Reptile & Amphibian Forums

im curious.... is there a living to be made by breeding ball pythons (norphs of course)... I havea long time until I truly get into breeding or atleast to sustain a decent way of life. Like I said, I'm just curious

I would say there are a handful that do. For the rest of us, we lose money year after year. So why do I do it? For the enjoyment. Any animals I sell help to pay for the ones I have or fund new projects.

Are you looking to do it and support yourself with just that? I'd advise against it. I think the morphs are in "craze" right now and after a while will settle down.
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Jay A. Martin

Back in the early 90's I was just breeding tons of normals and selling them for $100 a piece and making good money. I never lost money and I never even had a morph until 2001. I can't understand how, with even just ONE clutch that you would actually LOSE money. They are cheap to feed, cheap to house, and moderately easy to breed. If you're actually losing money, you're doing something seriously wrong.
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Signature file edited; [phw 9/26/04]

I am preparing my four for breeding now. I am glad to hear what you have said. Obviously, I am in the hole right now as I haven't produced anything yet! Thanks for your comment, it gives me hope.
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2.2 BPs (Syd, Nancy, Bill, and Beatrix)
0.2 French Lops (Jacquotte and Lapine)
1 Rat colony

Take a good hard look. Are you breeding normals? With $5 imports coming in daily, you won't get much. Will your breedings produce hets or visible morphs. If not visible, good luck trying to sell them if you are an unknown breeder.

What am I saying? Don't count your eggs before they are hatched and be careful. There are some out there that would like you to believe that breeding is as easy as sleeping, visible morphs like pieds can be had for no more that 1K and that you can become rich in this hobby/business.

All the best though!
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Jay A. Martin

Pieds for a grand? Want to clue me in on where I can get a dozen or so?

I'm not sure you can sell a normal for $100 anymore, it seems like the going rate is closer to $50-$75 unless you are an established breeder and less if your selling imports. Unless you had a whole bunch of them breeding it doesn't seem like it would be worth it to me and then who would you sell all of them too? Our local pet stores have had the same normals priced around $75 since September. So have some of the web sites I've looked at. Most of them males. When I was looking around for a snake for my son last November, many of the breeders I spoke with were willing to give me a male if I purchased a female. So there is always that possiblity that the demand isn't there - hense lost money. Just something to think about.
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Tosha

1.1.0 Ball Python (Harry and Fluffy)
0.1.0 Siberian Husky (Kita)
0.2.0 Feline (Pippen and Pandora)
0.0.1 Dessert Tortoise (Pope)
5.4.2 Fish (1,2,3,4...)
0.0.1 Frog rescued from pool skimmer
0.0.2 Lizards rescued from pool skimmer

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Chad Bachman

I'm not saying to breed normals in the HERE AND NOW and make tons of money, LOL!! I'm saying that even when I was just doing normals back in the early 90's, I was still making money at it. If you look at the math, its pretty hard to actualyl lose money unless 1) You suck at keeping reptiles 2) things die because of #1....

Buy a trio (1.2) of normals for $250. Rubbermaids and heating accessories is about $60. So initial cost is $310. Food for 2 seasons (up to year 3 for the females) is about $50 per animal (being super generous with the price, but with only 3 snakes, you probably won't have access to cheap rats). So food is $300 total plus your initial cost, and you are in for $610. Add in electricity for the 2 years and that's about $40 so $650.

Breed the females. 6 eggs each because you waited until year 3 and got them nice and plump at 2,000g plus. 12 eggs. 6.6. Sell the 6 males to pet stores for $40ea and that's $240, leaving you with 6 females to sell. You need to get $410 to recoup your investment (not really, because you still OWN the principle). So for $70 each you can break even. But you aren't breaking even because you STILL OWN THE INVESTMENT!!! You could now sell the two adult females for $400 each and have doubled your money in 2 years. That's 48% interest compounded monthly. Your credit card charges you 18% interest, so to be making THREE TIMES what the credit card people charge means you are doing something right.

Obviously the numbers are just for playing around, but look, this is just normals! Add a Pastel or an albino and the numbers change DRAMATICALLY.

Sure if you never breed a thing you'll lose money. Of course. But if are confident in your abilities, then there is no reason to lose a dime. Not at all. Plus, you'll always still have the initial investment which in the case of females and males of certain morphs, goes up HUGE as they get older. Heck, you could make a killing just by buying baby females and raising them up to breeding size.

