So here they are: my ball python breeder best principles and practices:

Simple Recessive:  “Hoes Before Bros”

It is a simple and unalterable fact that female ball pythons take longer to reach sexual maturity than males.  Most females won’t breed until their third or fourth winter while males can potentially be ready inside of a year, 18 months almost without fail.  If, in the same buying season, you acquire both male and female hatchlings for a project your male will be ready to breed not less than a full year before the female.  The only guaranteed thing you can do during that time is watch the value of the morph continue to fall.  When examining the original price paid you will see that you acquired and paid for the male at least a full year in advance of when you should have.  You should have purchased only females in year one and waited at least a full year before buying the male.  Doing this makes it more likely that you will have both of them reaching sexual maturity at the same time.  This minimizes your losses from depreciation.  So the next time you are looking to start a simple recessive project, buy your females first; pick up the males a year later.

This best practice may not appear to make sense if you already have other females that will be ready when the male is a year old (give or take).  But that all-too-common scenario really just illustrates the point.  The females you already have that will be paired with the male were acquired (or born) long before the male, which is exactly what I am suggesting should be done with simple recessives.

Dominant/Co-Dominant:  “Bros Before Hoes”

If you are going to visually see the product of your breeding in the first generation of offspring (e.g. dominant/co-dominant genes) it is a better decision to invest in males first and turn your attention to the acquisition of females in the following year(s).  Dominant and Co-Dominant (incomplete dominant) prices fall fast.  In order to have a chance at seeing a return in a reasonable time period you have to work for very fast turnaround.  Many males can be ready to breed in less than a year and, assuming they perform, you will see the product of your efforts in the next breeding season.  This allows you to begin recouping your investment after only one season of depreciation.  If you are using females to get yourself into a particular co-dom project you will have to patiently suffer through 2-3 seasons of depreciation before seeing the first dollars in return.  This is too painful for most people to bear and is not an ideal use of investment capital.

A corollary to this principle is that the eventual investment in co-dom/dominant females is required.  It is only when both the male and female are genetically special that we see the really exceptional designer morph advancement.  It should be abundantly obvious that true genetic progress only comes when both male and female are contributing genetic awesomeness to the mix.  Four, fix & six gene snakes don’t typically get made because all of the genetic mutations come from one side of the family; both mom and dad have to be sufficiently morphed-up in order to make really morphed-up kids.  It’s all about genetic synergy.

Pair Genetically Greater Boys with Genetically Lower Girls …But Never the Other Way Around
(Put Another Way:  Never Breed a More Expensive Female to a Less Expensive Male)

It is reasonable to buy a male dominant/co-dom morph and use it to make more of the same (e.g. breed it to a normal female).  However, you should never do that with a female.  When you acquire female dominant/co-dominant morphs it should be with the full intent of breeding it to a male whose genetics are different (and typically of greater financial value than hers).  It is economically effective to acquire a male dominant/co-dominant animal and breed it to a genetically lower female.  The opposite is never true.  Do not acquire a dominant/co-dominant female and breed it to a genetically lower male.   Please note that ‘genetically lower’ refers to the financial value of the morph.  For example:

• It is sane to buy a pastel male and breed it to a normal female.  It is insane to by a normal male and breed it to a pastel female.
• It is sane to buy a champagne male and breed it to a pastel female.  It is insane to buy a champagne female and breed it to a pastel male.
• It is sane to buy a silver surfer male and breed it to a ghost female.  It is insane to buy a silver surfer female and breed it to a ghost male.
• It is sane to buy a male albino and breed it to a het albino female.  It is insane to buy an albino female and breed it to a het albino male.  Please note that your sanity is also in question if you breed an albino male to an albino female.  At the very least breed female albinos with a male who is albino plus something else (albino spider, albino pinstripe, albino black pastel, etc.).
• Do not buy a pastel female with plans of breeding her to a pastel male (even though you can make super pastels).  It is no longer true that breeders intentionally produce super pastel ball pythons; they are almost always the product of missed opportunity in a different pairing (e.g. lemon blast x pastel lesser can produce super pastels but it is not what the breeder was trying for).  A female pastel bred to any other co-dom morph will, in the best case, always produce babies that are worth more money than a super pastel.

I almost gave myself an aneurysm this breeding season when I pulled a clutch of eggs from a bumble bee female and realized I had bred her to a pinstripe male.  This is a classic example of wasted female potential.  My decision to breed that particular pair of animals was rooted in my lack of males to go with all of my females.  I have a lot of 3, 4 and 5-gene males …but I have a lot more females.  Rather than breed her to nothing or try to stretch a male too thinly I, at some point, decided that the long odds of making spinner blasts was better than nothing at all.  The problem is that the odds of making spiders and pinstripes is much greater and that negates the value of such a great female.  Don’t make mistakes like that.

Diversity is a Detriment

Quality never goes out of style.  This does not require much elaboration.  But quantity…

Quantity of production of a particular morph is a benefit.  This is obviously true from the simple “more is better” perspective.  But quantity of production is also important for a breeder because the acquisition of many of your morphs will come out of  your own production and it is only after the needs of your own collection are satisfied that you can begin to easily entertain the notion of selling the results of your production.  You will forever be your own best customer and that is not a financially good thing.  If, because of limited breeding stock, you only produce a tiny handful of the morph you are shooting for you will be hard-pressed to sell when you finally hit on the odds.  How many times have you heard yourself say, “Yeah, I’ve got to keep this.”?   This could mean that your ability to sell your productive efforts is pushed back by a full breeding season and that push has a tangible financial value.

If you only produce a single clutch of clowns how can you easily sell them when you don’t have all of the clowns you need for yourself?  If you sell them without first satisfying the needs of your own collection you are effectively decreasing the worth of your collection (while increasing the quality of your competitor’s collection).  Ball python breeding groups are always depreciating in value and, as such, must continuously be upgraded to keep them even with the market.  If the diversity of morphs in your collection is out of proportion to its size you will probably produce comparatively few of each kind of morph.  The desire to keep them will be powerful and each animal you keep is less money in your pocket this season.  If you focus less on diversity and more on quantity you will be more likely to produce an abundance of a particular morph.  The decision to sell becomes easier and all you need to do is decide which animal(s) to keep rather than if there is an animal to keep.

It is not as exciting to keep a larger number of the same morph but it is definitely more profitable.  On the other hand, a diverse collection is more fun to look at but, since you are more likely to keep the best of your production, you are more of a hobbyist than a businessperson (and I’m not really writing for the hobbyist at the moment).

This principle also has a few corollary’s:

1. When you produce a particular morph in quantity you have more to choose from when selecting quality.  You get to pick the very best of what you produce to keep for yourself rather than having to hold on to whatever you get.
2. There can be a lot of variation in feeding response with ball pythons.  If you have several of the same morph you can hold them for a few weeks/months to see which are the best feeders.  You should always keep the best-looking, best-feeding animals for yourself.  And no, this is not an ethical issue.  A negative-minded person will read this and say that I wrote, “keep the good stuff for yourself, sell the crappy stuff to your customers.”  I’m not suggesting that at all.  Bluntly:  I suggest that you keep the very best for yourself, sell the remaining excellent product to your customers and, if you have anything of “low” quality (unattractive, poor feeding response, etc.), sell it to the wholesalers.  And yes, that should serve as a warning to people who buy the cheapest snake they can find (which is usually from the wholesalers).  Trust me on this one; the great deal you just got on that snake may not be as great a deal as you think.  As is often the case in life, you get what you pay for.

Nobody is going to tend to your collection but you.  If you don’t take steps to make sure it is the best is can be …who will?  If you give your friend’s first pick they will take the very best of what you produce and expect the lowest price.  If you put the very best of what you produce up for the world to buy, it will sell and people will applaud you for your quality.  But at what cost?  If you build your own collection from the leftovers how long can your collection remain superior?  Hopefully that question is rhetorical.  Never feel bad about keeping the best for yourself.  It is your responsibility to do so.  Altruism has no place anywhere on this planet, including the ball python business.

Refinement is a Religion

As you read this article the financial value of your ball python collection is falling.  The only way to keep it even or, dare I say, growing in value is to constantly increase its genetic quality.  If you have single-gene males now you need to upgrade them to multi-gene males for next year.  If you have a large number of normal female breeders you need to upgrade them to pastels, black pastels and other single-gene co-dom girls.  If you already have a solid base of single-gene breeder females you need to upgrade them to multi-gene girls.  And as soon as that upgrade is complete you will need to begin to do it again.  You cannot maintain profitability in a market as volatile as the ball python trade without constantly upgrading.  It, like the different combinations of morphs that can be produced, is endless.

Be mindful of the size of your collection as you go through this process.  The desire to keep the old while adding the new can quickly lead to an excessively large collection.  Big collections come with big caging bills, even bigger rodent bills and endless maintenance requirements.  The key here is to constantly increase the quality of the collection, not its size.  As one girl comes of age she should be moving into, not next to, the slot of another girl.  Don’t get me wrong, though.  If you want to grow your collection, do so.  But know how it is growing.  Collections in growth-mode need to grow in size and quality simultaneously.  Don’t keep older, less valuable, animals into infinity.  A $100 female breeder eats just as much as a $1,000 female breeder, requires the same amount of time to care for and generally produces animals that are worth significantly less.  A person who is breeding ten $1,000 females is going to make as much or more money with less effort and less overhead than the person breeding fifty $100 normal females.

2.0 Males

Keep multiple males of the same morph.  2.0 Pastel Genetic Stripes, 2.0 Pieds, 2.0 Pastel Lessers and 2.0 Honey Bees.  Not all males are good breeders and not all females are receptive to any male.  If you want to maximize the percentage of females that lay viable eggs each season you need to make sure they have as many opportunities as possible to be with a male.  Rotating at least two males of the same morph with each female will do this.  Yes, it is more expensive and no, it is not as exciting as having a bunch male morph diversity.  But this isn’t about having the prettiest collection; it’s about having the most productive collection possible.  The addition of a second male should easily pay for itself in the form of a higher rate of oviposition.  If the addition of another male can increase the number of females who produce each season by 10% he will pay for himself (and then some) in one year.

How many people ever see your collection anyway?  I can still count on two hands the number of people who have actually been to my facility over the past few years.  Would you rather “ooh and aah” over  your snake rack or your bank account?  Pick one and then act accordingly.  Very few of us can do both.

The One Who Dies with the Largest Ball Python Collection Does Not Win

Quality versus quantity.  Consider a tale of two breeders; one hatches 2,000 ball pythons each season with prices ranging from $8 – $10,000.  The other breeder hatches 300 babies with most prices ranging in the $500-$5,000 and up range.  Both are making money, no doubt.  But the guy with 2,000 baby snakes is busting his butt every day, has a crew of people helping him and has massive overhead.  The guy producing a comparative handful of snakes is doing it on his own, mostly in the evenings.  He enjoys spending time with his animals and has paid his house off over the past five years.  Both paths are a way to make money but one is a harder life.  The decidedly American mentality that “more is better” is tough to shake; it’s everywhere around us every day.  A smaller, higher-end collection is worth a lot more in time spent and overall quality of life.  But that is just an opinion, not a fact.

