as well. EVEN when they are gravid, as I have had the occasional 100% slug clutch with a dead female breeder the next day or the 1 live baby clutch with a bunch of stillborns, and then you get your perfect clutch which actually is a rarity. Dont get me wrong boas are plenty easy to breed (in my opinion) but rarely does everything go 100% perfectly. Yes you can make money breeding animals and it is fun but its never very consistent (my opinion).

#3.- To make 30 thousand in reality you'll need to make about 50 thousand. After paying electric bills, water bills, food bills, bedding, accessory bills, vet bills, so on and so on, depending on how large your collection is it can REALLY add up big time. Its my opinion after having a HUGE collection of breeder albinos etc.(including retics and burms) That it was easier for me to have a smaller collection. It seemed like the more animals I had the less I bred, because of certain factors, and the lack of time to take care of them all. I started out small with albino boas and started "holding back" lots of females and buying lots more and it got too much. I did make quite a bit of money but in the end I sold most of them to get back to a manageable level after not making enough money for a couple of years to justify keeping them or pay for them. Which brings me to

#4. - Boas arent selling like they used to. (No hate mail please) Sorry but its true. In 2001 and 2002 I would put baby albinos for sale on the classifieds and they were sold in an hour or so. Ive sold $1750 albinos in 5 minutes back then. I would sell out ALL of my albinos and hets within about a two month period easy. Not any more and it continues to get worse. Look at the classifieds and you will see many of the same animals over and over and cheaper and cheaper. The economy and recent scares in regulation are making the boa business a tougher bet, plus there is TONS of competition now. You have to have asolute top notch animals or extreme dirt cheap prices, and you have to have something that noone else has but also something that people actually want, so you have to pick your projects VERY carefully! Of course again just my opinion and I am still breeding boas, I still have ONE project I am hanging onto (even though it doesnt seem popular lol , I am almost 10 years into it at this point ) but I no longer have a large collection of boas. I am not saying they arent good to buy and breed but I dont know about having a super large collection any more, and trying to make 50 thousand a year on them - $10 thousand more do-able. Small sized fewer animals are good for me at this point but again thats just me (no hate mail please) I started selling my collection of boas off 4 years ago, and am working with other things now, that I didnt have space or time for because of the boas. I cant make the income off of the boas any more like I used to so there is no reason for me having lots of them (no hate mail just my situation)I still like them though.

# 4 - If I were to build a building for my animals (which I actually plan to do in the future) I would incorporate wind and solar for heat and skylights throughout. Thats my plan as you never know what kind of energy costs we will see in the next 10 years or so $10 a gallon gas maybe? Who knows. I would build ALL of my enclosures myself, you can save like 75% doing that. I built a baby rack enclosure that holds almost 100 babies for maybe $100, with heat - the boxes. Hand made stuff will save you TONS of money.
Heat each cage individually. When my collection grew I decided to dedicate my basement to my animals and heated the entire thing to 85 + . Mistake...I had a harder time breeding things and keeping temps on different animals regulated. Now I have each cage individually heated which is the way to go (my opinion).

This post is getting too long I could go on forever. Just wanted to throw some warnings out to think about. Good luck in whatever you do, its fantastic you've gotten to this point in your life, just make sure you do smart investing with little risk so you dont go backwards.
There are several businesses you could open with 100 grand that would be more reliable maybe less fun but... something to think about.

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Pythons.Net
StuInfo.org

I agree 100% with this posting, and Marc’s above. First and foremost as I stated in the original post, need to get a great reputation built for healthy decent animals, and as an honest seller. Usually a small start, and the growth will come. Then again the last dude that posted hit it right on with the downside of the business right now. The business is a whole different beast right now than it has been in the last decade. But I do think the trade will come back strong if politics and regulations end, and once the economy takes a turn in a few years.