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’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

“Because they know all they sold ya’ was a guaranteed piece of shit. That’s all it is, isn’t it? Hey, if you want me to take a dump in a box and mark it guaranteed, I will. I got spare time.”
-Tommy Callahan

Several weeks ago I read posts on the Burmese Python Forums (Small Burms and Fake Hypos) that discussed sellers on some notable reptile classified web sites offering both dwarf and hypo Burmese that really were not what they claim.   Apparently someone was selling hypo-like animals that were not genetic hypos and dwarf burms that were not genetic dwarves.  This sort of stuff is fairly common and I see it every now and then in the ball python market.  I’m sure it happens in every little crevice of the reptile world.  Less than scrupulous people are willing to stretch the truth, tweak the photos or flat-out lie in order to extract a few extra dollars from a sale.  It’s a bane of the business, an unfortunate feature of the reptile trade.  People in-the-know see these types of ads and react with laughter and general disdain.  A tiny handful will take time to contact the seller to tell them that their misrepresentation (intentional or accidental) did not go unnoticed.  An even smaller number of us will contact the administrator of the site on which they happen to be listed in an effort to get the ads removed.  But most of us either don’t notice or don’t care.  After all, only two people will be hurt by such listings; the seller (in the form of his diminished reputation) and the buyer (being unnecessarily parted with his cash).  That’s true, right?  I’m not selling and I’m not buying so it doesn’t effect me, does it?  I say it does, actually.  Possibly profoundly so.

As much as I don’t like it I recognize that a large number of breeders figure out how to price animals by seeing what others are posting on reptile classifieds.  I have reflected more than once on the stupidity of such behavior. When someone misrepresents an animal on a classified site and sells it for a discount it influences prices.  This is true even when the animal is not a legitimate example of the morph.  When people see the animal being sold and the price being asked they begin to think that the animal must be worth that much.  The simple presence of the ad starts the cycle of people saying, “I saw them on a reptile classified site for $_______.”  Because price is such a focal point for people the lack of genetic authenticity is lost in the shuffle.  This is also true of genetically accurate animals that are poor examples of the morph.  The discount Internet seller, even the illegitimate one’s, gradually erode the value of an animal.

A large number of people who love herpetoculture can’t resist an apparent good deal.  While there are many who look for quality animals first and let price come in a close second, most of us don’t.  Like it or not, price is usually king.  Quality is a novelty for many, a thing for people of more discerning taste.  If someone is selling any particular morph or species locality for an oddly low price people won’t hesitate to jump on the deal.  They simply can’t pass it up.  Their Spidey-senses are tingling as they do it but they want to believe they are getting a deal so badly that they let good judgement go by the wayside.  Needing to convince themselves of their own buyer’s-vigilance they interrogate the seller with a standard array of doing-your-homework style questions.  Questions like:

• Where did the animal come from?
• Who produced it?
• How long have you had it?
• Is it feeding?  If so, what is it eating?
• Why are you selling it?
• Why is it so cheap?
• Are the genetics certain?
• Do you offer a guarantee?

As long as the answers are somewhere in the realm of plausibility the desire to believe that the deal is a good one allows them to rationalize and internalize any answer.  With apparent due diligence having been performed they drop coin on table and complete the transaction.  At that moment they are proud of themselves; they have just beat the system by getting an animal for way less than the going rate.  Basking in their own fabricated bliss they proudly pat themselves on the back for their shrewd acquisition.  They think they have an animal that carries some particular gene but it doesn’t.  They just don’t know it yet.  Did the seller make an honest mistake or was it an intentional fabrication?  Who can say for sure from one deal to the next.  But one thing is frequently true regarding these unfortunate transactions:  It will likely be YEARS before the buyer realizes he didn’t get what he paid for.  And by the time he does, the opportunity for legitimate recourse has become painfully limited.  Let’s explore.