Never Breed Recessives a Year After Dominant/Co-Dominants

If you breed a dominant/co-dominant male to a female in one breeding you should avoid breeding that female to a simple recessive carrying male in the following season.  If you do there is a chance, albeit a small one, that the babies might not be the hets you think them to be.  Ball pythons can and do retain sperm across breeding seasons.  No, it is not terribly common (I believe it to be very rare) but I know more than one breeder who has witnessed it.  I have produced many thousands of ball pythons and have not had it happen …that I know of.  But one thing I am powerfully motivated to never do is sell someone a het and have it not prove out.  For that reason I am careful in pairings not only within the same breeding season, but also from one breeding season to the next.  In order to to this you must keep excellent records.  Consider the following pairings:

Pairing #1:  Risky and too stressful for me

• Year 1:  Pastel female x Pinstripe male – Possible offspring includes pastels, pinstripes, lemon blasts and normals.  None are het for anything.
• Year 2:  Pastel female x Ghost Pinstripe male – Possible offspring includes pastels, pinstripes, lemon blasts and normals.  All should be 100% het ghost.  But what if the female had some retained sperm from the previous season?  You are certain the production is 100% het but it may not be …and there is no way to tell until years down the road when your customer experiences the fallout from the mistake.  There was no deception on your part but the mistake is still your responsibility and, with your reputation on the line,  your problem to correct.

Pairing #2:  A slightly safer bet

• Year 1:  Pastel female x Pinstripe male - Possible offspring includes pastels, pinstripes, lemon blasts and normals.  None are het for anything.
• Year 2:  Pastel female x Ghost Mojave male – This is a slightly more bearable situation.  The best things to produce from this pairing are mojaves and pastel mojaves, which have no choice but to be 100% het ghost.  The pastels and normals that result from the pairing are almost certainly 100% het ghost but you can only be 99.5% sure.  There is an outside chance that the pastels and normals are from the previous season’s pairing.  If I were to do a pairing like this I would sell the normals and the pastels as “normals”, not hets.  Yes, they are more than likely going to be actual hets but I would not want deal with the fallout several years down the line if they weren’t.

Pairing #3:  Warm and fuzzy feelings for everyone

• Year 1:  Pastel female x Ghost Pinstripe male - Possible offspring includes pastels, pinstripes, lemon blasts and normals.  All are 100% het for ghost.
• Year 2:  Pastel female x Black Pewter male – Possible offspring includes silver streaks, black pewters, super pastels, pastels, black pastels and normals.  None should be het for ghost but it is remotely possible that the pastels and the normals are actually hets.  It should go without saying that you cannot sell them as such.  They are sold as the normal, non-het, animals you suspect them to be.  The worst case scenarios is that they are actually carrying the ghost gene and someone gets a happy surprise several years down the road.

Second-Hand Hets are Not a Good Bet

Buying hets is risky business.  The simple fact of the matter is that you have to buy hets either from A) someone you know and trust or B) someone who has a verifiable and trustworthy reputation.  The operative word in both options is ‘trust’.  Over the years  I have had a few bad experiences and I know plenty of other people who have lived through the pain of an animal not proving out.  Because of the time involved it’s really depressing.  Buy a lottery ticket and you’ll know in short order if it’s a loser; buy a het and it can take years to realize that you won’t be getting a return on your investment.  Adding insult to injury is that the het is supposed to be a winner.  At least with a lottery ticket you know you’re taking a chance and could come up empty-handed.  I have written at length about the danger of buying hets.  Rather than beating that horse any further let me refer you to the article called Genetic Provenance, Insanity and Spoiled Milk (http://ballpythonbreeder.com/2010/11/genetic-provenance-insanity-and-spoiled-milk/) that I wrote on the topic.

The article referenced above deals mostly with buying hets directly from the person who has (supposedly) produced it.  But what about buying hets from the person who bought the hets?  I guarantee my hets and I am willing to guarantee hets that I have purchased from others that have proven for me.  But I won’t guarantee or knowingly buy a het that passed through more than one person’s collection.  The only hets I am ever willing to buy are one’s the come from the person who produced them.  At least that way there is a measure of accountability.  If you buy your hets from a wholesaler you need to be at peace with the fact that they are selling them to you under the assumption that the person from whom they bought them wasn’t ripping them off.  Graft in the het business rolls down hill and if it’s you putting male to female it’s you and only you who is going to come out the loser when the het doesn’t prove out.

Avoid Sweet Deals on Other People’s Problems

You simply must exercise Due Care and Due Diligence when buying adult ball pythons.  I have written on this before.  Please read my article titled Sweet Deals on Other People Problems (http://ballpythonbreeder.com/2009/12/sweet-deals-on-other-peoples-problems/) for a detailed discussion on this topic.

Cover Your Assets

Whenever I sell hets I include a Certificate of Genetics that includes a photograph of the animal and describes the genetics it carries.  I also include information on the pairing that was used to produce the animal.  I do this to give my customer a high degree of assurance that the animal is what I claim it to be.  I will not last long in this business if I sell fake hets (which I call “Fets”).  My willingness to sign a document that holds me personally accountable for an animals’ genetics goes a long way to helping people feel better about their purchase.  But I don’t do certificates just for my customer; I do them to protect myself as well.  If I sell a het and years later the person comes to me complaining that it didn’t prove out I have no real defense if there is no photographic record of the animal.  How do I know that the animal they are claiming didn’t prove out was really from me?  I don’t.  This would be a delicate situation and I would like to avoid it.  I do that by making sure that I also have a photographic record of the animal being sold.

Happy Breeding!

Cheers,

Colin Weaver

I am about as pro-gun as any person can be so I consider it appalling that people in the UK have been stripped of their right to protect their life and property.  Criminals don’t abide by laws so the gun-carrying thief breaking into somebody’s home in the UK must feel pretty confident about his chances; he knows that the odds are in his favor that any opposition he encounters is going to be unarmed.  If a UK citizen owned a gun in defiance of the law and used it against the thief he would be in as much (or more) trouble as the robber.  In the UK, they would both be considered criminals.  I find this to be very, very sad:  defend your family and your property and become a criminal for doing so.  Rest assured that if that same guy broke into my house here in Virginia he would have a six-pack of Coke can sized exit wounds in his back.

But how did guns become illegal in the UK?  Was it done in one fell swoop?  Nope.  It was done in stages, a tactic often used to disarm (literally in this case) the opposing voices.  Despite my pro-gun position I didn’t sit down to write about gun control.  I continue to be concerned with the fate of reptile ownership in the United States.  But the history of gun control in the UK serves as a excellent timeline that illustrates our likely fate unless we get our act together in very short order.  Here’s how things went down in the UK:

• 1988 -  In the wake of the “Hungerford Massacre” the Firearms (Amendment) Act of 1988 was passed.  This law made it illegal to own semi-automatic rifles, pump-action rifles and military weapons that shoot explosives.  The law also implemented registration requirements and a requirement for “secure storage” of allowed shotguns.  Handguns (pistols) were not impacted at all by this law.
• 1997 – In the wake of the “Dublane Massacre” ownership of almost all handguns was banned.  One of the key selling points of the law was that a very limited number of people would be impacted (fewer than 1 in 1,000).
• 2006 – The Violent Crime Reduction Act was passed and this made it illegal to buy/sell air weapons by mail order.  This includes things like Airsoft guns.  Yep, in the UK it is even illegal to own a fake gun because it looks too much like a real gun.  Hilarious.  Tragic.  Sad.

The path from there to here was implemented through a simple concept:  divide and conquer.  In the late 1980′s UK pistol owners were apathetic about the proposed ban on rifles because it didn’t affect them.  “Why should I care if they ban shotguns?”, they said.  “I only keep pistols and bolt-action rifles.”  In an act of self-preservation they stayed silent, letting their rifle-owning neighbors have their rights extracted through the legislative process.  Those same people who thought they were safe found their rights removed less than a decade later.  The politicians who pushed this law through the UK’s legal system were smart to leave pistol owners out of the fight in 1988.  Attacking the whole gun-owning population of the UK would have been tantamount to the Humane Society of the United States trying to make pet dogs illegal in the wake of an escaped Nile Monitor killing someone’s Terrier.  Patient and resolute the anti-gun movement capitalized on high-profile tragedies to further their agenda.  Baby steps.  Little-by-little they got it done.  And look at the UK now…

Now let’s turn our attention to things here in the USA.  Large constrictors are under attack.  Most of us know that.  And many bearded dragon breeders, ball python breeders, corn snake breeders and leopard gecko breeders could care less.  Why?  Because they don’t keep large constrictors, of course.  That should sound eerily similar to the same apathetic mindset held by UK pistol owners back in 1988.  And look what happened to them less than a decade later.  Every time there is an isolated incident in the exotic animal community the anti-pet movement gains a little more traction to push through another limiting piece of legislation.  Whether it is done state-by-state, the Lacey Act or through the federal law making process, they are as patient and as resolute as the anti-gun zealots in the UK were.

I know how the end of reptile ownership is going to happen.  If we continue on our current path it will mirror what happened in the UK.  The voices of opposition in the UK screamed, “you can’t legislate a madman”, meaning that a ban on firearms would not stop the next massacre from happening.  If someone wants to get a gun and go on a shooting spree it will happen.  No law is going to prevent that.  My screams as a reptile owner have been of a similar vein.  I oppose any legal limitations on the rights of responsible pet owners.  No matter how responsible a pet owner I am there will always be someone out there who is not.  That person will do something stupid and my rights will be removed as a result.

But why?  Why do the actions of a few lead to restrictions on the many?  The answer is simple:  Legislation is a bludgeon tool.  It lacks finesse.  Laws have not, can not and will not deal with subtlety and nuance.  They are a widely cast net that frequently catches huge numbers of unintended victims.  I have already heard it said.  “Our inspectors are not trained tell the difference between a Burmese python and a Boa Constrictor so the most simple course of action is to ban them both.”  If that’s the case then how would a local law enforcement official tell the difference between a blood python and a burmese python?  Simple: He can’t.  Well, we better ban blood pythons too …just to be safe.  And when the time comes to ban ball pythons you can rest assured that Angolan pythons will be thrown out with them.  They look too similar.  And so it will happen; our compartmentalized herpetocultural community will fall in small group after small group.  And each group will remain silent as the others are attacked.  It will probably take the next decade or two to happen but the writing is on the wall.  The anti-pet movement is more than ready to wait us out and I have not seen evidence of the community having the stomach for a long fight.

