Need market opinions

There's a guy selling off his breeding collection. I've been wanting to get into it as a hobby... the problem is that I haven't convinced DH (hubby) that its a good idea.

The guy has a few Sand Boas but mainly corns. Amel, Snow, & Normal. My first question is... are these types of snakes actually selling? Oh, and I have a Cal King I would like to breed. Are jungle corn/kings selling?

This would be my first attempt at breeding and he has a total of around 10 snakes. Is this too much for a first time breeder to take on? DH seems to think that I should start really small (like just with one pair) but my thought is that you still have to have most of the same equipment for one pair that you do for 5 pairs... just a few more mice (just started a colony) and cleaning of more cages. An 8 tub rack and incubator come with the snakes.

Any ideas or comments would be welcome. Thanks

Well, one thing I can say that you could consider - corns can have some pretty good sized clutches, and hatching 5 clutches as opposed to one can mean the difference of having to buy one baby rack and having to buy several baby racks. Do you have the time and space to feed 100 hatchlings until they are all sold? Or enough mice that you will have 100 pinkies every feeding day?

You also need to be aware of is that type of corns you are looking at typically sell for a very low price. They may eat more money's worth of pinks before you get them sold than what you will get for them. And...you would probably be looking at finding a local outlet for them, because many buyers will have a hard time justifying spending $60 to ship a $15 baby corn. That and well...in my opinion, sales of ANY kind that is non-necessity items has slowed considerably in this economy.

I'm not trying to discourage you, breeding is a very rewarding hobby. I just want to try to make sure that you are aware of the financials as you go into it - if you're looking to make money, well....you probably won't. If you are just in it for the experience, and you really love the critters, you'll enjoy it.

Just make sure you have a firm knowledge of all of the variabl;es BEFORE getting into it.

Well, when I talked with him I asked about the possibility of just buying a few of the items and 2 or 4 of the snakes. The amount he wanted for the items I mentioned was over half of what I offered for the entire set up. I could always sell off the excess breeding pairs I guess. Course, they may be a hard sell this day and age too?

It doesn't sound like THAT many animals, if you can afford the money and time to get everything you need and to care for them. As for pinks, I do raise some mice, although not enough to feed all of my babies. If you buy a large quantity of mice, you can buy frozen pinks very cheaply.

I would suggest that you first check out some local shops or other businesses that buy wholesale, and see what you can get wholesale for them. It could be as low as $5 - $10 each for normals or amels and snows. Whatever it is, the first year or two, I would suggest selling at least half or more of the babies wholesale, as soon as they eat once or twice, before you have much time or money invested into them. Try to hold back mostly females of snows or the prettiest amels for retail sale. Then you can spend more time on the babies left to try to cultivate a retail market, if that is what you want to do. It would be good experience (if you can start cheaply enough) to find out whether you really want to invest more time and money into it, or just keep a few pets.

Part of the problem with finding a local outlet is that the pet stores that start up in my town always seem to go out of business... the nearest pet store is an hour away. Even then the retail stores like Petsmart and Petco don't seem to carry many snakes.

If you had to choose between the normal corns, the snow corns and the amel corns which would be your best bet as far as market?

Definitely don't choose normals as a best seller. Some people appreciate them, but there are always plenty of normals "left over" from other het projects people are always doing. I would never produce normals on purpose, unless I had a special line of them that was not really all that "normal". Snows and amels will sell better, and will allow you to use some of those to combine with other morphs, as well.

I would not keep any normal males at all, unless you need them for some particular goal. And I would try to avoid normal females, but at least they are more valuable than normal males. If you start out with just snows and amels, and want to upgrade, you can buy baby males or pairs, and breed the males to your snow and amel (and even normal) females, eventually. If you think about it carefully, you can choose some males that are combos of amel and anery, plus something else, so you can avoid just producing a bunch or normal, multi het babies. For example, you could pick up a male opal (amel lav) or fire (amel blood), butter (amel caramel) etc. Or throw some motley or stripes into the mix, as well. Or you could go the anery combo route and start raising a male (or pairs) of ghosts (anery hypo). Keep in mind that anerys don't usually sell as quickly as amels, though.

By upgrading in this manner, you would be producing babies that are amel (or anery, in the case of ghosts), but het for other traits. You could then raise up those multi het babies as eventual replacements, to produce a larger assortment of morphs in the future, without spending a ton of money.

It just depends on your goals, and the time, effort, and money you wish to invest.

You can always ship the babies to a wholesaler. If you do, then you will have to have enough to make it worthwhile for them to pay shipping. Most will probably want to buy $300 - $400 minimum (at very cheap wholesale prices) to make it worth shipping. Or you can go to a show and try to sell some retail (which is almost wholesale pricing, at the shows), and then sell a bunch wholesale to another vendor by the end of the show.

just be sure you don't get in too deeply at the beginning - becoming overwhelmed early on can really dampen your enthusiasm for the whole hobby. Be sure you have an outlet for a large percentage of the babies, even at a cheap price, so you can work with only the number you feel comfortable with - that will help you avoid burn out. For the first few years, just be really happy if you can come out even, and pay for food, electricity, etc. It may take a while (as well as coming out of the recession, and maybe even starting to produce more valuable morphs) before you really see a profit. So be sure to keep it fun - if it is not, you certainly won't want to be doing it just for the meager profit you are likely to see. OTOH, how many people have a hobby that has a chance to even pay for itself?

Good luck!