Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Lets say I hatch 100 (one hundred)pastels this season.
It's not hard,: 5-6 pastel males,30-35 large normal females and some luck.(And good professional caretaking off course.)
So here's my question.
How do I sell these 100 pastells????
Are there any big brokers or middlemen who can take such numbers of snakes off my hands?? Because I honestly don't think I could sell them retail one by one.
And what prices could I expect??
I would especially apreciate it if someone could tell me of his own experience with such an occurence.

thanxs for all input

amin

...

First of all this is a question to which I would like to know the answer BEFORE I invest in 6 Adult pastels and 40 Adult normals.(about $20,000 minimum).
And on the other hand I am trying to get an overview of the SIZE of the ball python market.

can anyone tell of a firsthand experience???

thanxs
amin

You could save yourself alot of work by investing in a higher end morph than pastels(spiders for one).Less volume same outcome.
Or,buy a spider male and 2 female adult/juvie pastels and make Bumblebees.
Or get a double het male and adult het females.Make homogenous babies that are possible het for something else as well.

There are many possible avenues actually...
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2.0 50% het Caramel Ball pythons
1.0 Very dark Ball python
0.9 Ball Pythons
1.1 Thayeri Kings
0.1 Viper Boa
1.1 Axanthic looking felines...
-------------------------------------
Looking for 0.2 Phelsuma madagascariensis madagascariensis

Less work more return

I've been lurking here - used to post alot on the cornsnake forum and have been breeding corns for a while now. Lots of work - not nearly enough money for the hatchlings. So I'm getting into BP's now. The genetics are every bit as interesting as corns but, dang it, I'd sure like to make enough back to at least pay for food and bedding!

Come to my house for awhile - you can feed my hundred plus hatchling corns and try to keep them all clean till I sell them off. You may change your mind about getting that many snakes!

Cheryl

yes....it can take it...yes you can wholesale to ALOT of people.....

Ian Gnadsdowski would take alot....Mark and Kim Bell....Brian Barczyck.......any of the other socalled "big" breeders would make you deals.....

..........lots of wholesalers out there........hundreds of them and more.......

......yes..you have to sell cheaper......right now,,,,,pastel males at 700 and female at 1000....you could dump them out at 500$ and $800 more or less and have no trouble selling them all.........

........you have to be flexible ........

some will want 10....some could take all 100.....

good luck.......

like said..get them first.....then worry about feeding them......and then selling them.......

JY
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.....wow....you people....really.....you are exactly like I thought.........

............right?

......................................................

Yeah I am gonna have to bring up that I hope you know what it is gonna take to feed all those snakes. You are going to have to get a rat breeding rack as well. Not to mention a room for an incubator as 50 or so clutches takes up alot of space. These things were the biggest surprise when I got into breeding. Also feeding that many babies is a major chore untill they all start to feed normally. And you are gonna piss off alot of smaller breeders if you start to sell them retail for super cheap. I would wholesale them to someone and let them sell them for close to market price so nobody gets pissed off.

Pastels are the starter morphs for many people interested in ball pythons. They are cheap (for the ball market), and you can see a return on your investment fairly quickly. There are probably many others out there like me (wannabe breeders) wanting to get into morphs, but cannot afford the animals that cost several thousands of dollars. I've been into ball pythons for over two years and still haven't bought a morph (I do have a 50% het pied male I'm going to breed for the first time this next season, along with a nice collection of females).

I've been keeping my eye out on the pastel market as I'll probably purchase one later this year, or early next. The ones at a lower price range, regardless of being a B-grade pastel, get snapped up fairly quickly. I don't think you would have a problem selling 100 pastels, getting their however is a different story.

Mark

100 pastels from 30-35 females? You're being VERY optimistic. Good for you. Reality is this: from those 35 adult females, reaslistically, 20 may take. of those 20, expect 5-6 eggs per snake. Also, DO NOT expect 100% hatch rats, aim for it, but don't expect it. You could also get entire clutches go bad. Your incubator could spike and kill everything. Anyways, of those 20 females that took, lets say (optimistically, as you like to think) that you do get 100% hatch rate and have an average of 5 eggs from each hatch out. That's 100 babies, average half of those to be pastels, and half of those to be male, and the other half to be female. What are you going to do with the 50 that are only pastel sibs? Freeze them? They have to be fed too, and sold. Lucky to get $25/pair for the normals if you wholesale. Lets say they all live, and you sell them all, that's only $625 for all the normals. Not even enough to buy a male pastel. Now you sell the pastel pairs wholesale for $2000 (optimistic again. Now you have $625 from the normals, and $50,000 from the pastels. Total: $50,625. Shave off $200 for the inital investment, that leaves you with $30,625. Gotta breed your own rats, feed them, water bottles, bedding, gotta make incubators, electricity for racks, you've gotta make racks, buy bins, water dishes, NOT TO MENTION the time and energy involved. You'll be left with MAYBE $5000 and hundreds if not THOUSANDS of hours of work. Lots of variables to take into account. Doesn't seem like the best of "get rich quick scemes" out there. Good luck though...

