Reptile & Amphibian Forums

i know a lot of you seem to be into albinos and dwarfs and tigers and everything which i love those snakes too i just cant afford them lol anyway my question is what is the deal with the price of just normal baby retics anyone who has bred retics before would know these snakes lay very large clutches of eggs and hatch rates are normally pretty good i always had about a 90% hatch rate when i bred retics i sold my retics to a good home to move into a new house got plenty of room and bought a normal female retic not too long ago $100 for a normal female baby retic??? something is wrong with this picture when i was breeding retics i used to give babies to friends to help their collections i had so many of them the way it looks im going to have to spend another $100 or so for a baby male normal to match my female with color morphs i can understand the big price tag wont complain about that at all but $100 for normal retics is ridiculous people need to start worrying a little more about the animals than about the $$$ i see it this way id rather give snakes away to my friends so i know the snakes are getting good homes than i would to sell to a complete moron who gets himself constricted and gives all of us in this hobby a bad rap

If it were up to me everyone would be paying more than $100 for any retic. I feel that if everyone who got a retic had to pay $1000, then prehapse they just might take better care of there animals, simply. Serriously now, the fact is that retics are not realy cheap to raise, there not cheap to house, and there definetly not cheap to breed. So I think $100 is a bit low, and at the same time they are realy not made for every one who has $100 dollers to spend.

just my oppion...

We find this goes for all sorts of "big" animals. Green iguanas, burmese pythons, retics, rock pythons, water monitors, niles and any other potentially large monitor....all are sold considerably "dirt cheap" to anyone who wants one.
The problem is, the hunt for a proper home is rarely taken when importers, exporters, pet shops and just any joe is looking to make a quick buck in mass quantity. These are all fantastic creatures who are NOT cheap to house or take care of yet we find them for far too little money for way too many people who don't know anything about them to get their hands on. :/

It's really sad when you think about how many of these animals are put down every year because there simply aren't enough homes.

I agree that there should not be a retic alive (or for that matter, any of the others I listed and the rest that I didn't) who should be priced at less than $100 (way too cheap IMO as well). It's a simple fact that people who pay $600 for a dog even, will take FAR better care of it and even take it to the vet more than those who don't justify a "free" dog or a little pound puppy that didn't cost them squat to those few hundred dollar vet bills and such. It makes no sense to me but I love too many critters out there (just ask Shaun and any of the other guys who know me. LOL!)
Some of my favorite animals who I'd give up almost any of my possessions to help at a vet if needed, cost me nothing or real close to it. ;D

Hugs!

Amanda Rose

you're [bleep]ing because you have to spend $100 for a retic? people pay that much for burms, rocks, even simple normal adult balls! You have to put a price on the snake or else every one would be stuck with 50 retics tring to find a good home to give (?) them to.

Some people breed snakes for a liveing, so finding the ideal home isnt always an option. Then again some people flip burgers and [bleep] because they have to pay $99.99 for a large exotic snake that they WANT, and expect one to be handed to them. That doesnt sound like an ideal home does it? If you dont want to drop $100 on the snake, how do you expect to feed and house it?

Personaly I agree that $100 is MORE than fair to ask considering the cost of raising and breeding. If you were to sell one whole cluch for $100 each you still wouldnt make back all you have spent to get your breeders to what they are... unless you bought some wild cought trash.

Sorry to rant like this but I deal with people like you all day and it really bothers me. If its not worth the price... dont buy it... easy as that....

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-echo-

1.0.1 - Ball Python
1.0.0 - Tiger Retic
0.0.1 - Brazilian Rainbow Boa
0.0.1 - Savu Python
0.0.1 - Spotted Python
1.0.0 - Tiger Salamander
1.1.0 - Red Spot Toad
0.1.0 - Betta Fish

but burms are as expensive to feed and house as retics but i have bought my burm for 25 dollars and i agree that they should ber cheaper

what is the reasoning for thinking retics should be cheaper?
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-echo-

1.0.1 - Ball Python
1.0.0 - Tiger Retic
0.0.1 - Brazilian Rainbow Boa
0.0.1 - Savu Python
0.0.1 - Spotted Python
1.0.0 - Tiger Salamander
1.1.0 - Red Spot Toad
0.1.0 - Betta Fish

first off im not some burger flipping punk i have been doing this for a long time second i have been keeping retics for 13 years and have sucessfully bred them so i know all about the cost involved in feeding and housing them doesnt bother me any you mentioned african rock pythons and burmese pythons as well well i paid $195 for the pair of rock pythons and the male came with a tank as far as the burms $120 for the pair hmm kinda funny a pair of burms is cheaper than a normal retic that has to be shipped and finally im not asking anyone for a handout i said I GAVE THEM AWAY that doesnt mean i am asking other people to do it i just asked what is the deal with the price and you dont know me so you cant possibly know about my kind of people but i guess some people just feel that they have to insult others

