I'm not a professional breeder. We have two adult corn snakes (the boys really want to make it 4). That means 30-40 offspring a year who need homes. What is the best way to find homes? (Obviously we'd still probably need to charge something). (I know, we don't *have* to breed them, but it's fun, exciting, and educational). Last year we did manage to find homes for all of them -- we sold a few through a newspaper ad, a couple at a reptile show, a few to local pet stores, and a few to a school, but it was a lot of work. I'd rather not get into the shipping hassle. So now, in the lull before they start piping, does anyone have any good leads to finding homes? (We're in Seattle, there are 20 odd eggs in the incubator, and I'm betting on a second clutch w/i a week).
Another question: Do you usually find the female sheds between her post-lay and her pre-lay shed? (I'm not sure if this last shed was a pre-lay shed. She had her first clutch May 1st. She shed about May 5th. We fed her up and reintroduced the male about May 20th and she shed again June 11th. She looks chubby, but I'm not entirely sure (I've tried several times, but I'm never able to feel the eggs in her). She is exhibiting that restless behavior (they call it nesting in humans) where she searches frantically around the cage). There is a nest box there which she retires to occasionally.
Corinne
dragonfly@w-link.net
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Finding homes
Replies (4)
If you want to sell them you should try the pet stores around you. You should also try to sell them to other sites on the net. Also you should try to find wholesale stores. Try looking in reptile magazines.
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Blake M.
stoneageh.tripod.com/
stoneage107@juno.com
Have you tried getting a table at a local reptile show? This is something me and a couple friends hope to do this year. Better prices and, I suspect, better homes than a pet store. I don't breed my corns, but the other friends do. I hope to have half a dozen to a dozen Children's Pythons to sell.(eggs due this week!) Next year I will have Ratsnakes too. And I am very leary of selling online mostly for the fact that there are not a lot of options for shipping snakes.
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Sonya
Haven't we warned you about tampering with the structure of a chaotic system?
Mrs. Neutron
is just to sell the whole lot to a distributor. They don't pay a lot but it definately is easier and if you are in it for fun and education, the money won't matter. If your local wholesalers are oversaturated with corns, the next best bet (again if you are looking for the easy way out) is to find a kingsnake breeder who will need them for scenting. If you really like to breed, perhaps you should look into making your collection 4, and get a pair of high end morphs to breed. The higher end your hatchlings are the faster you will be able to place them and the likelyhood of them finding proper placement also goes up(not to mention the better price you will get for them, not a bad side effect). It seems the market has all the normals, amels, anerys, snows, motleys etc. it can handle.
To find homes for any pet requires effort, especially in animals that can have 20 offspring per clutch. My suggestion if you find you have a hard time finding good homes for the baby snakes and/or don't like the ideal of sellign them enmass to wholesalers, is to stop breeding them and just enjoy the snakes.