Is there an alternative to legislation?  Yes!  It’s called self-regulation.  And this is where there is a fundamental divide within society.  Proponents of large government believe that it is the government’s responsibility to take action to provide for and protect its citizens.  Supporters of small government believe that protection is indeed the government’s responsibility but ‘providing’ is the realm of private industry and government should stay out of it.  The government should not regulate the commercial interaction between provider and consumer.  In a system of self-regulation the industry controls itself from within; it’s a commercial ecosystem that has its balance upset when the dirty fingers of legislation are inserted.  Whether we are talking about banking, exotic animals or pharmaceuticals the concept is the same; the industry regulates itself and acts in a responsible manner, no government intervention needed.  In the end the consumer is the real regulator because it is only where there is mutual benefit in a transaction that the transaction can take place.  Even though I would rather not pay $130/month for my iPhone I still do because I find value in the trade.  If my iPhone bill were to double to $260 I would no longer see the value and I would discontinue my service.  The provider is always going to push the edge of course; they are a for-profit entity and will always work to get as much as they possibly can without pushing me past the limits of my perceived value.  In this delicate balance between consumer and provider we don’t need the government to come in and control mobile phone price plans.  Doing so screws up the natural balance of commerce.

When an industry fails to self-regulate it provides a powerful foothold for the supporters of government regulation (banking and health care come to mind here).  And that is where we are today in the reptile world.  There is no shortage of idiocy in the reptile trade.  Someone out there is not securely keeping their reticulated python or rhino viper.  Another guy is selling Burmese pythons and eyelash vipers to 14-year old kids at a trade show.  And let’s not forget the guy who is keeping hundreds of snakes in horrible filth with no food, water or climate control.  None of these people are you, right?  Of course not.  It always seems to be someone else that is screwing things up for the hobby.  The problem is that the consumer:provider mechanism for self-regulation is seemingly absent.  The only thing an individual can do is take care of his/her own business; keep their animals secure, well-fed, watered and in a suitable climate.  They cannot control what another keeper is doing.  This appears to suggest that government regulation is a viable solution, doesn’t it?  Without changing what we do as a community, the answer, unfortunately is ‘yes’.  The ability to own a reptile in the United States will not survive if we stay on our current path.

But how do we self-regulate?  This is a tough question.  As a person purchasing a green anaconda I know what my responsibilities are.  But what about the seller?  It would seem like a no-brainer to say that a person would not sell a baby anaconda to a minor but that has been proved wrong more than once.  Should the seller take steps to make sure the person buying is fully prepared to responsibly undertake the long-term ownership of the animal?  Is that realistic?  No, it’s not.  The retail community doesn’t support it.  If I put somebody through a gauntlet of questions before selling them a green anaconda at a trade show they are just going to go to another table and buy it from the wholesaler who picked up a 20-lot of them earlier that day and could care about nothing other than their method of payment.  The long-term impact:  I am not economically viable and another person owns a green anaconda that is doomed to get sick and die …but not before it escapes a few times because he thinks that putting a book on the screen top of his aquarium is going to keep the snake from pushing its way out.  Because the community is unable to regulate itself it is primed and ready for government intervention.

Reptile community self-regulation seems viable only if there is widespread individual self-regulation and this illustrates the “you can’t regulate a madman” problem.  The reptile community is too large and too diverse in both number and intelligence for there to be any realistic chance to self-regulate.  Aside from “lock in a sock” forms of keeper-on-keeper physical violence I don’t know what the answer is.  But I do know that if things don’t change we are going to start losing our rights at an ever-increasing rate.  And the only people we can truly blame when its over will be ourselves.

Cheers,

Colin Weaver

That was the job description given to me a long time ago just before I accepted a position at a small start-up IT company.  I was trying to break out of the life-drag called Corporate America and during the interview process I asked for more details on my potential job duties.  And the quote above is was what I heard in reply.  When I realized he wasn’t kidding I was …moved.  I was so inspired that I wanted desperately to do something, well, awesome and amazing.  It was everything I needed to hear at that point in my life.  With that one sentence I had been both empowered and granted personal accountability.  The trust coupled with expectation that was handed to me was nothing less than food to my starving motivation.  In the year that followed I gave more of myself to that organization than any other before it.  I wanted to.  I was personally invested in making sure my job description was expertly executed.

When I reflect on the years that have passed I tend to recognize that as the moment I realized I was meant to be an entrepreneur rather than an employee in somebody else’s business.  Yes, I realize how that statement is initially dichotomous; becoming an entrepreneur while accepting a job to work for someone else.  A person will mentally be an entrepreneur for some time before they amass the means to actually be one.  Rather than looking to my bosses for kudos and acknowledgements for my efforts I became more interested in how I felt about the work I was doing.  Other people were ultimately secondary.  If I was happy with the results of my work I seldom needed to wonder if my bosses would be good with it.  I held myself to a higher standard and it was reflected in the quality of my production.  Excerpts of my inner-monologue included:

• “If you are going to do something, do it well.”
• “If you’re going to do it you might as well do it exceptionally well.”
• “If you can’t do it well, don’t do it at all.”

And over the years it’s that last quote that has caused me such angst.  Being excellent at a few things is do-able.  We can all do that.  Being excellent at a lot of things is challenging.  And not doing things because you can’t do them exceptionally well can be a problem.  The choices I have made (e.g. being in the live animal business) require that certain things must be done; they cannot be ignored or neglected.  And over the years I have crafted a life that impossibly requires me to be excellent at too many things.  As a result, a vicious cycle is at work.  If I can’t do it well, I won’t do it.  Since I want (or need) to do it I must do it well.  Doing a lot of things very well is difficult to maintain.  Trying to do too many things exceptionally well means you end up doing many of them not so well.  Realizing that you are not doing some things well means you have to either A) quit doing those things, B) work harder (or longer) at doing them well again and/or C) stress yourself out over the fact that you aren’t doing things as well as you should be (while trying to decide if you should be doing A or B).

I have become something of a mental train-wreck on this topic.  Like no other time in my life I feel torn between multiple radically different worlds.  I own and operate an ever-expanding reptile business.  I also own a thriving information technology company.  While the computer stuff comes in handy from time-to-time in the reptile world I can’t say that the opposite is true.  Computer people seldom need my herpertocultural skills.  As a result, I live two incredibly different professional lives.  Both are full-time jobs and they regularly conflict with each other.  I am accountable to my animals and I am accountable to my IT business partners.  Fortunately I don’t have much of a social life but I do have a family life that is more important than any of my other roles.  I have to balance the three and I continue to insist on being excellent at each.  The family part is relatively easy.  If I start to not be an excellent husband or father I have always said I will quit the other two without notice.  Neither of them mean much in comparison.  But part of being a good father and husband is being a good protector and provider so continuing to also be excellent at the money-earning components of my life is a requirement of the most important part of my life.  It’s a bit of a circular conundrum.

Like many reptile breeders, I have help.  I have good people that sometimes help me clean cages and keep my facility tidy.  But even with all of the help they give me I am still constantly struggling to keep up.  I need more.  As any keeper of a large number of animals knows, the dirty work is endlessly repetitive.  I clean enclosures every single day, usually for multiple hours.  And it is incredibly common that the enclosure I cleaned last night will need to be cleaned again the next day.  Snakes have an uncanny habit of waiting until you clean their house before fouling it up.  Sometimes I think it’s a game they play.  Because I have an obligation to my animals I can’t let them sit in a dirty cage.  This compels me to check their cages very regularly and give them the attention they need.  Because of the quantity of snakes I keep this takes a lot of time.

As a medium-sized reptile breeder I need to spend my time doing four different things:

1. Feeding
2. Cleaning
3. Breeding
4. Selling (and buying)

Once your collection hits a certain size you will begin to struggle to do all four extremely well.  And this is where my philosophy on how to do thing is causing me problems.  The size of my collection and the other demands in my life are making it increasingly difficult to do all four very well.  There is another nasty cycle at work.  I currently spend more time feeding and cleaning than I do selling.  And from one perspective, that is just dumb.  No margin, no mission, right?  I should be aggressively selling every day, but I don’t.  I should be working through my client list, making calls and putting together deals.  But I’m not.  Why?  I’m too busy cleaning and feeding.  I often have animals that I know are desirable to others that go for months on the rack and never get offered for sale.  And because I’m not selling as aggressively as I need to be I don’t feel financially comfortable committing to the money it will take to hire somebody else to do the feeding and cleaning.  My problems are not new; I’m not the first to live them.  Every single small business owner who went from a one-man shop to a larger enterprise did what I have been reluctant to do:  leap.  On this point I haven’t been drinking my own Kool-Aid.  One of the guiding philosophies of my life has been “leap, and the net will appear.”  But with the growth of this reptile business I still haven’t successfully done it.  I can’t stop feeding and cleaning in order to sell.  So I am left with two choices:

1. Reduce the size of the collection to something that can be easily managed.
2. Leap.

Choice number one isn’t going to happen.  It’s simply not what I want.  That leaves only option #2.  But hiring somebody (leaping) means turning over a function that must continue to be done extremely well.  And one thing is true:  nobody will ever do it as well as me.  No, that’s not ego, it’s fact.  The same is true for everybody.  Remember the old adage, “If you want something done right, do it yourself.”  The truth in that statement is not that I am the best at something, it’s that nobody else is likely to be as personally invested in making sure it is done right.  And why would they be?  It’s not theirs.  People who work in corporate America often hear their bosses encouraging them to have a “sense of ownership”.  Every employer dreams of their workers feeling this way because it helps to increase the quality of production.  People who “own” are more personally invested in the outcome and are therefore more likely to do something better than those who do not.  If you live in the United States you have almost certainly encountered the general level of apathy in many of the workers you encounter during your daily meanderings.  Whether it’s poor service by a cashier at the grocery or the inattentive waiter we all regularly see the product of people not owning their work.  As annoying as it is being a customer on the receiving end imagine how scary it is for the real owner of the business.  You create and nurture your business.  You pour your soul into making it successful.  That success forces you to hire help.  And it is quite possible that the help will suck.  In a perfect world the help you have will continue to nurture, to “own”.  But the world is not perfect so you must come to terms with the fact that there will almost certainly be a reduction in quality from what you, the owner, would do.  But if I want to grow my business I cannot forever be all things to all people.  I have to let go.

These are not new dilemma’s for me.  Because I choose to be in the live animal business I also choose to provide excellent care for my animals.  I cannot neglect the production capacity by not keeping my animals well fed and clean.  But at the same time I have to do a better job of actually trying to sell the animals I produce.  All aspects of the cycle must be given necessary time and attention.  Stephen Covey calls it the P/PC balance (Google it).

In the end analysis I know what I need to do.  I knew it before I started writing.  Business is not static; you are either growing or you are contracting.  I am growing.