I completely agree that all large snakes should be more expensive then what they are. The people that sell burms and rocks and balls for 25 bucks do not care at al about the welfare of the snake. A 25 snake is disposable and no big loss to the owner if something happens to it. If the price was higher then people would take better care of there snakes and house them better and such. I think it is rediculous that people sell these giants to anyone that has 50 bucks to spend on whim. I think it is careless on the breeders part and that hurts the hobby more than a higher price on normals would. Todd

none of my snakes are disposible regardless of their cost i have a 02 kenyan sand boa which is probably one of my favorite snakes in my collection and she cost me like $30 and my large snakes are fed properly and in very nice cages i built myself

Come on, use a little common sense here. I don't mean to be harsh, but just think about it. No one is pointing to you and saying that you view your animals as disposable. If you don't, great! Unfortunately, you would be the exception, not to the rule, when it comes to cheap large herps. I think that normal retics should not only cost more than they do, but there should be a nation-wide licensing system to determine someone's competency to keep such a potentially dangerous animal. If you make the requirements to get such dangerous animals more severe, you will inherently lessen the risk of stupid people getting them and killing themselves/their loved ones/strangers, or letting the snake go, either accidentally or on purpose. Same goes with any large Varanid or venomous. So again, don't view what is being said as an attack on you, it's not. It is an attack on what is wrong with this hobby, and what could ultimately lead to its total demise. If you really have been in this for 13 years, then I expect you have friends who are in it as well and through which you could get much cheaper animals. People are always trading/giving away animals to other people they know and trust. Maybe you should look into that possibility, rather than complain about general market value of normal retics.
-Chance

I think the point serpentine and echo are making is legitimate and I think possibly being misunderstood. One of the biggest problems facing herpetoculture is the mind set of throw away pets, which has allot to do with the low price of some animals. Lets face it how many people are going to buy a $20.00 book on proper care when the animal costs $9.99 (the going rate here locally for iguana's). Serpentine and echo are correct in stating that retic's and indeed all large reptiles should command higher prices. At the zoo where I work the calls per week are staggering with people trying to dump animals that are too large, too aggressive, or just too big of a pain for them to take care of. These animals are usually large burms, iguana's, savannah or Nile monitors, and Sulcata tortoises. All cheap animals to buy, all large animals as adults, and all "throw away pets" when the costs and time of care begin to mount. In all the time I've been there, there has never been one call from someone trying to dump their albino retic. Why? Because if you are going to plunk down two grand on a snake there is a really, really good chance you care enough about the animal to A) know what you are getting into, B) care enough to provide proper care, and C) are in it for the long haul. Spend twenty five bucks on a burm or a monitor and there is a good chance that when things get a little hairy with the adult animal most people will look to "donate" their animal or mismanage it to extinction. I believe the price of a baby animal should be reflective of the cost of care for the adult. This is especially true of potentially dangerous animals such as large constrictors, crocodilians, monitors, iguana's, and venomous.

At the shop that I work at I raised the price of our BABY iguanas from $9.99 to $25 for the simple fact that there is a serious problem with the "throw-away-pet" mentality. we would sell about 15 iggys a week (min) and half of them would be returned in after a few months, skinny and mistreated. We care always getting calls, and iggys abandonded at our door because after 2 years makeing salads gets old, they need a big cage, dont have time, what ever.. now we dont sell as many iguanas, but the people who do buy them seem to take them a little more seriously. i think its better for the hobby to sell less for more than mass production and sales as in the case of burms...

burms are bred all the time and sold for next to nothing and are picked up by 16y/o's who want a big snake to impress their friends. Ikm sure the breeder who sold you burms at $50 a pop didnt really care where they were going... How many times have you heard of a 15' burm found under someones house, or in the woods, or at large in an (sub-)urban area? now how many times do you hear about ferral retics? people ger cheap burms and have the same "ill get rid of it when it gets too big" adittude. I dont know how many people come into my store and see our big burm and say, "I had a burm once, but i had to get rid of it when it was about 8 (or 9) feet"

Cost is not only fair to the breeders, but to everyone else own ing large constrictors due to the fact that it discourages the wrong people from getting someting "to walk on the beach with".
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-echo-

1.0.1 - Ball Python
1.0.0 - Tiger Retic
0.0.1 - Brazilian Rainbow Boa
0.0.1 - Savu Python
0.0.1 - Spotted Python
1.0.0 - Tiger Salamander
1.1.0 - Red Spot Toad
0.1.0 - Betta Fish