Suppose it was you who bought one those codom hypo burmese pythons mentioned earlier.  It will likely be a few years before it reaches an appropriate size for breeding but eventually it will happen; oviposition, incubation and hatching.  And …oops!  No hypos!  What are the odds of that happening?  Assuming it was a large enough clutch of eggs (Burmese pythons tend to have significantly larger clutches than ball pythons) the odds are reasonably small that you will completely miss.  If there are 25 eggs and not a single hypo is in the clutch there is a pretty strong case that a mistake was made (or a ruse perpetrated) regarding the genetics.  Could you have missed on 50/50 odds 25 times in a row?  Sure.  But it’s not likely.  There is a 1 in 33,554,432 chance that you can flip a coin 25 times in a row and have it comes up heads every time.  For comparison, there is a 1 in 64 chance that you will miss every time on 50/50 odds when you have only six eggs.  Don’t be confused if those numbers seem a bit backwards.  I’m talking about the likelihood of completely missing on the odds, not hitting the odds.  If the genetics are correct your odds of hitting increases with the number of eggs.

If the buyer thinks he didn’t get what he paid for he has to contact the seller to talk about it.  But keep in mind that it is quite likely that several years have gone by since you made your purchase.  While you are far from done with the results of that transaction the seller mentally washed his hands of it a few minutes after it was completed.  Can the seller even be found?  People come and go in this business with speed matched only by frequency.  Assuming the seller can be found it is likely that he will be reluctant to admit fault and offer any form of compensation.  Inaction on his part is defensible on many possible fronts:

• You, the buyer, must have mixed up your animals during breeding.  This is an especially easy argument if it comes to light that you have multiple animals.
• Because there is no photographic history of the animal the seller has no way to verify that the animal in question was even sold by him.  For all he knows you got this particular animal from someone else and are now representing it as the one he sold you.
• The female must have retained sperm from the previous breeding season.  This can and does happen.  I know multiple people, myself included, who have produced animals from the male who was used two breeding seasons ago.
• You were  just unlucky and missed on the odds.  Try again next year.
• You are the only person who has contacted the seller with this problem so it must have been a mistake on your end.
• The seller insists on the genetic certainty of the animals he sells.  It must have been the other animal in the pairing who didn’t carry the gene (this is especially effective when addressing het-to-het pairings).  Yes, I know this does not apply in all genetic pairings.
• It is also quite common that the person from whom you bought the snake actually bought it from someone else.  You got the snake from Luke who bought it from Aaron.  Who knows where Aaron actually got it.  If the genetics aren’t right who is responsible?  I can assure you that in almost all cases your conversation with the person from whom you bought the snake will end with him washing his hands of the situation by giving Aaron’s contact information.  Unless there is an existing relationship I can also promise that contacting Aaron isn’t likely to yield any results.  The genetic provenance of second-hand animals is almost always completely unverifiable and equally indefensible.

With a little creativity we can continue to add to the list of reasons why the seller is going to be reluctant to accept responsibility.  Unless the person who sold you the animal has a tremendous amount of personal and professional integrity (and assuming you are also a person worthy of trust) you are unlikely to get anything.  When the seller is unwilling to make things right you are left with four mechanisms of recourse:

1. File a civil suit. Take your case to the courts and have a jury listen to your arguments.  A civil suit would be interesting and I am aware of only a handful of cases dealing with reptile genetics that have been taken to civil court.  I am also aware of the ease with which these suits can be filed.  Educating a jury about reptile genetics might be a tough job, though.  A healthy portion of our population is so misinformed about the true nature of reptiles that an impartial analysis of the facts is not guaranteed.  Fortunately, civil suits do not require proof “beyond a reasonable doubt”.  Instead they only require a “preponderance of the evidence”, which basically means that your argument must be more compelling (e.g. more likely to be true) than the opposing party.  Translation:  Document, document, document.  The one who keeps the best records wins.  This makes it very easy to win as most reptile breeders keep notoriously bad records.
2. Take your case to the Board of Inquiry (BOI) on the faunaclassifieds.com web site. This is tantamount to taking your case to the “court of public opinion”.  I believe that taking your gripe to the BOI is a waste of time.  Many will disagree with me on this point.  The BOI is only examined by a tiny subset of the reptile community (and an even smaller portion of them care what is written) and if the seller logs on to the forum to defend himself in a reasonably professional manner he will be able to cast an equal amount of doubt on you.  If you follow “bad guy” posts on the BOI you have seen how the OP (original poster) often finds himself in the hot seat rather than the supposed “bad guy”.  In the end you will likely accomplish little more than further alienating the seller, making him even less likely to do anything for you.  Yes, a well-articulated BOI post will cause a handful of people to shy away from the seller but it won’t do any real (long term) damage to their business.  There is a long list of people who are regularly ‘BOI-bashed’ but every single one of them continues to sell tons of animals.  It is blatantly obvious that the BOI posts don’t negatively impact their sales, isn’t it?  If not from new sales gone bad where else do the fresh negative BOI posts come from?  If the BOI had any real weight in the industry we would not keep seeing the same names over and over because their lack of sales would drive them out of the trade.  Pay attention and you will see that many people in the reptile community can’t learn from their own mistakes, much less the ones made by others.  Seller’s with less than stellar reputations are constantly given the benefit of the doubt by buyers lured in by low prices. The cycle is simultaneously depressing and hilarious.The buyer’s ability to talk himself into a purchase is predictable.  They see an animal on a classified site and then check the BOI to learn more about the seller.  They discover that there are some negative posts.  Unable to walk away from such a good deal they convince themselves the seller will be different this time.  But what are they really telling themselves?  Something like this:  Yesterday someone left a note on the refrigerator saying, “Milk is spoiled!  Do NOT drink!”.  “Hmmph.”, they say.  “That note is from yesterday.  It doesn’t apply to me.  Today I’ll bet the milk will be better.”  No matter how much you think the rules don’t apply to you, milk doesn’t fight through bad and turn good again.  And neither do shady reptile sellers.  Things are what they are.  Complaining about getting suckered when all the warning signs were right in front of you isn’t going to change the fact that you let a cheap price twist your otherwise good senses.  And in the end your BOI post is little else than your own effort at personal catharsis.  In the long run you will do better to stand in your back yard and scream until your throat hurts.
3. Use Twitter, Facebook, Internet forums and your personal blog as a platform to rail against the seller. I’m a big believer in the power of words and the Internet is nothing less than amazing for its ability to disseminate information.  That being said I have seen many sites with many messages about some of the more nefarious names in our industry and the volume of what has been written about them would be damning in many other lines of work.  But they are still here.  The Internet has desensitized us; it usually takes more than a forum post to touch the masses.  But sometimes the words you write can become viral within the community.  They can quickly spread from site-to-site and from mouth-to-mouth.  Blog posts automatically update Twitter and Facebook and followers and friends cross-post your messages on other sites and in a very short amount of time you can reach a lot of people.  The speed with which your words can be seen across the Internet is amazing.  While the Internet is a great way to spread information nothing has as much impact as sharing your  experience with friends who are also in the trade.  Think about it:  if there are (in theory) fewer than six degrees of separation between you and every other person on this planet imagine how few people there are between you and every other person in the reptile community.
4. Physically threaten and/or assault the person you feel has cheated you. While quite possibly the most therapeutic, this is the least intelligent thing you can do.  Everybody sues everybody in our society these days.  Resorting to threats and/or violence won’t do anything other than make you a defendant.  Victims become defendants when they lose their cool.  Try to remember that as the rage takes control (and then refer back to option #1).

I have been writing the past few paragraphs trying to act as if the seller actually was an honest person who made a mistake.  This can (and does) happen and truly honest sellers will make amends in some way.  While that is possible we also have to acknowledge that there are a healthy number of people who will look us directly in the eye and lie to every question asked about an animal.  They are skilled at doing it and are frequently very compelling in their false sincerity.  They knew they were lying when they sold the animal and they have no problem continuing to do so several years later.  It is, quite frankly, a cornerstone of their business model.

The dishonest seller is one of the most difficult realities of our business.  But even honest sellers can be troublesome to work with when genetics turn out to be wrong.  There are not a lot of financially sound reptile breeders.  Most of us struggle with our finances the same way the rest of the population does.  If you pay someone $1,000 for a snake I can all but guarantee that they will spend the money within days of receiving it.  Even if you came back to them a week later with a legitimate concern it is unlikely that they can conjure the money to issue a refund.  The problem is compounded when years have gone by.  Let me give you a real situation that happened in order to illustrate the problem.  A friend of mine bought a hatchling snake that was supposed to carry a certain number of genes.  Because the animal was rare at the time of purchase it carried a significant price tag.  More than a year  was spent raising the animal (a male) to its breeding weight.  After hatching eggs from multiple females it became obvious that the animal did not carry the genetics it was supposed to have.  The original seller was contacted and the problem was explained.  After seeing the evidence the seller apologized for the mistake.  But what do you think the seller could/should have done?  The solution may be easy to say but tough to achieve.