Cheers,

Colin Weaver

The HSUS, PETA, Defenders of Wildlife and other radical animal extremist organizations like them are large, well-funded, well-organized and, most of all, driven by a common goal that is kept on track through its leaders.  Most of them have been around for a long time and have had plenty of opportunity to create a solid base from which to operate.  Their leadership consists of affable personalities who focus exclusively on their agenda.  As much as I dislike his message, Wayne Pacelle is doing a lot of things right to further his organization’s agenda.  Don’t get me wrong, though.  I despise his ideas.  His organization is one of the worst things to ever happen to animals and their responsible owners.  But he believes them and he is focused on seeing them become a reality.  While his beliefs are dangerous to every responsible pet owner it is his ability to get others to also believe that makes him the threat that he is.  It’s his leadership and the orchestration of the teams of people behind him that makes him dangerous to pet owners of every kind.  I hate to be the bearer of bad news but the advocates of responsible pet ownership are woefully inadequate by comparison.  The leaders of the organization’s that trumpet our causes are largely invisible and unknown to a world that needs to hear them.  The longer we go without comparable focus, cohesion and leadership the closer the country will move toward HSUS’ goal of ending pet ownership for everyone.

The HSUS expertly uses lies and misinformation to extract almost $200 million each year from a misled American public.  Their benevolent sounding name is the cornerstone of their fantastic lie and they have a sympathetic media and most of the Democratic party on their side.  If a single pet-ownership advocacy group has 15,000 members who give $50/year they will still only have $750,000 in revenue.  Who would you like to bet on?  An organization running on a shoestring budget with a react-only game-plan or the financially successful and laser-focused machine with educated and articulate leaders orchestrating the attack from multiple fronts?  It’s not really a competition, is it?

The target of interest for both sides of this fight is the pet.  Animal extremists want to ‘protect’ animals by putting an end to pet ownership.  They believe that the very best way to protect animals is for them to not exist as pets.  Extremists attack the exceptions to the majority of us who properly care for and respect our animals.  They use the sensational as ammunition to push their agenda and feel justified in limiting the rights of everybody in order to address the irresponsible few.  They twist facts, perpetuate irrational fear and wordsmith information in order to lead people to false conclusions.  And they are good at it.  In contrast, pet owners just want to be left alone to enjoy their pets.  This means that most pet owners have not sufficiently developed a fighter’s mentality.  They are standing unwillingly in the ring, hands down, being punched repeatedly in the face by the animal extremism juggernaut.  And they take it, punch after punch, reeling with each blow.  Without money, leadership, better organization, and well-marshalled volunteerism, the eventual fate of the pet owner seems obvious.

To all the responsible pet ownership groups out there:  Do a better job of leveraging your support base.  Don’t just ask them for their money; ask them for their time and their skill.  There is an army of responsible pet owners out there.

And to all the responsible pet owners out there:  Pick a group to support.  Reach out to them.  Give them money if you want to; no doubt they need it.  But you also need tell them your skill and let them know you want to help support the rights of pet owners with more than just money.  For now, be willing to give your time freely, in support of the cause.  It is quite probable that your payment  will never be money.  It will come in the form of your right, and your kid’s right, to keep the pet of your choosing.  That’s worth a lot more than money, don’t you think?

Cheers,

Colin Weaver

At the time of her email, Casymay’s included link to Petfinder.com, a national registry whose purpose is to re-home animals currently residing in shelters, contained a whopping 34 pythons, six of which were listed as being in Canada.  Both amused and annoyed by her email, and without knowing anything else about the sender,  I sent the following curt response:

Casey didn’t reply back.  Should human procreation be put on hold until all the world’s orphaned kids get homes?  Would Casey subscribe to that suggestion, too?  In order to see if I could learn a little more about the person who disproved of my actions I decided to do a quick Google search for Casie’s email address.  That search led me to another page where her profile suggests that she is 14 years old.  This realization changed the paradigm with which I had viewed her question.  Young people, many of whom have parents that have unknowingly let them watch too much thinly-veiled animal and environmental extremism in the form of Dora the Explorer and Go, Diego, Go, are filled with a legitimate yet often misguided desire to help animals.  I am confident that this young woman’s intentions are pure; why would someone buy an animal when perfectly good one’s are available for adoption and, better still, why would someone intentionally make more when the same conditions remain true?  Those seem like honest questions and legitimate concerns.  And with many more orders of magnitude these questions are also portable to dogs and cats.

Nobody can argue that there are animals in this world that are abused, abandoned and irresponsibly cast aside.  One good thing about them is that they get people’s attention.  But that’s also a bad thing for the majority of animals that are on the other side.  You know, the one’s that have caring and considerate owners who give their companions the very best in care.  They provide excellent nutrition, a warm and comfortable place to sleep, companionship and prompt and regular medical care.  But those animals are so incredibly uninteresting.  Video of my dog sleeping happily next to me on the sofa isn’t going to help the Humane Society of the United States get any donations.  It also makes for a very boring storyline for Diego and Dora.  The evening news reporting on the secure, healthy and otherwise happy black throat monitor living over on Scenic Avenue isn’t very interesting either.  You see, there’s no money and no story in the animals that are well cared for.  No sound bite, nothing to tweet about and nothing to go viral on YouTube.  Instead we dig for and find the 34 pythons that have lost their homes for who knows what reason and focus on them.  Their plight is evidence enough for young Casie that a breeder like me is in the wrong; that I am the one who is perpetuating the abandonment of more pythons later down the line.  Casie seems to be suggesting that the best solution is to bring captive breeding to a halt because a tiny minority have not received proper care.  I do not share her opinion.

To rescue from a shelter or to buy from a breeder, that seems to be a recurring topic of discussion in the pet world.  I have a friend whose opinions, perspectives and insights on this topic are often different than mine.  She sees the world through the eyes of someone who works in a shelter and has repeatedly seen the tragic end-result of animals, mostly dogs and cats, that are dumped by incapable or otherwise irresponsible owners.  She regularly sees, first-hand, how some people obtain and dispose of living things with callous whimsy.  The animals dumped on the doorstep of her shelter are victims and the perpetrators simply drive away, hands washed of an inconvenience that has a heartbeat.  Those experiences have steeled the resolve she has on her opinions and I know that there is nothing I can ever say that will change her mind.  In a recent exchange of emails she and I had another friendly debate/discussion on buying dogs versus rescuing dogs.  She was uninspired by my reasons for leaning toward a respectable dog breeder rather than a rescue for my next dog.  One of her arguments was that “puppies suck”.  She suggested that a one year old rescue would likely be house trained, past the chewing stage, able to be left alone, have its shots, etc.  And you know what?  She is 100% accurate in all of those things and when looked at from such a pragmatic point of view I might buy into her assertion.  But using the same empirical logic I know another thing that sucks when young:  human children.  They pee and poop on themselves for the first two years or so.  They vomit with some consistency and at incredibly inopportune times.  They can’t talk and, even after months of interaction, can’t communicate their wants with any consistency.  They make loud noises, don’t sleep through the night, cost a ton of money and disrupt virtually every other aspect of your existence.  As a parent, the logical approach is to say screw it and avoid taking the ‘puppy route’ when expanding the family; we should all rescue 18-year old college students who have full scholarships at Virginia Tech.  They won’t cost as much and, despite their tendency to abuse alcohol on the weekends, are almost certainly potty-trained.  Someone else has already taught them the basics and their vaccinations are sure to be up-to-date.

I hope that sounds as silly to you as it does to me.  Almost every parent on this planet knows that there is no way they would ever trade a day of their child’s youth.  Despite sometimes being dirty, stinky, and inconvenient, they are incredibly rewarding.  But it’s not the dirty diaper that makes it so wonderful; it’s the relationship that is formed in the process.  And it’s that relationship that makes everything else so worth it and so wonderful.  And for me, having the puppy equivalent of that relationship with the exact breed and provenance I want is my prerogative.  The rescue animal may work for many people but it does not work for all people.  I respect my neighbors decision to adopt a dog from the local shelter and do not cast derision upon him for doing so.  So why does it happen in reverse?  Why do animal rights advocates throw scornful glances my way for buying rather than adopting?  There are many reasons, I suppose.  But one of them is not as plain to see.  There is a pervasive idea growing in our society that suggests that the less fortunate and otherwise downtrodden are not just worthy of the capacity of the more fortunate; they deserve it.  Those who ‘have’ should be compelled to give what they have to those who do not.  If you have more money you should pay more taxes.  If you come in first place you should share your glory with those who came in 2nd, 3rd and, increasingly, even last.  Nobody should be allowed to be better than anybody else because that’s not fair.  You should work harder so you can give more to others.  You shouldn’t get the puppy (or snake) you want when there are other animals who need your capacity.  You should give up your desire to have your needs satisfied in order to satisfy the needs of someone (or something) less fortunate.  “I really want a Weimaraner puppy,” you say.  “But I can’t get what I want when there are mix-breed puppies at the shelter who need homes.  Their need for a home is greater than my need for the breed that makes me happy.”  Under this illusion, the so-called ‘greater good’ trumps any need of any individual.  This notion, which is both a centerpiece and a rallying cry of the liberal mentality, is so perverted and wrong to me that I struggle to think that another person could arrive at the conclusion.  But reason is not automatic and logic is not always appropriately applied.   I do not subscribe to the notion that the “greater good”  supersedes my needs as an individual.  I believe that I need to take care of and be responsible for myself and my family.  I do not live a life where the benefit of others comes before the benefit of my family.  I know there are many who will disagree with me but I’m impervious.  If you do disagree with me do you know what I am to you?  I’m one less person with their hand out, asking you to freely give me the product of your efforts.   And these ideas are far from new.  The first time I read Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand I was floored to see that she was writing about the same issues in the 1950′s.

Whether it’s dogs or snakes I support the rights of the breeder to create a ‘product’ that is demanded by the buyer.  So long as there is a market for snakes I will produce and sell them.  Moreso, I support the decision of each buyer (or adopter, as the case may be).  If you want to buy an animal because it is the exact animal you want, do it and feel good about it.  If adopting/rescuing makes you happy, rock on!  But do not think negatively of someone who chooses differently than you.

So here is why I breed (and why I do not):

• I breed snakes because I find them beautiful and enigmatic.
• I breed snakes to financially benefit me and my family.  I do not breed snakes in order to benefit others.
• I breed snakes because I believe in an individual’s ability to choose the animal, regardless of what it is or where it came from, that makes them happy.
• I breed because there is a demand for the animals I have the capacity to produce.
• I breed the animals I choose because they satisfy a need I have.  People who see value in the animals I produce and who have a need, will buy one.  Nobody is compelled to buy from me just as nobody is (and never should be) compelled to pick an animal from a shelter.
• I do not abstain from breeding because someone out there has abandoned their snake.
• I do not abstain from breeding because some people do not practice good husbandry.  I breed because most people do.  I do not tailor my actions to address the shortcomings of the lowest common denominator.