I'm not sure why I'm responding other than I thought the post was a little discouraging to people getting into breeding ball python morphs. Of course the number of babies produces and prices can vary greatly but this is how I try to calculate potential profits. My girlfriend hates it.....

One if I only had a 57% (20 out of 35) breeding success I would be pretty upset, I would say more like 70% to 80% so out of 35 females more like 25 to 28 gravid females as long as the weight is good and they are cycled properly. But even going with your calculations of 100 babies 50 norms 50 pastels equal numbers of males and females. Unless you need to move the normals out immediately you should make more than $625. Go with the 25 males 25 females, you feed them 8 times or so around $160 in mice you should easily get $20 for the males and 35 for the females so $1215 being conservative. Look at the classifieds for 2004 normals for the current prices, and if you set up at shows you can usually get more.

For the pastels even if we go with $1500 a pair wholesale that would be $38,715 minus the $20,000 investment you are left with $18,715. I did a quick calculations on electrical usage for a rack and you figure for 10 adult females you are using around 200 watts full power (11" x 12" Flex Watt per box) so 1752 Kw/h per year at the rates here that would be $144.89 per rack times 4 racks. Figuring the same racks for males. So $579.56 a year, the yearling racks for 100 ball pythons around $280 a year so even if we say $1000 per year for electricity now you are down to $17,715. If you are good with your hand you can build a nice adult rack that holds 5 for around $80 plus boxes, so say $1500 for all the racks now you are at $16,215. Take off another $1500 for heat tape, thermostats, water bowls etc, so we are at $14,715. Now for feeding, I don't see a reason to breed your own if you have a rodent breeder close or can pick up at a local swap. I have around 70 snake in my collection mostly ball pythons and dealt with another 281 babies this year most of which were farm hatched baby balls. Anyway, year to date I have spent around $1600 in food and I'm sure I had some frozen from last year so maybe a little more. Of course we are not talking about those numbers so say $1500, now it's at $13,215 this looks a little better than $5000.

BUT... There are a few important things were left out of the previous post, with these figures after the first year you would have paid off your initial investment, the racks, and the accessories so the following year you have food time and electricity. So taking the $38,715 or even better the $50,625 minus $2500 isn't too bad. And if it is something you love to do the time is inconsequential.

Sorry for ranting...

George Knaack
GLK HERP
www.reptilenews.com

Bottom line: if you aren't in it for the love of the snakes ( and it really sounds like you're not) and you just want to make a quick buck, there are many opportunities non snake related that require less effort, and will yield a higher profit.

He didn't say he didn't like the animals, he just posed a question. Name a few things you could do to make more money (legally) than being in Ball pythons - besides getting real lucky in real estate, getting real lucky in the stock market, being a high level executive or CEO, or being very successful at owning your own business ?
I find your views very pessimistic & might just be the reason you are not making that kind of money now. I like the other guys projections real well & point to the obvious : if you produced 100 Pastels, your going to make money, and your going to make a lot more money the next year when you do it again !
Paul Edwards

YEs, but you'll make a lot more money if you take the time to sell each individual snake to the public rather than wholesaling. Read the initial question. Also, no offense but the BP market isn't the be all and end all of how to make a lot of money. Very closedminded.

Your post opened my eyes! I've been a fool. I am going to just dump my pastels, albinos, ghosts, everything I've worked so hard for. I am just kidding myself. Your right, all those thousands of hours, cleaning cages, feeding snakes, worrying about eggs hatching.
I need to just dump all of them for pennies on the dollar. And be lucky I got the pennies. I've only been kidding myself. No one would want to buy Pastels or Albinos from me. No one.

And I bet you also pull wings off of flys.
Maybe if you saved your lunch money for a few years, you might be able to buy a male pastel of $600.