You guys keep referring to raising the prices of animals as some sort of savior for these reptiles.
Sorry guys but increasing the price of an iguana from 9.99 to 24.99 isn’t going to keep an unsuitable person from buying that iguana if he really wants it. So raising the price of a retic to even double the going rate (to $200) is as well negligible over time, and just simply is not going to keep that 13 yr old from spending his bar mitzvah money on the snake.
Keep in mind, millionaire hunters buy exotic large cats (for what I assume would be a hefty price) so that they can kill the poor things on their friggin’ ranches.
To some degree, the onus is on the seller/breeder to ensure the subsequent proper care of the animal he’s selling. I was utterly amazed when a dealer sold me my normal retic (for $100 mind you, at the Westchester reptile expo) without asking one question of whether I knew how to take care of this animal or if I knew what I was getting in to. I don’t know if it’s because I’m older (33 yrs old) or what, but he should have at least asked me if I was aware of how large he was going to get, what kind of care was necessary, etc. Fortunately I’m an experienced reptile owner, but he certainly did not know that (he just wanted to dump his last retic, pathetic).
I wonder how many dealers/breeders would actually refrain from selling that $100 retic to an obviously unsuitable person. Unfortunately, I believe not many.
Will this solve the problem of abandoned reptiles? Of course not, but it’s a start. It’s called responsible selling and doing a little bit of due diligence on the person your selling to.

I agree with you that simply raising the price is not going to accomplish the ultimate goal of all keepers being responsible for their animals. Like you said in your last sentence, it all relies on the seller. I vended at the San Antonio show a year or so ago and had 1.1 burms and 0.1 retic on my table. Both animals were marked on their delis, "18 only!!" I had at least one person that I can remember, and probably a few others I didn't notice, that were aggravated over this. After all, this was the same thing I had marked on my venomous containers, and burms aren't venomous, right?! Of course I was willing to make an exception if I could talk to an interested person that demonstrated that he/she had the knowledge and capabilities to deal with the animal. I know two 16 year olds, twins, who are more responsible with their venomous snakes than most of the adults I've spoken with who keep them, and I wouldn't hesitate to sell (their father) something I knew they could care for, even if it was venomous. However, for the public at large, I wasn't willing to sell to just anyone to even let someone think I was. Maybe if we had more vendors at shows marking their giant constrictors/giant varanids/igs, "18 only!!" people would start wonder, "hmmm...I wonder why he will only sell those animals to legally responsible adults." Maybe not, but maybe so. So of course in the end it all comes down to the seller, and you can never be sure all sellers are being responsible with their sales. What you can do, though, is give a call or e-mail to those companies you know selling potentially dangerous herps to obviously unprepared keepers, no matter what their age. One or two may not make a difference to those companies, but a multitude sure will make them stop and think next time! Anyway, enough of my rant.
-Chance

Excellent post Chance. Coincidentally enough, this was on Yahoo news today: http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=514&e=15&u=/ap/20040506/ap_on_re_us/apartment_zoo_1

I particularly liked the part: "Mitchell said federal wildlife officials plan to investigate those who sold animals to Verburgt through the Internet."

While without a doubt this lady should be punished to the extent of the law for abusing these animals (one of which happened to be a retic), the sellers should also bare part of the burden.

Have read all the posts here, some make a very good point of defending the over-inflated price of some snakes. But, PERSONALLY speaking, I believe that:

a)There ought to be a Federal licensing and examination for competency for people that wish to own Retics or Rocks or Burms.

b)Retics are large snakes that require large cages. they also are not cheap to feed. The initial cash outlay of $50 for a retic is the SMALLEST part of the cost of the snake, when you factor in cages, food, vet bills, medicine, cleaning agents, water bowls, substrate...you end up haveing a faifly expensive animal to maintain. Anyone that is willing to outlay the kind of cash to properly house and feed these wonderfull snakes ISNT going to balk at the price going up to $100...or $200...or $300 for a"normal" retic. because they know that this is only a FRACTION of what the true costs are over the longhaul. But the problem with people, not necessarily the person that originally posted this question, but people that buy snakes is...they ARENT in it for the longhaul. They get something, get bored with it(The er wears off ) and they want to get rid of it and get something else.Or its gets TOO big. But didnt they know this in the beginning?
Animals continue to get recycled...over and over again, go to kingsnake classifeds and you can often find the same snake being resold, again and again and again.
Which is a shame, because with a large snake like a RETIC, this means that the snake goes from one home to the next and takes the luck of the draw as to if the owners will truly care for him or be responsible in housing him.

So, the cheaper this snake is, the more the likelyhood that it will get"Recycled" as the people that orginally got it werent financially, nor mentally prepared to deal with its TRUE needs.

Haveing said that, I think that just giving snakes away to close friends, as long as you truly KNOW they can financially and physically and mentally take good care of it over a long period of time, is the best way to go. Ive never felt better then when I gave offspring I produced to people that I liked and knew WELL.Makes for lousy business, but great homes for the animals you try so hard and breed

My two cents

Fred Albury