I do not encourage people to adopt simply because an animal has a need.  I encourage people to buy or adopt in direct accordance with their own needs.  If purchasing an animal meets your specific need, open your wallet (or purse).  If adopting does the same, drive to the shelter.  But do not give up on your needs simply because someone else appears to be more needy than you.  And while it may make you feel good inside there is no absolution in sacrificing yourself to the want and needs of others.

Cheers,

Colin Weaver

The current state of affairs is that we can break the thinking people in our society into two general groups of people:  liberals and conservatives (some people may prefer ‘statist’ and ‘libertarian’).  There are many reasons why liberals and conservatives are different but sometimes they are actually in agreement on a particular thing that needs to be accomplished.  This agreement is only on the surface, though.  The devil is in the details.  Suppose for instance that you are sitting in a cold house and would like to get warm.  The liberal tells you to turn on the heat while the conservative suggests that you wrap yourself with a down comforter.  They are both describing a way to achieve an end result but their opinions on how to get there are quite different.  You, the cold person, are being sold two different approaches to satisfy your need and both seem to be genuine and sincere in their desire to address it.  But if you aren’t paying attention you will miss the larger picture; the reason those two methods are being offered is that they represent some aspect of a larger agenda and there is a good chance that neither of them really care about your warmth.  For example, the liberal may tell you that heating the whole house is the best way because it gives everybody in the house an equal ability to be warm; nobody is made to be warmer or colder than anybody else.  The conservative tells you that the down comforter is more appropriate because it is cheaper and the ability of an individual to achieve warmth is directly related to how well they wrap themselves.  How each came to the conclusion that their way of warming cold bodies was the right way could be rooted in their life experiences and upbringing or it could be that they are being directed by less often seen third parties: lobbyists.  The liberal receives large campaign contributions from the HVAC Worker’s Union and the conservative is being backed by the IAIDP, the International Association for the Infiltration of Down-Containing Products.  Once this realization is made we can begin to understand that making people warm is secondary to the way in which people are made warm.  Everybody has an agenda; something to accomplish.

The treatment of pet owners and the reptile trade is no different.  In general politicians aren’t concerned about snakes; special interest groups are.  Each side of the argument has found a sympathetic ear in the form of the liberal and the conservative.  Sweet nothings have been whispered, campaign contributions have been made and like Rock Em’ Sock Em’ Robots the politicians have been put into the ring, punching and jabbing and all the while it’s special interests (like the HSUS) who are pushing the buttons.

The HSUS and other animal extremists made a brilliant move in 2010 when they decided to temporarily de-emphasize the law-making process.  They performed an end-around by using the USGS’ biased report on large constrictors as a means to get the Department of the Interior to add the nine constrictors to the list of injurious species in the Lacey Act.  And, considering the outcome of the 2010 mid-term elections,  what a brilliant move it was.  They didn’t need any members of Congress to take this path.  All they needed was a liberal in the Oval Office to appoint a liberal to head the Department of the Interior.  Now the decision is no longer up to “the people”; it is now in the hands of an impossibly small few within the Department of the Interior.  And one of the biggest ways it is being sold:  fear.  I have heard politicians and other bureaucrats say, over and over, that one of the reasons that large constrictors need to be controlled is because of a “threat to public safety”.  In 2010 I sat in a hearing of the House Judiciary Committee and listened to Florida House Representative Thomas Rooney (a Democrat) read a statement that said exactly that.  But it’s a big lie.  Large constrictors are not a public health concern; they pose an impossibly small risk to humans.  Your odds of being killed by a large constrictor are about 1 in 584 million.  For a little bit of perspective on how that compares with other ways to die please read this post I made about the odds of being killed by a python.

The other big argument for controlling pythons is the environment.  The USGS’ horribly biased, self-serving and repeatedly debunked report (here, here, here and here for starters) on nine large constrictors paints a picture of these snakes taking over much of the country.  The reality is that they pose a risk to southern Florida at best.  And in all seriousness, if pythons and boas are such an invasive species why are only the large one’s being targeted in these attacks?  Invasive is invasive, regardless of size.  The real answer is simple.  They are easier targets because they prey on people’s  fear.  Many people have an irrational and media perpetuated fear of snakes.  And big snakes, one’s that can eat big things are worthy of additional fear.  The truth is that laws have been proposed and the Lacey Act is about to be amended because of fear.  Not public safety, not the environment.  Just fear.  And it’s such an easy sell.  Imagine a reporter walking up to you and saying, “Do you want giant, man-eating pythons living in your back yard where your children play?”  Who in their right mind would answer anything other than no to such a leading question?

So is it really possible for a government to legislate based on fear?  Sadly, yes.  As evidence of such efforts let me direct your attention to a seemingly unrelated topic:  guns in schools.  If you were to ask every American whether or not it was OK for children to take guns to school you would find that 99.999% are in agreement that it is not.  And in 1990 Congress passed a law that said exactly that.  The Gun-Free School Zone Act of 1990 made it a federal crime for anyone other than law enforcement to take a gun onto school property.  I am VERY pro-gun and I completely support the idea at work; no guns in schools.  Well, not long after being enacted the law was challenged in the courts.  And in 1995 the U.S. Supreme Court shocked everybody when they agreed, striking down the law as unconstitutional.  The attorney’s for the federal government had argued that the law was valid under what is called the Commerce Clause in the Constitution.  Their primary argument was that Congress was within it’s legislative authority because the presence of guns in schools would lead to people being fearful and being fearful would lead to an environment less conducive to learning.  Without quality education people would be less prepared to be economically productive and this would significantly impact interstate commerce.  And Congress does have the ability to legislate interstate commerce.  Now I don’t want guns in schools any more than any other sane American but the crux of the government’s argument was that they could legislate the People because something might cause someone to be afraid.  And if they could ban guns in schools because of fear what other aspects of a persons life can they control using fear as the justification?  To say this is a slippery slope is an unprecedented understatement.  The Supreme Court vote was 5-4.  One vote in the other direction and legislative branch would have been given the power to legislate based on fear.  Please note that there is more to the case (United States v. Lopez) and the rational of the Justice’s decisions.  Please take some time to read about it yourself.

So is it now legal to carry guns in schools?  Nope.  Was it a decision made by the states?  Nope.  It is a federal law.  But how?  The Supreme Court said the law was unconstitutional.  Well, some smart lawyers and politicians revisited the original wording of the bill that Congress passed, changed its language and reintroduced it.  Let’s call what they did what it really is:  they twisted the wording to make the Constitution work for more federal power.  In the re-worded bill they made it a crime to take any gun onto school grounds if that gun had been involved in interstate commerce.  The manufacturing of a gun involves a lot of individual pieces, most of which came across one state line or another.  By linking the desired result (no guns in schools) to ‘things’ used in interstate commerce the re-worded bill was passed by Congress and, though not yet taken up by the Supreme Court, has withstood Constitutional challenges in lower courts.  Despite my support for the end result, the mechanism used to achieve it scares the hell out of me.

It should go without saying that I am glad that guns are not allowed in schools.  Am I glad that the federal government passed a law for it?  Not particularly, no.  I think the states could have handled it on their own and I am quite confident that each state would have done so.  Even though the end result of this decision was a good one it should serve as a scary reminder for every citizen that the federal government can potentially control every aspect of your life if they can correctly wordsmith a bill in Congress to link it to one of their enumerated powers.  And the commerce clause (in conjunction with the “necessary and proper” clause) has been repeatedly used to expand the federal government’s power over the states.  And today the fate of much of the reptile trade hangs in the balance.  Whether through Congress or the Lacey Act the federal government is poised to leverage fear in order to control the interstate transport of a ‘thing’ (a snake).  States should decide which reptiles are allowed in their communities, not the federal government.  Once something becomes federal law it binds us all; there is nowhere to go to be free of it.  It suffocates.  If Florida wants to ban the ownership of Burmese pythons, let that state’s citizens decide to do so.  But geographically speaking, Minnesota is a different planet than Florida.  Minnesotans don’t need the same protections when it comes to such concerns.

Regards,

Colin Weaver

On higher dollar snake purchases it is easier for the seller to absorb the cost of shipping (within the United States).  A normal ball python that weighs 500 grams costs just as much to ship as a 500 gram panda pied ball python.  It is almost a foregone conclusion that more expensive snakes yield higher profits for the seller.  And for this reason many sellers usually agree to pay the shipping when the dollar amount hits a certain point.  For example, I pay shipping when a deal totals more than $1,000.  For multi-thousand dollar deals it is often not even discussed, it becomes a service included in the sale.

Because I produce 99% of what I sell I am personally invested in the animal being shipped.  I have a lot of time, energy and money invested in the production of my animals so I am powerfully motivated to not have something bad happen to them on the night they travel to their new home.  For this reason (and because I don’t ship every day) I always take my animals directly to the shipper’s hub in my city.  It’s about 20 miles each way (mostly highway miles) and it is usually a special trip made in the early evening.  I do this to minimize the amount of time the animals will be exposed to sub-optimal conditions and temperatures.

So how much does shipping really cost?  Well, it’s more than just the shipper’s fees (FedEx, UPS, etc.).  Depending on how large a breeder you are, where your animals are kept and a variety of other factors you will have different costs associate with shipping.  Some people have daily pickup’s scheduled with FedEx while others drive their animals to a local shipping drop-off.

In order to know how much it is really costing to ship that box you have to look at all of the associated costs.  And here they are:

1. Shipping material costs (insulated boxes, snake bags, deli cups, heat/cold packs, etc.)
2. Travel costs to shipper drop-off location (or pickup fees)
3. Actual shipper charges to forward the box the the recipient
4. Payroll costs (time spent generating paperwork, building boxes, packing animal, etc.)

Reptile Shipping Calculator

Click here to download a free excel spreadsheet that will let you put in your own numbers so you can calculate your actual reptile shipping costs.

After factoring in all of the ancillary expenses I find that it costs me around $75 to ship a single 12x9x6 box. (assuming the shipper fee is $45).  There are a lot of factors that can make this number go up or down (box size & weight, distance being shipped, other shipments being processed at the same time, whether you process your shipments on-line, etc.).  The larger you get the more careful attention to you need to pay to managing these costs and implementing efficiency improvements when possible.

There have been times in the past when I posted a snake on-line for, say, $250 plus shipping.  And it happens without fail that I get calls, texts and emails asking me if I will do “$175 shipped”.  Knowing that it is going to cost me almost $75 to ship the animal what the person is really asking me is to do is to sell the snake for $100.  If a buyer was face-to-face with me at a trade show I doubt he would try to negotiate a $250 animal down to $100 (it wouldn’t go well) so it’s borderline confusing to me that it happens on-line.  To those kinds of price offers I usually nicely decline.  I’m sure there have been times when I didn’t even respond.