If you are sold a snake that is supposed to carry certain genes and it turns out that it does not you are due some form of compensation, right?  It makes sense.  But how much?  Should you get a full cash refund?  With interest?  How about replacement animals of similar value to the money you spent? How about a cash refund plus compensation for lost production?  How about animal credit for the initial value plus credit for lost production?  If you think you should be paid for your lost opportunity in addition to your initial investment how are you going to come to a value for the lost opportunity?  Do we turn to statistics to find a settlement?  If not, what do we use?  Suppose the buyer in the above scenario paid $5,000 for the original animal.  Let’s also suppose the Punnett square shows there to be a 1:4 chance of producing the desired offspring.  If a total of 25 eggs were produced from different females there should have been (statistically) six of the desired animal produced.  Suppose those six animals have a retail value of $3,500 each.  That’s $21,000 of unrealized financial gain because of a mistake made by the seller.

The problem is likely to become compounded because we almost always give the benefit of the doubt to the animal and try a second breeding season before passing final judgement.  In an effort to be optimistic we chalk the first year up to bad breeder’s luck and try again the following year.  If we suppose that a total of 20 eggs are produced in the 2nd season we should see (statistically) five of the desired animals poke their heads out of the egg.  But again no animals (which are now worth $2,500) carrying the desired genes are produced.

Let’s do some math:  $5,000 was paid to acquire the animal.  $21,000 was not realized during the first year of breeding and an additional $12,500 was not realized in year number two.  In the eyes of the buyer a (statistical) total of $38,500 has been lost.  But how will the original seller see it?  Is he going to agree and quickly send a cashier’s check for almost forty-grand?  Let me be the first to assure you that there is a zero percent chance that will happen.  Even if the seller had that kind of money you would have to kidnap his family to get it from him (and that might not even work).  And this pulls the covers back on the biggest, dirtiest secret in the reptile business.  Here it is: If you ever come up on the losing end of a genetic “mistake” you will almost never be indemnified.  Put another way, you will never be fully compensated for your loss.  Even in the most agreeable of resolutions you are not going to come out at the level that you could have if the genetics had been true.  It’s not right, I now.  But it’s the way this business seems to work.  I don’t know why but there is an underlying part of our hobby’s culture that makes it OK to make amends in a manner that ultimately works out better for the person who made the mistake (e.g. the original seller).

If you’ve never been on the receiving end of a genetic mistake take a moment to imagine this scenario:  You just spent real money on a new male for your collection.  You spend the next year getting it to breeding size.  You then spend an additional two years trying in vain to prove its genetics.  The seller has apologized for the mistake and wants to make things right.  One of the most frequent offers of compensation is for the seller to give you current year babies as replacements.  Knowing that you are not likely to get anything else from the seller (without going to court), you agree.  Are you satisfied?  Most people are.  But take a moment to assess your situation:

• The real money you originally spent is gone.  You have a ‘worthless’ male that you have spent years raising.  There is measurable time and money involved in getting the animal to adulthood.
• Your breeder females have laid eggs for you two years in a row.  The likelihood of them going three years in a row is small.  Even if you were offered an adult male as a replacement it is not likely that you will get eggs a third year in a row.
• You have a new baby male given to you by the breeder as compensation for the mistake.  Depending on the time of year it will probably be the following breeding season before it is ready to be paired with the girls.  This means yet another breeding season will go by with no egg production that benefits you.
• Prices have continued to spiral downward.  When all is said and done it could be as many as six years later before you ever produce the animals that your original male was supposed to help you make.
• Congratulations!  After six years of effort the money you spent has not advanced your collection or your wallet one single bit. The project you began in your early 30′s has not borne any fruit as you celebrate your 40th birthday.

Let me ask the question again:  Are you satisfied?

