Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I just wanted to make comment on the designer balls out there. First of all I would like to say that they are all very beautiful, and that I would like to thank all of the hard work and dedication being put forth out there. I would SOMEDAY like to have a nice piebald or albino in my collection, but as only a keeper, and not a breeder, I don't have $2,500 to $3,000 dollars to put up for one of these snakes. Most of the 'business' out there for these designs, and others, are only among breeders. I'm pretty sure that everyone wants a piece of the action if not only to just own one of these animals. I know all about supply and demand and how that causes the prices to be where they are.

But when are you breeders going to start the 'battle' of "lowest price" so that (like with leopard geckos, the 'hottest' color morphs now are dirt cheap) us hobbiest can enjoy these animals.

If I am completely wrong and out of line, I'll shut up. I'd just like to hear what fellow keepers/hobbiest and professional breeders think of this.

Thank you for your time,
~Nick

You do make a point, a lot of 'keepers' can't afford top-dollar morphs. You have to understand though that prices WILL go down on these animals. There will be a day when most people can afford a pastel. Until that day though, it'll be a hard investment for 'keepers' to make just because they like the looks of an animal.
Like most aspects of life, a lot of the buying that you see are actually investments. Dropping $20K on a snake may seem outrageous, but when you can produce $50K worth of offspring in ONE successful year, that pays off.
Let's take do an example with numbers. Let's say I went out and bought a 2-year old spider. It'll cost me at least $20K. . That's a hell of a lot of money, but let's just pretend (and pretending we are) that I just got a 'backer' who wants to help me out HAHAHA. Anyway, I take that $25K snake and I breed him with 5 good adult ball pythons that say I paid TOP dollar for (I think the $400 level is getting ridiculous, but again this is just an example) and paid $400 for. I then take them to the vet and stuff and in the end, I paid a total of $500 each. That's $20K for my spider and $2500 I have in my normal females. Say they each eat a F/T rat a week. That's pushing it because of breeding season, etc., but again, play along with me. Say I get rats for $1/each (mine average from $.80 for smalls to $1.50 for mediums). That's 5 rats a week for 52 weeks a year for a total of $260. Okay, we'll throw in substrate, some vet visits, cleaning solution, incubator, electricity, etc and we'll say that adds up to $1000. So now I have an investment of $20K (spider), $2500 (females), $260 (food), and $1000 (misc.). That's a total of $23,760.
Okay, I feel like I'm doing my taxes That's the 'debit' side of the house...now on to fun stuff!
Say I breed those 5 girls and we'll say that only 3 get gravid, which is pretty realistic (if not pessimistic). Say those 3 girls each have 6 fertile eggs (now if I'm spending $500 on females, I'd only hope for more than 6 eggs...again being realistic/pessimistic HAHAHA). Now we have 18 eggs in the incubator. Let's say that we lose 4 eggs in incubation (I'm a moron and let water drip on the eggs or something). We now have 14 eggs that should hatch out. Mathematically, we should get 7 spider babies and 7 normal babies. The normal babies we sell for a dirt cheap $30/each for a total of $200. However, now we have 7 spider babies. We'll say we sell them cheaper than market value for $8000 each (just averaging males and females...we may sell females for $7K and males for $9K, I don't really know). That's $56K!!! Add our whopping $210 and you have $56,210. Granted we'll need to feed those 14 babies, say they eat 4 meals at $1 each (those are some expensive rat pinks) so from our $56,210, subtract $56 so now we're at $56,154 if I'm not mistaken. Deduct from that our 'debits' of $23,670 and we've just turned around $32,484.
Take that to the next level and remember that the next year you don't have the initial costs to recover. So we now only have the food and misc. expenses so our 'debits' are only $1260. Say that the prices of spiders drop to even an average of $4K the following year and we produce the same amount of babies (7). That's $28,000 - $1260 - $56 (food) for a total of $26,684 the second year.
You can obviously see where I'm going with this. Now think of the people that do this same thing 3, 4, or even 5-fold and you can understand a)Why they demand the price they do and b)Why people are buying them.
Sorry for the long drawn-out e-mail, I guess I just wanted to play with some numbers. Before I invest in anything, I draw out similar 'plans' to see in realistic/optomistic conditions, how long it will take me to recover my money. If it doesn't pay off the second year, count me out
Take care,
Jason @ Jason's Jungle

Thanks for your imput. Makes a lot of sense. Guess I'm just frustrated because it might be some time before I have my first designer ball.

~Nick

if you want check dealer sites because some of them do payment plans. that's what i've done with my female het albino & a pair of het piebalds. true say you want a pastel you will still be paying 1200 to 1500 dollars but at least you can do it in installments so it's easier. 100 a week for 12 weeks = a nice lil pastel
i bought mine from D&M BREEDERS
also I'm pretty sure Ralph Davis had payment plans...(not positive)
you should be able to find one you want & someone willing to work with you

You said you would not do it if you could not turn a profit by the second year....I was assuming you were referring to the second year breeding.
You will always make your money back in the first year. The only way you wouldn't is if you payed WAY TOO MUCH for a snake and was only able to sell the babies at a fraction of what you paid for your initial 'morph'.
Example-
Pastels- range from 900-2000 a head (yes Pastels range in price by looks and the sex of the snake).
Use the $2000 figure for this.
You spend $2000 on a male pastel and you spend a couple hundred on a female. THe clutch should consist of 1/2 pastels and 1/2 normals. Say you get 6 babies, 3 of them will be pastels...or should be. Sell each of them for the going price for males and the going price for females and you made a profit.
You could take the same pair above and add another normal. Breed the male to both females and you could double the figure from exapmples above.
You could figure the same for ALbinos, Pieds, Mojaves. The only difference with recessive ttraits such as albinos and pieds would be you would need two of the morphs OR two hets OR a het and the actual thing. Either way, you will come out ahead of your initial investment each time. THe only thing that would keep this from happening would be if you lost the whole clutch of eggs,but that is a rish we all take when producing snakes of any kind.
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Brian Oakley
Phoenix, Arizona
BrianOakley@cox.net

Yeah, sorry. That is my thinking clear across the board, sometimes not so applicable to other snakes like Kenyans (which I do a lot of). Spending $2000 for an unproven pair. It may yield 4 babies that are worth $300/piece. Hardly worth the investment really. The quicker the profit can be made back the more business sense it makes to invest (that translates to "the faster I can show my wife that it was a good think to drop X amount of dollars on such-and-such, the less trouble I'm in" HAHAHAHA)
Thanks for the followup,
Jason