In the end we are the same as when we started:  we all want to get the best deal we can.  I respect that because it’s what I also want.  But as a person who spends an almost equal amount of time as the buyer and the seller of reptiles I am keenly aware of what is (or is not) being absorbed by each side during a transaction.  When I spend a few thousand dollars with a fellow breeder, I expect him or her to pay the shipping.  But no matter if I’m the buyer or the seller, if the deal is only a few hundred dollars, buyers should expect to pay shipping (even when it’s me).  Keep that in mind the next time you make an offer on a snake you see on-line.  You are more likely to make an offer that is agreeable to the seller when you take time to appreciate and respect the fact that there are a lot of costs associated with selling reptiles.

Cheers,

Colin Weaver

P.S. – A few notes:

• FedEx charges a $15 pickup fee unless you have pickup service with your FedEx account.  If you ship regularly you can schedule a weekly pickup for less than $15/week.  I personally don’t like the idea of pickup service because my animals have to spend the remainder of the day riding in the driver’s truck before ever getting back to the dispatch office.  I know they will probably be fine but I don’t like the idea of it.
• Recycling old shipping boxes, deli cups and bags is a great way to save money.
• You can change your policy to state that you only ship one day per week in order to minimize the costs associated with driving to the shipper’s drop-off location.

I’m pretty much over it now, of course, but I was feeling pretty picked-on that day.  Missing so badly on the odds was one thing but I rubbed salt in my own wounds when I thought about the time, money and effort I had put into the parents; both of which I had raised from hatchlings.  All I could think about was how financially invested I was and how the production yielded nothing better than I could have made with a much less genetically impressive pairing.  For this clutch I was producing at a level that was genetically many seasons earlier than where I should have been.  With money on the line, that’s a tough pill to swallow.

Misses like this one are a seasonal reminder that ball python breeding is packed full of randomness and chance.  When you swing for the fences you run the risk of striking out.  And I’m doing it again this season.  I have pairings that have the potential to make some truly amazing things …if I can hit on the odds.  But when I hit on something big I’m notorious for holding it back; very little of my highest-end production makes its way into the collections of others.  Yes, sir!  I’m a morph hoarder.  And every year I rely on a lot of  luck to take me to the next level.  Luck, unfortunately, is a fickle friend.

Producing something next-level is a relative thing.  The animals that I am lamenting missing on today will be commonplace in the near future.  Perspective is important.  But lately I have been contemplating the intelligence of trying to hit on long odds.  The wisdom behind the answer to my contemplations can only be had after-the-fact, when I am  looking at the results of my production.  My decision will be interpreted as shrewd if I meet or beat what the Punnett Square suggests.  When I miss on the odds I can’t do anything other than think that I chose poorly.  But why did I try for such long odds in the first place?  Three reasons:

1. To make money
2. To take my collection to the next level.
3. I can’t afford to buy the super-crazy, cutting edge, designer morphs.

If I produce something amazing there is a pretty good chance that it will become a permanent resident in my collection, something I plan to use in the future to take me to even higher levels.  I’m using genetic luck to kite myself to ever higher heights.  The fact that I keep the coolest stuff I produce means that I am letting the betterment of my collection trump my desire to make money.

I’m starting to think that I shouldn’t be doing it this way.  As time goes by I am beginning to realize that it’s not smart business to try a hit tiny sweet spots and incredibly long odds.  This is especially true considering my admission that I’m just going to keep the best of the best that I produce.  The more intelligent bet is to re-align my pairing strategy to maximize the production of genetically less impressive (and statistically easier to produce) animals.  I wouldn’t produce much in the way of super-amazing combinations but I would produce a lot of moderately-priced, easy-to-sell, animals.  And if you don’t already know, it is fairly easy to sell lots of animals that are $1,000 and under before you sell a single $3,000+ animal.  The pool of buyers increases many-fold when the price falls to a certain point (usually under $1K).  This means that if I stop trying to go next level on every pairing and start trying to maximize lower-end morph production I will have many more babies to sell …and then I can buy the super-crazy morph from someone else who did take the chance.  Let someone else swing for the fence …and miss.  But I’ll be there, with cash in-hand, when they hit.  Let them be the one’s who count on long odds while I  produce lower-end animals in greater quantity, sell them easily and quickly find myself with all the cash I need to buy the morphs I covet.  I can sidestep the brutality of the odds, letting somebody else take all of the risk; I lose nothing when they miss and stand to gain when they hit.  There are plenty of people out there who are trying to hit on long odds.  Most of them will miss.  But some will hit on something silly-cool.  They took the risk, not me.  And by not even trying to do it I am guaranteeing that I won’t be one of the disappointed many that misses on them.  But, because I have so much desirable and affordable production to sell, I can safely conjure the cash (or trade) to make their animal my reality.  And the best part is that it’s still a win/win; everybody makes money.  I’m just doing more to guarantee mine.

This all makes a lot of financial sense.  But in the end I’m not sure I can do it.  The desire to make something cool, despite how painful it is when I miss, is a really tantalizing lure.  It frequently overrides my desire to make money.  I guess that means that this is more than just a business to me.

Cheers,

Colin Weaver

Not really a tough question, I suspect. Money in-hand is tangible and usable; it represents capability. In order for me to convince you to wait for money in the future it has to be more than what you can have today. But how much more? If the offer was $5,000 today or $5,200 in four years I feel pretty confident that you would still reject the deal and opt for today as the payday. The capacity for progress created by having money in hand will trump the promise of a meager future return.  What the exact future return needs to be in order to entice someone to take the deal is going to vary from person to person. But barring extreme and pressing financial need most people will eventually agree to wait for a future payday. Assuming you are looking to make some type of investment you need to decide what that number is and then make educated and rational decisions on how to achieve it. Enter the ball python; far from a pet the ball python has long since become one of the world’s many mechanisms of speculative investment.

I have an increasingly long history of trying to analyze the economics of the ball python industry (http://ballpythonbreeder.com/2010/04/on-the-economic-viability-of-ball-python-breeding/).  There are times when my contemplations on the topic consume me and I have lamented the pricing of ball pythons on several occasions (here and here).  Is it really an arena in which financial prosperity can be obtained? Or is it a money pit, a hobby that pays only part of its way with financial returns, leaving a hefty portion of the ‘profit’ to be paid in less tangible forms such as personal satisfaction and enjoyment? As a person who treats ball pythons as an investment in my financial future I really need to know. If the answer is ‘no’ I need to make some dramatic changes to my approach.

The number one place most people think to invest money is the stock market. It may not always be the best or most lucrative but it is fairly easy to do. How easy?  Simply open an investment account, fund it, and  then sit back and watch. Investing in mutual funds is almost completely hands-off. You need to keep track of the funds you have selected and adjust course from time-to-time but the day-to-day buy/sell decisions are off-loaded to professionals who do it on your behalf (for a fee).  It’s a pretty easy way to invest money.   Like many of you I invest in a retirement plan through my employer.  I also have a brokerage account, IRA’s and a few mutual fund accounts. Each month money from my bank account simply vanishes into them. Aside from the required attention I must pay to their performance I don’t do anything other than earn the paycheck that feeds them.  Pretty simple. How much of a return will these investments earn? I have absolutely no idea. But when I play around with the numbers I always assume that over a long period of time my investments will earn an average of 10% (compounding). Having spent some time around the investment world I have consistently seen 10% used as the variable when speculating future results (please note the emphasis on the word ‘speculating’).  And for the purposes of this ball python investment exploration I would like to use that as the baseline against which we measure everything else.

Let’s suppose you have $5,000 and want to invest it in something.  Should you invest in ball pythons, gold, diamonds, orange juice or mutual funds?  If (and this is a very big ‘if’) we assume that the stock market will provide you with a 10% return during the next four years we can figure out how much your $5K investment today will be worth some 1,500 days from now.  Here is the equation:

FV = P • (1+%interest)ⁿ

• FV – Future value of your money (how much money will you have at the end of the investment period)
• P – Initial Investment ($5,000 in this example)
• %interest – The return you expect (10% in this example)
• n – the number of years you will leave the entire investment (P) untouched.

So:

• FV = $5000 • (1.1)⁴
• FV = $7,320.50

This means that at 10% compounding over four years (e.g. you don’t touch the money at all during the investment period) your $5K investment will earn you $2,320.50 before taxes.  If you take those profits at the end of the four year investment period we will assume that you will pay a 35% tax on the profits (total tax = $812.18).  That will leave you with a net profit of $1,508.33.  Now let’s take a moment to ask the initial question again:  Would you rather have $5,000 today or a net of $6,508.33 four year from now?  Before you answer let me remind you that you won’t have to do any tangible work to make that money.  The only thing you will have to do is go without the $5K for four years.  Is that $1,508.33 going to be enough of a return?

Please also keep in mind that this calculation assumes that you actually have $5,000 in your hand today.  If you borrow the money with interest (credit card) you will have to deduct (from your net profit) the money you pay in interest to the credit card company.  I won’t try and present those numbers here but it should go without saying that borrowing $5K at 12% interest so you can invest in something that might pay 10% interest is not going to be very lucrative.

But wait, there is more to consider!  At this point we are supposing that we can turn $5,000 into $7,320 in four years.  But it is important to remember that $7,320 in four years will not be worth as much as it is today.  It is a mistake for you to think about future money using today’s perspectives.  The buying power of money is going down.  It always has and always will.   So what is today’s value of your future earnings?  I’m going to make an unscientific guess that across the board we are experiencing about 2% inflation.  Please note that I know that the real rate of inflation is a highly political issue.  The Consumer Price Index (CPI) suggests that the current rate is just over 1% but other people have compelling arguments that suggest it is practically closer to 8 or 13%.  I’m not educated enough on the nuances of the topic to argue it so I’m just going to make up a number that seems plausible but not excessive.  If you’re an economist please don’t bother trying to bust my chops on this point.  The make-believe I am playing doesn’t determine policy nor is it used to pass laws.

Here is the equation to calculate today’s value of a future return:

CV = FV • (1+%interest)^-n

• CV = The current value of a future return
• FV – Future return (e.g. how much will you actually be paid at some point in the future)
• %interest – The amount you will pay in interest (inflation in this case).
• -n – The number of years until you will receive the payment.

So what is that actual $5,000 in your hand today going to be worth in four years?

• CV = $5,000 • (1.02)^-4
• CV = $4,619.23

And what is today’s value of the $7,320.50 you might have in four years?

• CV = $7,320.50 • (1.02)^-4
• CV = $6,763.01

In four years your original $5,000 is only worth the equivalent of $4,619.23 in today’s money.  The $2,320.50 you made in pre-tax profit is only worth the equivalent of $2,143.78 today.  So just what does this all mean?  It means that without accounting for the ever-decreasing value of money you can’t make a direct apples-to-apples comparison of money that you have in your hand today with money you might have in your hand at some point in the future.  Stick with me because this is important.  You have to understand the future value of money in a way that is meaningful to you today.  This is called “net present value”.  Getting $1,500 today is not the same as getting $1,500 in the future.  In order to understand the future value of money you have to be able to look at it from today’s perspective.  The after-tax value of your future profit (four years from now) is worth only $1,393.46 in today’s dollars.

