Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I am wondering if you guys have other jobs or are full-time snake breeders? I am interested in breeding reptiles as a career but am not sure if i should have an extra job on the side or if breeding is a full time job. Any advice, comments or whatever you want to share would be helpful. Thanks!
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1.0.0 Water Dragon (Poseiden)
1.0.0 Armadillo Lizard (Sonic)

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Nature's Servant Awaits

In my opinion, unless you have a LOT of capital to start with. The safest and smartest way to start a business is by moonlighting. Especially in a field like this. VERY few people have ever managed to make a living from reptile breeding. But it can be a great hobby that sometimes comes close to paying for itself.
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Martin Whalin
My Email

I agree with Martin. You will need at least one full-time job to support your snake breeding projects ( which is a full-time job in itself), at least for a good while. Snake breeding is NOT something that you can expect instant gratification from, or even close to it. It will take literally years to learn all that you need to learn, accumulate the equipment and breeder animals, find your "niche", etc.

And...finding a "niche" is going to be a necessity, unless you can go into it on a very large scale, invest in several adult trios of whatever species you are going to breed and then find a market to sell them in bulk. Let's just take an example. Let's say the you like Sinaloan Milksnakes. So..you buy trio of adult breeders (normal coloration). They are among the easiest to breed, so first season you end up with 6 clutches. You are really, really lucky and have 90% hatch rate with an average clutch size of 10 eggs. That gives you 54 babies. You see that the average price for a neonate Sinaloan is $35.00. So, you open a KS account ($20.00) and run an ad. Then you go and look at the other ads and find that there are 25 more people selling baby Sinaloans for around the same price. You have to cage and feed the babies and the breeders all this time (60 of them), invest you work in cleaning the cages (60 of them). The babies are eating 2 pinkies each per week...the adults are eating 2 to 3 adult mice each per week....do the math. It doesn't take long to get to the point that you can't even seel them for enough money to pay for what you've invested in them. So, you end up wholesaleing the lot at $10.00 to $15.00 each.

If you find a "niche"...something that is in demand, but very few people are breeding them, you might have some success. But, the breeders for these types of animals tend to be very expensive, and there's usually a reason that very few people are breeding them...maybe they are extremely difficult to breed consistently.

Then there's the problems with setting up shipping accounts, dealing with difficult customers before and after the sale, local, state and federal permits and business licenses that may be required, etc.

Too many people jump on the breeder bandwagon with visions of having a lucrative business, but it very often ends up in lots of work and aggravation with a disappointing payoff.

You are much better off the start on a small scale, breed a limited number of the animals you like and build a name for yourself over time, while finding the animals that you can breed and market successfully.