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"Don't breed snakes if you want to make money!"

bitsy said:
My worry is that the end result will be a lot of unwanted/unsaleable hatchlings ending up as King food, because the potential snake-buying public will be cutting back on unnecessary spending.
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Unwanted/unsellable hatchlings could always be wholesaled to pet stores. That way, you won't have to cull them. They might not go off to the best of homes, but hey, they're out of your hair. Granted, I do care about where my animals will be going, but there is a point where you just have to stop and say "Okay, this is getting ridiculous. I've got another 50 hatchlings that I can't get rid of, but I also can't keep them all. Hello, (insert name of petstore here)?"
 
I have to admit I really enjoyed reading over this thread. I've put a lot of thought into what I plan to do when my nakes grow to breeding age, I know I don't want to produce animals who will not be wanted, that is one of the reasons I don't breed dogs.

It is great to have access to such information from people who have been doing this for years upon years. I want to be part of this hobby because I enjoy the snakes and I look forward to seeing my first pippies, no matter what morph they are. I'm sure that I will likely end up keeping several of the babies, but that's kind of the point for me. I want to breed snakes for me, not to make a profit. Of course I'm not saying I won't sell an babies I decide not to keep, but that won't be my goal.

I hope you guys don't mind my inexperienced input. :uhoh:
 
Em, one great thing about breeding when you want to expand your collection is the possibility of trades! Someone who has something I am interested in has always seemed to want pyros, hoggies, black milks, gray bands or something I've produced (if not corns)! I've gotten lucky a few times and raised up some stunners, the babies always are in more demand if you can show the exceptional parents.
 
elrojo said:
Em, one great thing about breeding when you want to expand your collection is the possibility of trades! Someone who has something I am interested in has always seemed to want pyros, hoggies, black milks, gray bands or something I've produced (if not corns)! I've gotten lucky a few times and raised up some stunners, the babies always are in more demand if you can show the exceptional parents.
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I'll trade you a pair of Dumerils babies for a pair of Woma babies :p
 
LO freakin' L!!! I have a full-grown pair that is *finally* producing that I'll trade for a mere $2,600 worth of 'em!
34ec7z4.jpg

FWIW, they are the size of some blackheads! Geez, I love these guys, but it wasn't my best bulls/bears choice!
 
elrojo said:
LO freakin' L!!! I have a full-grown pair that is *finally* producing that I'll trade for a mere $2,600 worth of 'em!
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I meant babies... LOL. :D
Glad to see you saw the humor in it! There are some people that might've taken me seriously and gotten offended :argue::eats02:
 
Rich Z said:
Oh, I believe you can make money off of breeding corn snakes. But there is a catch. A BIG one. You will have to dedicate your LIFE to the business. It is not something you can do on a scale that would be profitable if you want to do it part time.

Be prepared to give up vacations, social contacts, friends and family, because you will be TOO busy taking care of the animals to be concerned about such things.

Yeah, sure, maybe you can hire someone just as dedicated and reliable as you are to take care of things while you are away, but don't count on that being the case.

Furthermore, can you stick it out long enough to become well known and have a good reputation? There are no short cuts to this. I've been doing this for 30 years now and would say that it took about half of that to where "SerpenCo" became even fairly well known. Yeah, maybe someone with a lot of money going into this can do a media and publicity blitz to get their name out there, but you still have to work at that reputation part.

Then once you have worked hard getting a good reputation, you have to work just as hard to KEEP it.

Another factor that probably many, many people don't think about is that the job entails a LOT of physical labor. Not the strenuous type, but the tedious type. How long will you be able to keep up with the demands when you get older? I'm DEFINITELY feeling the strain on my wrists from opening the containers to feed baby snakes every night. When I was younger, standing at the work station to do this for several hours at a shot was no big deal. Now it is GETTING to be a big deal. You find yourself hoping your back will hold out for just a little while longer so you try ignoring the pain, or popping some pain pills so you can stay on schedule.

Sooner or later the day will come when you have to just stand back and re-evaluate the situation and determine if you CAN continue doing this sort of business, not really whether or not you WANT to. Can your business survive if you go into the hospital and get incapacitated for 6 months? If it cannot survive, what will you do if that happens? Yeah, maybe your spouse would be willing to take up the slack, but if he or she is already stretched to the limits helping out with the business, are you going to put him or her in the hospital as well with a nervous breakdown or exhaustion?

Obviously these are all things that are running through my mind lately that many of you will not be facing anytime soon, but could be if you stick this out long enough. This spring I had a wakeup call when I went into the emergency room with appendicitis. Connie had to leave me there so she could harvest the eggs from about a hundred females so they wouldn't dry up and die. I was able to get back into the swing of things pretty quickly, since newer techniques with this kind of surgery were not as drastic as they used to be. Had it happened earlier and I been laid up for 6 weeks or more, things could have been pretty grim.