My friend who bought the expensive animal with incorrect genetics is still trying to come to an agreement on compensation for the mistake …and the mistake was made almost four years ago.  At the time the mistake was realized the value of the loss was about $12,000.  And that was just to account for the amount that was over-paid for the original animal (yes, it was a very expensive animal); it did not include the value of lost production.  As is usually the case, the original seller offered baby ball pythons as compensation.  The total retail value of those animals (at the time) was just under $2,500.  When my friend told him that was unacceptable the seller looked at him with an expression that clearly said, “What else do you expect me to do?  Do you really think I’m going to give you $12,000+ worth of animals?”  If you’re bewildered right now, join the club.  The original seller actually took an additional $12,000 of real money from the buyer and 20 months later, balked at returning the money (in any form) he unfairly took.  Why?  Because the original seller didn’t see it as giving back $12,000 he never really earned.  He saw it as losing $12,000 worth of animals.  Remember, he washed his hands of the original sale five minutes after it was done.  In his mind that was money made.  It is very hard for money to become “un-earned” a year or more after the fact, regardless of the legitimacy of the sale.  It’s crazy, I know.  But this mindset is rampant in the reptile business.

You can’t pass a normal ball python off as an albino.  Nobody will confuse an ivory ball python over a pastel, either.  Some things are easy to discern.  But how many people can tell with certainty the difference between a yellow belly and an unusual normal?  I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard a snake described as “yellow belly-like”.  How about the difference between a lesser and a butter?  Seen any pastel ivories lately?  Can you tell the difference between a pastel ivory and a super pastel ivory?  Can you pick out the fire in a pile of very pretty normals?  What about a spector?  Can you pick one of those out of a lineup?  Het Genetic Stripe, Het Ghost, Het Albino, Het Clown, Het Piebald, Het Axanthic, Het Caramel Albino. Het, het,het, het, het, het, het.  Buying hets is nothing less than taking a leap of faith in the person from whom you are buying them.  Sum it up in one word:  trust.  You need to have a lot of trust in the person from whom you are buying hets.  You can’t just trust that they are selling you hets, though.  You have to trust that they can and will make things right if the unthinkable happens and the animals don’t prove out.  You are begging to get burned when you buy a snake from the guy on an Internet classified whose ads always seem to read something like, “I hate to sell em’ this cheap but I really need money right now.  My hard times are your good times!!!” Not only should you not be surprised when the genetics aren’t right but you also should not be surprised when you can’t get any resolution when you realize your problems a few years later.  Caveat emptor.

But it’s not just shady sellers that pass along animals that are not what they are supposed to be.  Legitimate and honest breeders can and do make mistakes.  A breeder may mislabel a tub or  confuse two animals after holding both of them at the same time.  It doesn’t take much to make a mistake with hets.  Breeders who have employees have to be able to trust their workers to be as careful as they would be.  Employees often work unsupervised and a dishonest worker can easily swap inexpensive heterozygous animals for valuable high-end hets.  The breeder has no idea when such things happen but they are left to deal with the fallout years later.  One disgruntled or dishonest employee can wreak havoc on the reputation of an industry leader.  The capacity for mix-ups is a function of any breeding operation.  While prevention is an omnipresent requirement the measure of a breeder is how they handle the rainy day when one of their animals doesn’t prove out.  Do they meet the issue head-on and do the right thing or do they avoid, hem and haw and make you chase them to try and get resolution?  Unfortunately there is no way to measure how a seller will respond years later when things go bad.

Albert Einstein is often credited as having defined insanity as “doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results each time.”  Anybody who has an older brother or sister knows the value of watching them screw up.  The ability to learn vicariously from the mistakes of others is a great part of human design.  But for reasons unknown, being a reptile lover seems to diminish this capacity.  I guess people who are casual participants in the trade don’t benefit from spending time browsing the forums and talking with other breeders/hobbyists.  But for those of us who are in and around the business all the time, it is nothing short of insane that we continue to do business with people we know to have shady reputations.  For the most part I’m wide open on my willingness to pick up choice animals from someone I don’t know.  But I do have a mental list of people I won’t buy from.  Do you?

Cheers,

Colin Weaver

Like gamblers in Vegas, ball python breeders sit at the table each and every year and play the odds.  And each year we bet on increasingly long one’s.  We have to.  Competition is increasing, prices are fickle and our desire to make something magical is insatiable.  In many ways the designer morph business is a competitive sport and the release of the second edition of John Berry’s book has put all of us on notice.  The first time I sat down and flipped through its pages all I could think was, “I’m gonna’ need a bigger boat.” More so than ever I see the heights to which I need to elevate my game.  All that and there are several existing combos that didn’t make it into the book and photographic contributions from a few of the bigger names in the business were missing.  We can only imagine the things they produce and don’t share with the world.  Playing catch-up with the morph-producing leaders of this business is forever difficult.  The dollars required remain ridiculous and their production helps them stay in front.  I’m feel like I’m sitting in the fourth or fifth row, doing my best to leverage a modest but potential-rich collection of animals.