And now I can ask the question one final time, in a slightly different, yet much more meaningful, way.  Would you rather have $5,000 today or today’s equivalent of $6,393.46 in four years?  Now we have a meaningful comparison of money across time.  If the stock market can actually produce a 10% return over a four year period your $5,000 investment will yield an effective profit of $1,393.46 (taking taxes and inflation into account).  At this point you are either seeing the light or bleeding from the ears.

Ok.  The baseline is set:  $5K invested.  Fours years of waiting.  Net profit of about $1,400 (in today’s money).  What about taking that $5K and investing it in ball pythons instead?  Can that investment provide a better potential return?

The calculations for a snake breeding project are not quite as simple as putting money into a mutual fund.  There are a lot of moving parts that need to be considered.  Investing in the stock market comes with many unknowns.  Investing in ball pythons has just as many, if not more.  On the Scale of Risk an investment in ball pythons is arguably more risky than the stock market but not quite as wasteful as buying lottery tickets.  The benefit to this is that increased risk should bring greater potential for reward.  The risk versus reward theme is a constant.  The bigger the bet, the bigger the gain.  Or, if things don’t go well, the bigger the loss.  I have said it many times:  breeding ball pythons for profit is a game of calculated chance.  No matter how well you control the variables the end game is usually nothing less than a toss of the dice.   How many females lay how many eggs?  How well did you do on the odds and are the babies the “right” gender?  None of these things are under your control.  And that’s not too unlike the stock market; technology stocks can tank, there could be another accounting scandal or that pharmaceutical company you invested in could have its most profitable product recalled because it kills more people than it cures.  Not matter the mechanism, investment is full of risks you can’t completely control.  So is the profit potential when breeding ball pythons worth the risk?  That’s the question.

What are the moving parts that need to be considered in an evaluation of a ball python investment?  They include (but are not limited to):

1. Will there be any startup costs?  This includes caging, water bowls, hides, room preparation, etc.  Many of these costs are, for the most part, one-time costs.  If you buy quality cages today they should still be serving you well in 10 years.
2. The initial (and continued) investment in animals.
3. The costs associated with raising animals to an appropriate breeding size.  This mainly includes food and environmental necessities (heat, cleaning supplies, etc.) and, rarely, vet bills.
4. Your time.  How many hours per week will you spend taking care of your investment?  How much do you get paid to do it?  For most of us, for-profit breeders included, that answer is close to zero; we don’t pay ourselves to take care of our snake collection.  We rationalize this decision by telling ourselves that our payday will come in the future, when babies are hatched and sold.  One way or another you are expecting to get paid for the time you spend.  But by excluding the value of your time you are artificially skewing the numbers to a more positive outcome.  At the very least this is a healthy dose of denial.  Companies can’t calculate their profits without accounting for the cost of labor. Would you go to work every day at your “real job” for no paycheck?  If this reptile thing you are doing is a business why do the hours spent working on it count differently?  It’s OK for you to defer your pay.  I did it for a few years when I started my IT business.  All I’m saying is that you need to account for it as you do.  It’s part of the real cost of being in business.
5. Market value depreciation.  Ball python prices are both fickle and arbitrary.  They frequently fall very fast.  It can be depressing.  Do not look at the animal’s value today and use that as a measure of your profits tomorrow.  You will be very disappointed if you do.  For the purposes of our discussion we will assume that co-dominant morphs lose 45% of their value each year.  And we will assume that simple recessive animals lose 30% of theirs.    This can be quite variable from one morph to the next but the numbers I have seen over the years (despite making me sick to my stomach) suggest this is not unrealistic.

It is impossible to account for every eventuality when considering ball pythons as an investment.  This fact alone may make it unsavory for some people.  I am reasonably confident that most people who take time to read this really want ball pythons to be an excellent investment.  I know I do.  But I endeavor to be pragmatic on the topic so I can make the most responsible investments.  I am, after all, no longer in this because it is a hobby.  These snakes need to pay for a good portion of my future.  Can they do that?  If not, I need to direct my investment dollars in another direction and let this whole snake breeding thing fall back into the category of ‘leisurely hobby’.

The first thing we need to do is invest our $5,000 in some snakes.  To keep things focused on the animals we will assume that the appropriate environment has already been established.  Cages, water bowls, etc. have already been acquired and we don’t need to dip into our investment capital for these things.

Here is what we buy:

• 0.3 Normal Adult Females @ $125 each
• 2.0 Visual Males (Single Gene, Simple Recessive) @ $850 each
• 0.3 100% Het Females @ $500 each
• 0.2 Visual Females (Single Gene, Simple Recessive) @ $1,100 each

Total value of investment:  $5,700.  Whoops!  We already blew the budget.  But we’ll assume we got a discount on the whole package and our total price was $5,000.  Sweet.

With the exception of the adult normal females all of these are current year (hatchling) snakes.  Here are some general assumptions we will make about this group of animals:

• The 2.0 males will be big enough to breed the following breeding season.  This is why we invested in the normal females.  They are an affordable way to get some production early in the investment period and the sale of that production will help offset the cost of raising the others.
• We also assume that two of the heterozygous females and one of the visual females will be ready to breed in 18-20 months.  The remaining het and visual female will require an additional year before achieving a good breeding size.  This is a relatively safe thing to assume.  Not all females get up to size in 18 months but some do.  It is not unusual for females to take upwards of 36 months to get up to size.
• Every female of breeding size will not lay eggs every year.  Most breeders will agree that in any given breeding season you should expect only 50-70% of your females to lay eggs.

The Timeline

The animals are purchased in May of Year One.  Beginning in November of Year One the males are bred to the 0.3 normal females.  Breeding continues through late February.

In June of Year Two (13 months after the initial investment) two of the three females lay a total of 12 eggs.  In late August 5.6 hets hatch.

For completely arbitrary reasons the price of simple recessive animals drops by approximately 1/3 each year.  Using the value of the animals in the previous year as a reference we can speculate that the value of the heterozygous animals one year later will be:

• Male Hets:  $70, down from $100 the previous season.
• Female Hets: $350, down from $500 the previous season.
• Male Visuals: $600, down from $850 the previous season.
• Female Visuals: $775, down from $1,100 the previous season.

The total value of our production in Year Two (all of which we will sell) is:

• 5.0 Male Hets @ $70 each = $350
• 0.6 Female Hets @$350 each = $2,100

Because we acquired our initial stock at a 10% discount we will assume that we also sold your production at a reasonable 10% discount.   The value of our Year Two production is ($350+$2,100) – 10% = $2,205.  The hatchlings were in our possession for a total of ten weeks before being sold.  They were fed twice weekly during that time.  Subtract the first 10-14 days for their first shed and subtract two additional weeks when they were again in shed and we were feeding them for a total of six weeks.  That works out to ($.90 x 2) x 11 animals for six weeks.  By the time they are sold we will have spent approximately $120 feeding them.  Subtract this from your total and your net for Year Two production is $2,085.  As a reminder, that $2,085 is not the same as $2,085 today.  The net present value of that $2,085 you will earn in one year is $2,024.

Now let’s jump forward to the tail end of Year Three.  This season you got eggs from one normal female (7 eggs), one of your young het females (6 eggs) and one of the visual females (5 eggs).

• From the normal female you hatch 3.3 hets (one egg went bad during incubation)
• From the het female you hatch 2.1 visuals and 1.2 100% hets
• From the visual female you hatch 2.3 visuals.
• Total production:  4.5 hets, 4.4 visuals

Prices at the end of Year Three are as follows:

• Male Hets:  $50, down from $70 the previous season.
• Female Hets: $250, down from $350 the previous season.
• Male Visuals: $425, down from $600 the previous season.
• Female Visuals: $550, down from $775 the previous season.

The value of your Year Three production:

• 4.0 hets: 4 * $50 = $200
• 0.5 hets: 5 *$350 = $1,750
• 4.0 visuals: 4 * $600 = $2,400
• 0.4 visuals: 4 * 775 = $3,100
• Total production value:  $7,450

In Year Three we will again assume that you sell your production at a reasonable 10% discount.  This drops your gross to $6,705.  Using the same sales time line as the previous season (with a slight increase in rodent prices), hatchling feeding costs for Year Three are: ($.95 x 2) x 17 =  $193.80.  Subtracting this from your Year Three production gross leaves $6,511.  The net present value of that $6,511 is $6,137.

Finally let’s jump to the end of Year 4.

This season you got eggs from two normal females (11 eggs), two of your het females (12 eggs) and both of the visual females (11 eggs).

• From the normal females you hatch 7.4 hets
• From the het females you hatch 1.3 visuals and 3.5 100% hets
• From the visual females you hatch 7.4 visuals.
• Total production:  10.9 hets, 8.7 visuals

Prices at the end of Year Four are as follows:

• Male Hets:  $35, down from $50 the previous season.
• Female Hets: $175, down from $250 the previous season.
• Male Visuals: $300, down from $425 the previous season.
• Female Visuals: $375, down from $550 the previous season.

The value of your Year Four production:

• 10.0 hets: 10 * $35 = $350
• 0.9 hets: 9 * $175 = $1,575
• 8.0 visuals: 8 * $300 = $2,400
• 0.7 visuals: 7 * $375 = $2,625
• Total Year Four production value:  $6,950

In Year Four we will again assume that you sell your production at a reasonable 10% discount.  This drops your gross to $6,255.  Using the same sales time line as the previous season, hatchling feeding costs for Year Four are: ($.95 x 2) x 34 =  $408.00.  Subtracting this from your Year Three production gross leaves $5,847.  The net present value of that $5,847 is $5,402.

The Tally

At the end of three full breeding seasons (which will put you into year four on the calendar) you will have earned (expressed using Net Present Value):

• Year Two:  $2,024
• Year Three: $6,137
• Year Four: $5,402
• Total:  $13,563

After subtracting your initial $5,000 investment you have a profit (still expressed in Net Present Value) of $8,563.  Well that looks pretty nice but don’t start grinning just yet.  You need to subtract your expenses, the biggest of which is your rodent bill for your adult breeders.  If you buy rats at an average of $1.30/rat I estimate the bill to feed ten ball pythons for three years is about $1,600.  Subtract that from your profits and you have now netted $6,963.

