Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Hello,

I was just curious if anyone out there had any advice, insight, or knowledge as to how to started with a breeding business. Any advice would be so helpful.

Thanks,

Chris

Just kidding you there.
I'm not a breeder yet, but I'd like to be.

First of all, I guess it kinda depends on the snake. For example, I want to breed my African house snake when she's much bigger.
(Its ashame such an easy snake is kinda hard to find. It's a nice beginner snake to fall back on if you feel corns are too big.)
Anyway, it turns out hatchling house snakes are so voracious they might eat their own siblings during food tussles. So obviously I'd want a bunch of cages to keep them separated.
Some snakes prefer more humidity, some less, etc.

Second, I'd say just use common sense. Obviously you still want a hot spot and a cool spot, hides, water, etc. I'd think a similar environment to the adults would be the case for most snakes.

Now if there is anything more than this basic stuff, I can't help you...again, I'm just starting to look into breeding myself. I'm sure however if I missed something important, or I'm completely wrong, some experienced breeder will point it out.

I might be a little rusty on house snakes, but odds are you'll want an incubator of some sort...
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"The serpent crams itself with animal life that is often warm and vibrant, to prolong an existence in which we detect no joy and no emotion. It reveals the depth to which evolution can sink when it takes the downward path and strips animals to the irreducible minimum able to perpetuate a predatory life in its naked horror."
Alexander Skutch

An incubator too...I forgot to add that one, but yes, everything I've read up on says to incubate like a typical colubrid egg.

Danka!

Actually, with house snakes, I never used an incubator. I simply put the eggs on a shelf in my snakes room and they hatched.

And with house snakes, that really is all there is to it. You need a boy and a girl. If you have a pair, they will breed, whether you want them to or not! There isn't any cooling, light cycling, introducing males at the right time, male combat, etc. Just keep a male and a female in the same cage and presto - snake eggs.
The House Snake Page

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Chris Harrison

First you have to realize that you will probably never make a ton of money (unless you get high dollar morphs) and will be really lucky to break even.

With that in mind...First decide what kind of snakes you are interested in. Let's say for example you decide to get cornsakes. Easy to breed little buggers. Now, do you want to get hatchlings? or adults? Obviously you will be able to breed the adults sooner but they will cost you a bit more to start out with.

Rule number one: It's stupid but make sure you get a male and a female.

After that you have to do a bit of research on breeding the snake. Does your type need a cooling period? If so, for how long and at what temp? After that it's a matter of mother nature taking its own course. Put the male and female together. Then wait...........for ovulation....then the pre-lay shed....then finally EGGS!!!!!

Now let's take a little step back...to incubate your eggs you will need an incubator. This can be something as easy as a hovabator or as complex as an Avery. Unless you have very sensitive eggs (like chondros) you can probably get away with a hovabator. Make sure you know the correct temp for incubating the eggs. Set the incubator up and get it to the correct temp BEFORE you are expecting eggs. (Ours runs 24/7...all the time, even with no eggs in it.)

Once the female lays the eggs, place them in the incubator and wait...this part is the hardest...lol. Finally they hatch, adn you have to be prepared to house and feed all the hatchlings. House them separatly, this makes it easier to tell who is eating and who isn't.

Once they are established you can begin selling them. Where depends on what you have available to you. With something like cornsnakes, you could find a reliable pet store to supply or you can go over the internet or to shows. I personally sell most of my stuff at shows or to a very good pet store in my area.

Unfortunately, many people try and go about this without thinking it through.

First of all, decide what you want to breed. Are you going to produce hundreds of inexpensive babies a year? Or are you going to try and produce fewer high dollar snakes? How much money do you intend to invest?

Lets say you are going to produce lots and lots of cornsnakes. Lets say you want to sell $30,000 of babies per year. Corn snakes generally sell for around $15-$20 wholesale for some of the common morphs. Let's say you get lucky and get $20 per baby on average. To produce your $30,000, you are going to need to sell 1500 baby corn snakes. Assume you can produce 30 babies from a good female (with double clutching, that is) you will need 50 female corns. You could probably get away with 20 males. So you would need to buy and raise 70 corn snakes for about 3 years first before you make a penny.
If you bought your snakes wholesale, you would have paid $20 each for a total of $1400. Assume you use some home made racks, you could house them in sweater boxes. Assume you could buy the sweater boxes cheap ($3 each). You would need at least 70 boxes ($210) plus at least another $300 worth of wood, heat tape, etc. to build your racks.
Now to feed them... You will need fuzzies for six months, hoppers for six months, then mice for the remaining two years. You can probably breed your own mice to save money and end up spending a few hundred on mouse breeding racks or make your own for $100 or so. Add another hundred for a watering system and now your cost for the rack is about $200.
You will be needing about 70 adult mice per week eventually and for that you will probably need 20 breeding female and 5 males(plus some raising pens). Say you buy cheap pet store mice at $1 each, you need $25 for mice. To produce that many quality mice, you will have to buy rodent chow (you won't get that kind of production feeding dog food!). A good rodent chow costs around $25 bag and you will probably use a bag every two months with that sized colony. So in the three years it takes to get production up, you will spend $450 in mouse food.
Or you could buy 70 mice per week. If you buy frozen mice (starting with pinks, then fuzzies etc,) you would probably end up spending an average of $0.30 per mouse. You would need 70 mice per week for 3 years until you began to produce offspring which is a total of 10920 mice. That means you will spend $3276 on mice.

So lets see the tally so far...
snake stock - $1400
caging for snakes - $500
mouse stock - $25
mouse food - $450
mouse housing - $200
total investement- $2575

So you would spend over $2500 trying to produce your first baby. Then you have to factor in the costs of living, heating/cooling, rent/mortgage, etc. If you live really cheap you could probably do this for $1000 month so add another $36000 to the bill for producing your first snakes. You would obviously have to work full time for the first few years at an outside job just to pay these expenses.

Then to sell the snakes. You have to find buyers for 1500 baby cornsnakes. That isn't easy to do. You could wholesale off maybe half of them, then you would have to go to shows to sell some of the others. At more than $300 a weekend for the shows (table, hotel, travel) you have to sell 15 snakes a show just to pay your bills for the show. Some shows that is easy, others it isn't.

The whole point is that is really a difficult "business" to succeed in. Most people fail or end up working full time jobs to support their "business".

If you go the other route (sell fewer expensive snakes), your initial investment goes WAY up. Say you wanted to produce $30,000 worth of albino ball pythons. Assume they are going to cost around $4000 each in four years when you will be selling them. So you will need to produce 8 snakes to make that much. That will require two females and one male. Right now albinos cost about $5000 each. So you need to lay out $15000 on the first day to even start. Sure, your housing and food costs come down, but your initial outlay is so high that it actually takes you longer to break even. All the while, you still have to pay rent, electric bills, etc.

And what if, god forbid, a tragedy strikes. You get a virus, or have a fire, or whatever. Half your breeding stock dies. In the case of the cornsnakes you would be out $700. In the case of the pythons, you have a $10000 loss!

The take home lesson is that unless you have an outside source of significant money, it is very difficult to get started in the herp breeding business.
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Chris Harrison

All that was true, BUT... If you want it bad enough and work hard enough,(research included) you will do good at it. Probably don't want to quit your day job though.

My piece of advice to you is... Take baby steps, don't bite off more than you can chew.

Scott