You're overly optimistic and lean strongly to one side. Sorry, but the largest clutch I've had was 10 eggs from a 2900 gram female. My male to female ratios have never been 50/50. I usually end up with 2/3s male. But by your standards, I don't know what I'm doing. Fair enough. Best case scenario, you make money. But in the reality I live in, best case is 50% at best. I'll just chalk it up to being one of the very few who aren't making a killing in this business. But that's ok, I'm not in it for the money.
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Jay A. Martin

Last year I got a 6-egg clutch from a 1290g female, a 7 egg clutch from a 1830g female and an 8 egg clutch from a 2050g female. The rest of my females were over 2500g, but they didn't necessarily give any more eggs. I wasn't being optomistic. I was just going by my data for the last 11 years.

You pretty much have to raise your own feeders to come close to profitability before the morph factor. Raising up babies takes a lot of meals. Anyone out there with good records? I'm guessing it takes between 150 - 250 meals to get a female up to breeding size. Even buying wholesale those might cost you on average $1.50 each and you will be a long way paying that and caging/heating/incubator off with $30 normals. Heaven forbid you are buying $4-6 pet store feeders. Maybe between breeding seasons it's only 20 - 35 meals but they are big meals by that size and might run you close to $2 each wholesale $6 retail and you have to pay for feeding the male too and the females that don't go every year and vet and marketing expenses (tables at shows etc.). It's pretty razor thin if everything doesn't go perfect. However, anyone figure what it actually costs you to raise your own rats? I used to get 50# bags of feed for $8 and could feed my females (snakes) well enough to raise them up a lot faster in addition to saving on my current $1,500 a year feeder bill. This will be about my 15th year keeping reptiles and perhaps my first profitable one with a little luck. Of course I haven't worked at it all that consistently or invested much of anything either.

If this were all true - you've spent 3 years and the only real money you've made (less than a grand) is by selling the two breeder females, leaving you with what? Does that sound like it's worth it? Yes, with morphs there is more money involved, but how many unwanted morph males are you going to be able to dump off at the pet store? And with morphs in those three years prices will drop significantly and you'll have to sell more to make up the initial investment, not to mention the higher priced animals are harder to sell. And if your joe schmo your not going to be able to sell your stock like NERD does. There are a lot of factors involved. Yea, if your in it for the buck and you have the money, you can probably do it. But there is a reason why most of the breeders here (the ones that just love their snakes) are broke (LOL). My two cents probably are worth two cents but some thought to toss out. I'm sure I missed the point.
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Tosha

1.1.0 Ball Python (Harry and Fluffy)
0.1.0 Siberian Husky (Kita)
0.2.0 Feline (Pippen and Pandora)
0.0.1 Dessert Tortoise (Pope)
5.4.2 Fish (1,2,3,4...)
0.0.1 Frog rescued from pool skimmer
0.0.2 Lizards rescued from pool skimmer

Well at least that has always been my problem... Anyway if you have the money to invest, love for the animals and make smart choices I don't think it is hard to make money. You buy one 2004 male Mojave ten grand, should easily be breedable by next season. Mojave produces lucys so the price 'probably' won't drop as fast as some of the other co-doms... You buy 5 captive females that will be ready next year, say two grand. and yes if you have the money and look hard enough you can find them... Last year I bred 5 females and got 4 clutches totaling 22 viable eggs that all hatched. So forget the 50% Mojaves go a little less than 25% and say 5 Mojaves produced out of the 22. Your not a big breeder so you have to sell them a little cheaper say $8,000 each, so a pretty easy $40,000. Then of course you have to minus the 12K investment and probably less than $600 in feed so you are still talking over 27K profit. Even being conservative that wouldn't be too bad of a profit margin for the time involved. It all depends on what you have to invest RIGHT NOW.

Granted if the Mojave dies or is infertile then you're screwed but there are always risks...

Just my opinion,
George Knaack
GLK HERP

This is a great thread.. and I really enjoyed to replies (including fellow Canadian Mr Favelle). However, one thing was missed in my opinion.. it's not "making money" that was the original question.. it was "breeding BPs for a living". Making money is one thing, but making enough to be able to pay for your house, car, food, etc is a whole different story... How much is left for you at the end of the year? How many hours a day do you have to work?

Thanks,
Bristen.