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What Ball projects should we --> breeders and hobbyist-- be focusing on?

hhmoore said:
At one time, due to this, normal females that were close to breeding size could sell for $400.
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Ahh, the good old days. I remember when I could sell a normal female for that within 5 minutes of posting the ad.
If you do breed now, go for morphs you like and produce quality.
Be prepared to hold on to animals (hence the breed what you like policy) and have fun with it and not be focused on making a ton of money.
 
I didn't take offense to it, and I'm sorry if it came across that I did. I just wanted to point out that not all new people can be lumped together, and that there are some of us who really think about what we're doing before getting overly involved. I totally understand the point you were making, and I've seen it especially with the newer morphs that I considered to be too expensive for new people (bananas in particular this season). I see one breeder selling 20+ male bananas and say "yup, bought one male and bred it to a bunch of normals", but it's not until I'm typing this that I realize anyone with 3 grand could do the same thing.

I think if it did seem as if you struck a chord was because of the statement about people who have been doing it for a year and suddenly have 10+ snakes, because I definitely fit into that category. After seeing the possibilities there are with breeding and how absolutely gorgeous some of the morphs are, I couldn't help but want to get more involved with them (my partner has been interested in and owned ball pythons for years, but I am fairly new to them...less than a year of actual hands on experience). However, I have enough common sense to know that if I breed one snake to 6 females, not only am I sitting on a ton of the same morph and limiting my ability to recover my expenses, but any future plans of diversified gene pools and avoiding inbreeding goes completely out the window.

While some of the short term breeding plans we have are to make up for expenses, almost everything we are doing now is to provide more diversity for future breeding. Obviously we can't just keep throwing money out and will have to sell some to cover costs, but that's why we made sure to have multiple different breeder males (that still fit into our future plans) so as not to flood anything. I know that I am a new breeder, but hopefully I can change the perspective that a lot of people have about newbies :)
 
SPJ said:
If you do breed now, go for morphs you like and produce quality.
Be prepared to hold on to animals (hence the breed what you like policy) and have fun with it and not be focused on making a ton of money.
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That's exactly what our thoughts were when getting started. We figured that if you produce quality you shouldn't have to dump your prices to get rid of morphs, and if we produce snakes that still fit in with what we want to do, it doesn't matter if we sit on them because we can still use them for future projects if no one wants to buy them.

We've already decided that undercutting in order to sell is NOT something we are willing to do. If we are producing high quality snakes and selling them at the going prices (or higher if they're super nice), people who are looking for quality will buy them. If they want cheap they can find it somewhere else.

There are a couple snakes that as soon as I saw them I knew I wanted to make one for myself. I could have easily just bought one for less than what I've paid to get everything started up to breed, but I want to have one that I literally MADE. Lol. Maybe that sounds stupid, but that's how I feel about it. I get excited even just thinking about it right now, and it's still a couple years away.
 
Eww...we might have some butthurt brewing.

The gender difference is extreme at times, I remember browsing kingsnake sometimes and seeing animals from the same clutch, same quality, going $750 for males and $1500 females. On a personal note, I like my normal gals...it's cool seeing all the natural variation in them.
 
Now now Harald, this is an equal opportunity forum...I don't think we should discriminate against someone just because they do or don't like butts being hurt.
 
hhmoore said:
What's your fascination with butthurt? That's the second time you've mentioned it in this thread; and I'm pretty sure this wasn't the only one.
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It's good entertainment.
MCMB-2 said:
Now now Harald, this is an equal opportunity forum...I don't think we should discriminate against someone just because they do or don't like butts being hurt.
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Spank you! ;)
 
Here's a project: introduce non-herpers to your snakes. Bonus points if one of these people eventually buys an animal from you.
 
bcr229 said:
Here's a project: introduce non-herpers to your snakes. Bonus points if one of these people eventually buys an animal from you.
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I have done this before with geckos. I work part time at a day care with my mom and I have been trying to get some snakes in there. I think I am going to start by hanging a couple pictures of my snakes breeding, sitting on eggs, incubators, and just the snakes themselves obviously. Eventually they will all be ok with me bringing a few to show the kids...hopefully.
 
bcr229 said:
Here's a project: introduce non-herpers to your snakes. Bonus points if one of these people eventually buys an animal from you.
Click to expand...

Haha, I keep trying to do this with both snakes and rats. Still no conversions, and I've been selling pretty hard. My girlfriend seems to have a lot better luck, guys will just come up and start asking her about snakes (could be they're hitting on her, but eh :p).
 
EmeraldBoid said:
I work part time at a day care with my mom and I have been trying to get some snakes in there. Eventually they will all be ok with me bringing a few to show the kids...hopefully.
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Eesh. Toddlers might not be the best target group lol. I can only speak from personal experience, but all the moms I have known would freak out if they knew I was having their little kid play with a snake. Too many misconceptions for them to look at things realistically.

Heck, the girls that live downstairs have known me for two years and know that I would never do anything to hurt their daughter, and I still think her mom would freak out if she knew I was taking the snakes out around her. She knows they're friendly, I think it's just that maternal instinct. Granted, the little girl is only two and a half, so maybe it depends on the age.
 
MCMB-2 said:
Eesh. Toddlers might not be the best target group lol. I can only speak from personal experience, but all the moms I have known would freak out if they knew I was having their little kid play with a snake. Too many misconceptions for them to look at things realistically.