Good luck to you too.

Thanks for coming out Sparky. Feel better? Anyways, not that I feel the need to justify your response, but I had a great season this year, thanks. I produced a few clutches and know the hard work that is required, but more importantly the love for the breed. If I didn't love what I do, there is no way in HELL I would assist feed my "cheap normals" the trouble eaters that I have, I would't even worry about getting them traded over to rats, then to f/t. It takes a passion to do this and if you don't have it, it ain't gonna be easy. I don't do it for the $$$, and I have 3.7 pastels and a few albinos. I could sell my snakes for $$, but I'd ratehr trade for the morphs I'm still looking to acquire. How many people in the WORLD do this full-time for a living? 3?....4?... Exactly.

Passion..is that what they say about you ? lol
They call me crazy behind my back around here i bet,(Neighbors/friends/family/UPS guy).

I agree though.
Anybody just looking for a fast return will grow weary of the endless cleaning,feeding and watering long before they could attain a colony large enough to support them totally financially.
-----
2.0 50% het Caramel Ball pythons
1.0 Very dark Ball python
0.9 Ball Pythons
1.1 Thayeri Kings
0.1 Viper Boa
1.1 Axanthic looking felines...
-------------------------------------
Looking for 0.2 Phelsuma madagascariensis madagascariensis

especially the more objective ones.
I do love the snakes.But I wouldn't invest that amount of money if I couldn't get something in return.I knew about males for 800 but I thought females were much higher than 1000!?
I also thought about a smaller collection plus a higher end male (eg:spider), but my estimate was built on ADULT pastels and ADULT females, to start producing right away (I,m a greedy money loving and impatient person remember? )so If you apply this to a spider you would be talking about much more money.(NERD lists 03 spiders for 19000)!

amin

If you decide to take the time to sell your snakes NOT to a wholesaler, but to the general public, you can get as much as $3500 for a pair, but if you're looking to wholesale, then you're saving lots of time, but losing lots of money.

Now, your just fishing for comments...
There are more then 3 or 4 people who make a living breeding and selling reptiles. In Florida alone, there is more then fifty I could list for you. Ohio, another twenty, California, dozens, Arizona, Texas, etc.
Go fishing on another website.......

Davis, Sutherlands, Barkers, Woods, Mandic and McCurley. I said Balls. Owning a pet store doesn't count. That's 6, care to add to the list?

I actually know 2 people who make a living raising corn snakes so it can be done but I'd agree that it isn't common.

If you have a half million dollars posted on your available page, not counting what you presold, I would say the day job is not neccesary. I think that there are atleast 100 people in the country making a living breeding snakes, most of them make a chunk of it from balls. I guess too it depends on what you call a living, to me if you produced and sold 15 spiders, 30 pastels, and 10 albinos, I would say you made a pretty good living(about 200k) Maybe I have low standards though. Remember, you could have done the above and went to work every day if you choose to. I could not see working with that kind of hobby income, but I have never had a job I truly loved either. Craig

I know several people that produce well over 100 pastels a year.....
remember they go all over the world. We arent the only ones buying them. Alot get sold wholesale to different jobbers and they take them to shows all over this country and sel them.
There arent enough if you think about it.
Once they hit 400-500.00 then it opens up the market ten fold as that many more people can afford them.
Mike
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"Quality isn't Quality without customer service so I guess I sell quality"

We have sold 42 since returning form Daytona last year. That was August 15th 2003. That DOES NOT include the 6 we sold last year while at the show that we did not taken pictures of before hand. This also DOES NOT Include the 4 that we sold immediately after the show last year. And then there was 1 I did not post a picture of but sold it here locally. And again there was 1 sold at the show this year while still in shed and so no picture was taken.

Some of these sold were even purchased and resold at higher price. We sold all of our 2003 males except a 3 exceptional ones and found ourselves buying them after January 2004.

That's well over 50. And that's all to the public. I could have easily sold out if I did not want to hold any females back and hope to produce Supers & bumblebees in the years to come.

I DO NOT think you would want to sell all 100 of your Pastels. You would want to keep back 20 females and 5-10 males for future breeders. I have had a few that want to purchase 5 & 10 lots of Pastels. None has been sold this way.

Here is link to see all 42 that we sold and have pictures of.

http://imageevent.com/asfreptiles/2003pastelssold

GOD Bless
Andre
ASFReptiles
Link