A few more estimated expenses that were incurred during the multi-year process:

• Mulch/Bedding: $487
• Electricity: $720
• PayPal/Credit Card fees:  $406 (assumes 1/2 of the $13,563 was payments via credit card or PayPal at 3%)
• Misc supplies:  $300

After factoring those into the equation our profit is down to $5,050.  That’s not bad, really.  We are still $3,657 ahead of the comparatively meager $1,393 we earned in our mutual fund.  But don’t forget what is missing:

• Taxes: At 35% your $13,563 would be chopped by $4,747, leaving you with a total initial profit of $8,816.  Important Note:  There would be plenty of deductions that would push that number back up, of course.
• Caging: We didn’t budget the cost of caging into these calculations; we assumed it was already there.  If that isn’t true you could quickly see your profitability drop below zero.
• Your Time: Invest in a mutual fund and make $1,393 while doing almost nothing for four years.  Or bust your butt in the reptile business and make $5,050.  You worked a lot harder for the return.  The time you spent has financial value, doesn’t it?  Had you been paying someone to do this all along how much would you have spent in payroll?  Even if you spent a lowly 8 hours per week taking care of your animals (a low number, I think) and paid $10/hr you would have spent $4,160/year in payroll.  Actual payroll over the total investment period would approach $15,000 …more than the total amount earned.  Every business owner knows that payroll is the single biggest bill that has to be paid.  This also helps us understand why we don’t pay ourselves for the time we spend tending to our animals.
• Selling Difficulty: I generously assumed that you would quickly sell your production.  If your babies spend more time on the rack you could easily add a few hundred more dollars to your rodent bill.
• Marketing Costs: This includes fees to sell using on-line classified sites, web site hosting, trade show table fees, display cases, etc.  All of these costs could add up to a lot over a four-year period.
• Catastrophe: The production numbers each season were pretty darn fair.  Subtle swings in the odds could radically change the numbers.  What would have happened if an animal got sick and needed vet care?  You could easily lose them for an entire breeding season (or worse).

One criticism of this particular analysis is that the collection of animals remains stagnant over the investment period.  I admit that this is not the normal way ball python breeders do things.  Most of us continue to upgrade the quality of our collections.  At the end of the first breeding season we could have acquired other multi-gene animals to increasingly work toward making something other than the same stuff year after year.  While this may be the more common approach it was not my intention to muddy the waters with additional investment capital being poured into the mix.  What I want to know is if an investment in a project can be profitable by itself; no continuous cash infusions needed.  Trying to determine profitability when buying new collection members is a topic for another day.

The end analysis in all of this is that ball pythons have the potential to provide a better return that what it typically expected from the stock market.  But it’s not a sure thing; nothing is even remotely close to guaranteed. There is a lot of risk and expenses are significant.  I remain confident that there is money to be made for some people in this business …but not all of us.  Most people simply don’t make plans to be profitable and, as a result, they won’t.  I once had a teacher tell me that “failing to plan is planning to fail”.  How true…

Cheers,

Colin Weaver

The pace of production for different morph combinations is always accelerating.  As breeders get their hands on more and more multi-gene males and females the combinations are beginning to leap forward almost exponentially.  In 2011 it won’t surprise me to see an abundance of new six, seven and possibly even eight-gene combinations.  It’s not as if they will be available in quantity, though.  Even with three or four genes on each side you still require a massive amount of luck on the odds.  Because they are so hard to make it will still be several years before they are available in any measurable quantity (and there is still plenty of time to be the first). For the next several years getting your hands on a four, five or six-gene animal is going to require you to produce your own or be prepared to drop significant cash (or comparable trade).

So if you really want to be the first the make something amazing what do you have to do?  The answer is quite obvious, I suppose.  But if you’re lagging behind the bigger names in the business you may be looking for a way to gain some momentum.  There isn’t much opportunity for the short road but here are a few quotes that nicely illustrate my perspective:

“Those who live within their means suffer from a lack of imagination.” – Oscar Wilde

• I hate to be the bearer of bad news but you are far less likely to be in a position to name a morph if you are not financially aggressive.  Who am I kidding?  Let’s call a duck a duck:  you will likely need to lean more toward financially reckless.  This immediately narrows the field of contenders.  Most of us don’t have the stomach to spend multiple thousands of dollars on a single animal.  Even if the money was available we wouldn’t do it.  And in reality, you need more than one.  These days you will need several heavy genetic hitters because big genetic combinations require you to come to the table with powerful potential in the sire and the dam (and that requires money).  Having a high-end male paired with lower-end females is a great way to make some money but don’t expect to be wondering what you are going to call the babies when they pip; it’s almost guaranteed that somebody else beat you to it.  I admit that it is silly to spend big cash for the sole objective of being able to name a ball python morph.  It’s really more of a fringe benefit.  It remains, however, largely true.  Can you spend five, ten or fifteen grand on a single snake?  Most people wouldn’t even consider it.  I hem and haw over how much to spend on a new dishwasher but I barely flinch when spending multiple thousands on a snake.  I’m one a relative few that has that special kind of addiction.   From Mr. Wilde’s perspective, I, and others like me, have ample imagination.

“Luck favors the prepared.” -Louis Pasteur

• Louis Pasteur is frequently referred to as the king of accidental discovery so I take him at his word on this point.  The more opportunity to which you expose yourself the more likely it is that you will come across something amazing.  Put another way, serendipitous moments are less likely to occur when the “data set” is small.  What exactly does this mean for ball python breeders?  A few things:
  1. Don’t count on the odds to be kind. Punnet squares are not guarantees.  More often than not I consider them to be taunts.  Consider yourself fortunate if your production matches what the square suggests; your eggs have been sprinkled with magic fairy dust if you beat the odds.  Be sure to thank the Higher Power you deem worthy when it happens.  Sometimes it takes a whole lot of tryin’ just to get lucky once and painfully large amounts of time may pass in the process.  Ball python breeding is not a field of endeavor packed with an excess of guarantees.  Even though you may have the ingredients necessary to make magic you are going to find that you often have to try more than once to hit the sweet spot.  And if you’re trying to be the first to make something you need it to happen sooner rather than later; this particular facet of ball python husbandry is competitive.  To beat everyone else to the prize you need to get as many at-bats as possible.  Put simply, get as many high-end animals as you can to improve your odds.  Easier said than done, I know.  Please refer back to Oscar Wilde’s quote if you need to get the full spectrum of my point.
  2. If you’re gonna’ go, go big. We all have limits on money, space and time.  This makes ‘big’ a relative term.  To make magic you don’t have to keep thousands of animals but you do have to keep as many as your time, space and money allow.  Scratch that, you have to work within your time and space constraints; you need to stress the limits of what you define as affordable.  Yes, I know it is horribly bad advice to tell people to spend more than they can afford. In this instance, however, I am addressing the desire to be the first to make, and subsequently name, a particular morph.  If pushing the edges of what has been done is part of your game plan then you don’t get to be conservative.  You can expect conservative results if all you make are conservative investments.  Risk versus reward is always in effect.  If you only buy snakes that are $1,000 and less you are not likely to make the first of anything.  You have to have the largest, nicest collection that you can still provide with excellent care.
  3. Husbandry matters. Getting animals up to breeding size is a game of vigilance, chance and speed.  I have one word for all the people who breed for profit and say they “don’t push their animals” to get big.  That word:  bullshit!  When price is factored into the mix time is your biggest enemy.  Casually getting animals up to size is contra to the stated objective of making a profit and I don’t buy it when people tell me they aren’t in a hurry to get their girls on eggs.  On the breeder’s carousel the gold ring is only available once per year and missing it requires you to wait at least another twelve months before you get another shot.  That time is valued in cash.  Almost all of us are in a hurry to push that male past 500 grams and we hope and pray that our females blow right through the thousand-gram wall.  Most breeders will start breeding their girls at 1,200 grams, give or take, but the odds of a first-time girl going at that size are somewhat low.  The odds of the clutch being large are even smaller.  There is no substitute for bigger, older girls.  This, of course, takes time.  But if you want to have the greatest chance for success you need to make sure that the time is well spent.  You have to aggressively feed your females in the off season and you can’t waver in the slightest.  It’s not an exact science but bigger girls tend to produce bigger clutches.  One girl who gives you ten eggs is worth a lot more than those smaller girls who only offer four, five and six eggs each year.  Every extra egg that makes it through incubation increases the odds that this time around will yield the gold ring.  Set yourself up for success by adhering to a simple philosophy:  ABF – Always Be Feeding.  Feeding snakes should be your favorite pastime.  And before you heat up your keyboard flaming me for encouraging reptile obesity let me remind you that we are talking about ball pythons here; their appetites are sufficiently fickle that overfeeding is an infrequent problem.  Other species of snakes?  Sure, there are many python species that will get too fat.  But consider yourself lucky if you have a ball python that will eat often enough to look like most Americans.

“Collect opportunities.” -Nicholas Taleb

• Collecting opportunities means a few things to me.  In some ways it ties in with points I have already made about the size and quality of your collection but it also emphasizes the opportunity you have to leap forward by taking chances with the unknown.
  1. You can’t breed it when it’s not in the rack. When you come across an animal that fits beautifully into your collection, do everything you can to make it yours.  It is more than just a little cavalier to suggest causing yourself financial stress and/or harm over ball pythons.  Admittedly, it is not right for most people.  But people who are always going to be financially conservative probably stopped reading a while ago, anyway.  Much to the chagrin of my wife and business partners I have an incredibly optimistic attitude about my ability to make money.  It’s this mindset that allows me to actually pull the trigger and spend it.  I believe the pain to be temporary and I have faith that the investment will earn the money back multiple times over …most of the time.  Despite the tone you may interpret here, my risk-taking is quite calculated.  It’s aggressive but not to the point that I can’t pay my mortgage or feed my family.  Being happily married with healthy kids and a nice, safe place to live is always going to be cooler than naming a ball python morph.
  2. Dinker. A few of the bigger names in this business got there by being lucky.  Most got there through money, investment and time but there are a small few that saw something others did not.  They took a chance and bought an unusual (or not so unusual) looking animal and found that it was genetic gold.  The Orange Dream, Special, het Puma, Specter, and Yellow Belly are a few easy examples.  Most of these animals are not immediately impressive but when paired with the right mates something amazing happens.  Some breeders have an eye for unusual markings and have developed a knack for teasing new morphs from the DNA; others have just had blind luck.  In the end it doesn’t matter, though.  It all starts with the dinker.  The flow of unusual ball pythons from the wild has slowed in recent years but they are still arriving.  If you see something odd and unusual, pick it up.  Dinker projects are like lottery tickets; most are going to be losers but every now and then somebody wins big.  If you don’t dinker you can rest assured that it won’t be you.  Don’t bet on dinker projects to put you on the map.  Consider them a fun little side project that might, just might, bump you ahead in the game.

We’re all in this business for different reasons.  Some people could care less about the money, making something first or any of the other limited forms of fame and glory the business has to offer.  Others feel just the opposite.  They want desperately to be the first to make something new.  And there there are a huge number of us who could care less if we are the first so long as we can make some nice money from our efforts.  I find that I am most closely aligned with the latter.  More than once I have said it:  nobody keeps as many snakes as I do solely out of love for reptiles.  Money is the motivator.  Seeing something for the first time, something no other person has ever seen …that’s just a super-cool bonus!

Cheers,

Colin Weaver