Heck, the girls that live downstairs have known me for two years and know that I would never do anything to hurt their daughter, and I still think her mom would freak out if she knew I was taking the snakes out around her. She knows they're friendly, I think it's just that maternal instinct. Granted, the little girl is only two and a half, so maybe it depends on the age.
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I work with 4 and up. If it takes a few years then so be it, I joke about a lot of things, but education is not one. Obviously everything would be cleared with the parents and it could easily be made an optional activity for them "go play outside or spend 20 minutes learning about snakes then go outside". The ideal is after a few months of them, particularly older students, seeing pictures, little write ups, and maybe even a video, the kids (and the parents) will want to see the actual snakes.
 
I have a home-based business and keep one reptile enclosure in the office with one of my snakes, usually one that's pretty, not too big, and very tolerant of being handled. My male albino boa and my male BRB have both been ambassadors and have helped change quite a few minds.

I'm dealing with adults though, not kids.
 
Seen this crash coming yrs ago.... even c-list is loaded with BP nobody wants and you see the same ads up for months at a time. ... haven't sold an animal in years. . Don't do much breeding and I breed what I like. Because in the end this is a hobby to me. Some people thought with BP they would cash in more than the stock market. ... well not if everyone is mass producing the same thing!
 
To be fair, craigslist isn't the top choice for selling things unless you're dumping them cheap. Maybe it's just me, but I don't buy anything on craigslist unless it's a killer deal.

I still see balls selling on here as long as they're quality. The people who get stuck with snakes are the ones who breed out 20 of the same morph, have crappy genetics, and/or are asking way too much for something that a couple dozen other people are selling (or they make nonsensical combos that no one would ever want).

Maybe I'm being overly optimistic, but I think people will always want nice looking snakes.
 
MCMB-2 said:
Maybe I'm being overly optimistic, but I think people will always want nice looking snakes.
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...for the best price ;) .

In the end it all comes back to one simple fact that hhmoore and many others have pointed out from the get go, there is an excess quantity. There are a handful of breeders of certain species that produce animals 3k and up and sell out before they even hit the available page. Why is it so hard to move a nice $800 triple gene male BP then? Because, there's already 20 more on the FedEx truck and more about pip in the incubator. I think this is a big cue for all of us to slow down at the production line...honestly I may have one breed able female (who will probably get a two year break) this year and will be getting a few younger girls to raise up over the next 4-5 years. I really think if we made more conservative husbandry practices the norm in BPs, like we already do for so many other species, then we will have a lot more "stable" of a market.

Sorry hhmoore I did not mean to offend you with the butthurt thing, you have my sincere apology.
 
I understand the argument but I disagree to some extent. We just paid twice as much for a baby snake as we could have paid for an adult breeder (same exact morph combo) simply because the genetics were clearly much nicer.

I would argue that most of the people who are pushing out triple genes are just doing it to try to make money, and the combos themselves look like crap. Anybody can take a couple codom snakes and make triple or quad combos, but if they look like garbage who is going to want them?

I stand by the statement that if people work to produce quality, their snakes will sell. Pumping a bunch of different codoms into a snake doesn't automatically make it worth a grand. I don't care how many genes a snake has, I just want it to look nice.
 
MCMB-2 said:
I understand the argument but I disagree to some extent. We just paid twice as much for a baby snake as we could have paid for an adult breeder (same exact morph combo) simply because the genetics were clearly much nicer.

I would argue that most of the people who are pushing out triple genes are just doing it to try to make money, and the combos themselves look like crap. Anybody can take a couple codom snakes and make triple or quad combos, but if they look like garbage who is going to want them?

I stand by the statement that if people work to produce quality, their snakes will sell. Pumping a bunch of different codoms into a snake doesn't automatically make it worth a grand. I don't care how many genes a snake has, I just want it to look nice.
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The triple gene example was just an example, it was not definitive. Yes Greg Maxwell said it himself, "...quality is contagious". what looks good is very subjective, but using your example, how many base morphs do you still see in the classifieds for weeks and weeks before they are sold? Some of my favorites are champagne, butter, mystic, pastel, black pastel, bananas and pieds. I believe focusing more on quality is a must, and I think we both respect the other for believing so even before this thread; however, if we keep pumping out at this rate, whether it's mud bomb pastels or pastels rivaling highlighter carpets, then this market will stay flooded. A better focus on line breeding for exceptional animals combined with more conservative practices can drain this market to safe levels. Imo.
 
I know what you were getting at, and I agree that it is most noticeable with the "entry level" morphs (single gene codoms). I don't doubt that some of it is people overproducing, but I think part of it also results from breeders working on higher end projects just getting bad luck (breeding a couple codom combos together and getting a bunch of single genes out). So not only do you have the lower end breeders producing them, but higher end breeders who don't get along with statistics and end up with a bunch of them that they have to dump to make up costs.

The problem with that too is that there isn't a whole lot of variation with single gene morphs, especially the subtle ones (YB or het anything) so it really is a battle for who is going to give the lowest price (obviously this isn't true for all morphs...pastels immediately come to mind).

I'm just going to stay optimistic and make combos that I think look cool, or that I think will look really cool, and hopefully other people will like them as well. I suppose time will tell :)
 
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