Anyway, went a bit off topic, but hopefully I gave some food for thought.
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Two thumbs up!
 
Unwanted/unsellable hatchlings could always be wholesaled to pet stores. That way, you won't have to cull them.
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Ah but that's what I already do. There have been odd years in the past when demand has dropped unexpectedly, and the shop that I breed for has just turned round and said they can't take the hatchlings (guaranteed to be eating me out of house and home by that point).

The only other pet shops round here are the mega-chain Petco types. I wouldn't touch them with a bargepole so there's no way I'd send hatchlings there.

It'd be better for me to not breed at all, if only there was advance warning.
 
bitsy said:
Ah but that's what I already do. There have been odd years in the past when demand has dropped unexpectedly, and the shop that I breed for has just turned round and said they can't take the hatchlings (guaranteed to be eating me out of house and home by that point).

The only other pet shops round here are the mega-chain Petco types. I wouldn't touch them with a bargepole so there's no way I'd send hatchlings there.

It'd be better for me to not breed at all, if only there was advance warning.
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I'm sure if you listed a lot on here or on some other sites, you'd probably find a buyer (especially if you check the classifieds for lots wanted!)
 
Drizzt80 said:
I only have about 80 corns and it's a lot of hard work!! ;)

Thanks for the additional insight!

D80
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that was an estimate really, i would an accurate number would be a little less. That will include all ages, that number wont be breeders, i am aiming for about 25 females and 15 or so males next season to breed. The year after, if i can handle it will be maybe double, but i suspect i may well have a lot of adult and sub adults to sell this time next year.
 
RobbiesCornField said:
I'm sure if you listed a lot on here or on some other sites, you'd probably find a buyer (especially if you check the classifieds for lots wanted!)
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You can always find a buyer, especially if you are willing to take $5 on a $200 animal. Thats what the market is unfortunately dictating right now. I know some wholesalers are only offering $10 for any and all corns, no matter what morphs (be it an amel or an amber stripe or an amel striped blood). Which for the producer, sux.
 
There is alot of good thoughts on this thread, here is my take on things.

I've been involved in this hobby for over 15 years. For the first 10 yrs I had just a couple of animals. And then about 5 years ago I started trying to build the collection up a little bit. I found out about SerpenCo and started going to the shows and buying some animals ( mostly from Rich Z ) that I had an intrest in.

Like most of the people on this site I was intrested in the genetics, and started to breed some snakes when they reached maturity. Knowing full well that I wouldn't make tons of money at this. But I thought at least when some babies are produced then I might be able to sell some of those and make some DECENT MONEY to help with the cost of mice, cages , etc.

But here is were the problem begins, like this year for instance I had about 50 hatchlings to sell. Some of them were plain jane stuff like Normals, Amels, Hypos , etc. But then I had some better animals for sale. Like Candy Canes, Crimsons and a few others. I wholesaled most of normal animals out for about $ 10 a piece, and these were animals that were well started and had been feeding for well over 5 weeks. Then saved my other animals for a show in Nov HOPEING to make the DECENT MONEY there. It never happened ! I had Crimsons starting out at around $ 40 a piece. Pretty close to the market price. They never moved off the table. Then I dropped the price by about $ 10 after the first day figuring they were too high, they still didn't move. By the end of the show I might had sold 6 hatchlings ( none were Crimsons ) and one of my older snakes. That show seemed to be a little slow for most people.

I know that this is just a hobby, but the key word that comes to mind is FRUSTRATION, when I can hardly sell these animals at a decent price. When you spend all the time raising up the babies, getting them to breeding size, breeding them. Incubating eggs and trying to get a fair price for the animals, at times it's too much. In my opinion the market is being flooded with Cornsnakes, because these animals are realitivley easy to breed.

As far as next year goes, I may decide not to breed any animals and will hope that the economy will improve .

To Rich , Kathy, and Jeff I don't know how you do it !!

Wow, I feel a little better now.
 
Stephen, I completely see where you're coming from. When I was "out of the reptiles," I would still usually produce two or three hundred colubrids. I won't wholesale some things like locality Okeetees, and will release or feed them off before I'll sell 'em for fifteen bucks! But making money at this is essentially gambling on football in today's market. I love western hogs, but can't possibly justify dropping 3 grand on an anery -though that probably makes business sense. But I won't strap myself to take on a project, nor will I shelve something not paying off that I enjoy. I try to work with animals that make it a hobby I can afford, is my strategy. Or excuse...
 
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