New house and a home "snake" business

Thanks for the feedback Cathy. The realtor is still on the search but I'm assuming that it's for lots outside of subdivisions or older homes. I might have to go the "fixer upper" route.

Thanks!

Check with a title company and get maps that show city and county lines. That will show you where to look.

I think it is all a matter of scale. They don't want someone setting up a chicken or pig farm in their back yard. Nor do they want commercial traffic clogging the parking area.

When I lived in Maryland in a townhouse, from 1978 till 1991 I had snakes there and bred them, selling off some of the babies. There was a community restriction against having ANY animals other than cats or dogs, but everyone there, including officers in the association, knew I had the snakes. No one ever said a word to me. Even when the big Harlan truck would deliver rat pups every other week.

Yes, there was the risk that some jerk could just make things tough on me, but that is true everywhere. When we first moved down here to north Florida, on 50 acres zoned as agricultural, some idiot tried passing around a petition to get us thrown out of here because of the snakes. Apparently he couldn't get many people interested because we are still here. Some people called the health department, but fortunately the director of the health department at that time also had snakes himself, and his wife bred rodents. Needless to say, that didn't go very far, but it COULD have. So they are everywhere.

No matter where you move, it will be best to keep a low profile. Breeding snakes just will not make you very popular with most of your neighbors, no matter where you go. And there are people out there with nothing better to do then to try to stick their nose into your business.

We bought a fixer-upper ourselves a few months ago. It's an old farm house (100 years!) but in very good condition, two acres, a silo and two barns that guess what they will be turned into? The covenants are restrictive to breeding animals in that area (we are across the street from a lake) but they made an amendment and left this subdivision out of it (by mistake)....Of course I'm not planning on putting a neon sign advertising what's in there, but it's a relief.

Thanks for the info.

A little more hunting and my realtor has found areas that don't restrict "breeding" explicitly but also state that you can only have "household pets". Certain legal definitions I have found state that excludes snakes, which seems very odd considering you can buy them at your local petstore.

I did find a pennsylvania court case where they did consider snakes to be household pets:
http://www.columbiapa.org/courts/opi...0of%202001.rtf

It's sad that you almost have to be "underground" to be able to have reptiles. Something I was hoping to avoid in moving to a more urban area.

Agreed. Heck, that's half the reason I wanted to own a house (so I didn't have to deal with landlords telling me what I can and can't have on my property).

Grrrr... whatever happened to our civil liberties?

Originally Posted by The BoidSmith

Although I was thinking of raising your own rodents I also thought that if you wanted to have a reptile breeding facility for business purposes, you had to be registered as any other animal breeding facility. Is that true?

Thanks

Dan,

From my research and folks I've spoken to with the USDA, they really could care less what you do with reptiles, no matter how many you have. Their regualtion is fairly strict and well laid out for most warm-blooded animals, but even there, feeder rodents are marginal. It depends on who you sell them to, to some extent, but the general rule with rodents I believe is if you sell more than $500 worth per year you should be licensed and inspected.

Again, state regulations vary and can be quite different, but I know Iowa could pretty much not care less about snakes either for the most part.

And we live out in the middle of nowhere too, which helps....we too have an over 100 year old farmhouse (the basic structure anyway, it has been added on to since the original house was built), on 6 acres, several miles out of anything resembling a town....and our only neighbor close enough that they could complain doesn't care. I think we have kind of an unspoken agreement.....we don't complain about him and his buddies having a couple too many drinks and raising hell on their 4 wheelers at 3 am once in awhile, and they don't complain about anything we do. It's perfect.

Thanks for looking into this Cathy

I received a real estate listing from the realtor of homes that didn't prohibit "breeding pets for commercial sales" and the list was only 4 houses long. Very disheartening. I called another realtor for another area nearby and hope that she can find me something but I have low hopes at this point in the immediate market.

While ambitious I think I might persue getting the 2/3 lot vote of the subdivision I want to live in to change the covenant. I realize this might not be possible but I'd like to think atleast eloquently speaking about this hobby and the limitations I'm seeing might make atleast a few more people informed.

Thanks for all the feedback. Any helpful statistics or other info about this hobby that might help my plight would be great

Thanks!

While ambitious I think I might persue getting the 2/3 lot vote of the subdivision I want to live in to change the covenant. I realize this might not be possible but I'd like to think atleast eloquently speaking about this hobby and the limitations I'm seeing might make atleast a few more people informed.

I wish you the best of lucks although I've reptiles all my life and haven't been able to convince friends or even relatives! Some people's feelings go beyond rational, it's more powerful than them and they can't control their fear towards those "cold creepy creatures" (sarcasm)!

John, I didn't even think to ask...what kind of snakes do you keep? I know it has become popular in some parts of Iowa to impose size limits and such on snakes you can keep....

You may want to double-check into your area before announcing to anyone that you keep any.