Breeder? You Need to Own this Book!

My opportunity to jump forward in the pack hinges largely on one thing:  hitting the odds.  It has to be.  I don’t have the kind of money necessary to buy my way to the front.  Each year I spend just enough on new morphs to make my finances constantly uncomfortable and each year I hold back a large number of animals that I should be turning into cash.  People who have painful addictions often behave in such irrational ways.  Doing the best I can with money I try to fill in the gaps by breeding my way forward in the pack.  It’s a slow, uncertain and sometimes painfully frustrating process.  The breeders I am trailing have either been around a lot longer than me or they have the finances available to buy themselves the pole position.

Because we are almost always trying to increase the genetic diversity of the animals we produce we seldom do pairings that provide a 100% guarantee on the odds.  Every clutch has a desired sweet spot, a moving variable that we are shooting for.  Not many people breed super pastel to super pastel or albino to albino even though doing so provides genetically guaranteed results.  There wouldn’t be any measurable excitement when the eggs pipped because the results are already known.  Genetically speaking, there also would be no forward progress.  For many years people have been breeding albino males to het albino females.  Meanwhile, albino females are busy being bred to albino spiders or albino black pastels or something else that still leaves some piece of the genetics to chance (while you may be hitting 100% on the albino you’re betting on 50/50 or longer odds for some other morph being added to the equation).  Those of us who have eyes set on distant future prizes are breeding albinos to other simple-recessive animals, producing double or triple hets that are not visually exciting.  While they are rich in potential they are quite normal in appearance.  The payday comes a few years from now …maybe …when you hit on the 1:16 or 1:32 odds.

When you breed single-gene albino to single-gene albino you aren’t doing anything to advance the quality of your collection.  More to the point, it’s a waste of a female albino.  When combined with another morph the hets you could produce from an albino female are worth more (financially and genetically) than the albinos you can guarantee in a homozygous pairing.  Because at least one of the genes is left to chance the results are almost always incomplete and intermediate.  Lesser het albino, spinner het albino, albino black pastel, the list goes on.  It seems we are always producing things that are visually one thing and het for something else.  Once mature these animals are likely to be paired with mates that also do not give us a guaranteed returns on the odds.  The lesser het albino might be bred to an albino pinstripe, the spinner het albino could be bred to an albino female and the albino black pastel will be bred to another albino black pastel.  All of these pairings offer opportunity but they do not offer certainty.  You could miss on the odds, leaving that pairing’s pinnacle of genetic achievement frustratingly unrealized.  The odds are long to hit on the albino kingpin, the albino spinner and the albino super black pastel.  Hitting on the odds is a magical moment but missing on the odds means your production is not much better than that of a person who is much less invested and breeding albino male to het albino female.  Such is the nature of betting on long odds; win big …or lose big.

Pretty much every person who breeds ball pythons has lamented their mistreatment at the hands of The Odds.  Friends and colleagues console them by offering assurances that the odds will come back around for them next time.  But is it true?  Does missing the odds on one clutch earn you the right to have the odds work in your favor on the next one?  Is getting brutalized on the odds a way of earning some reptile breeder’s form of karma credit?

In short, no.

When you flip a coin there is a 50/50 chance it will land on heads.  The odds are equal for tails.  If the first coin flip lands on heads what influence does that exert over the second flip?  Do the 50/50 odds shift to favor tails?  Of course not.  Each flip of the coin is independent of and unrelated to the preceding flip(s).  The same is true with ball python genetics.  To the best of our knowledge all of the morphs available in the market place are determined at the moment of fertilization and do not change.  Whatever genetic code is carried in the haploid cells prior to their union is what determines what type of morph you are producing.

Every year I know, hear or read about a breeder getting miraculous results on the odds.  You know who I’m talking about.  The guy who breeds het albino to het albino and hatches nothing but albinos.  The guy who breeds double het axanthic pied to double het axanthic pied and gets two male axanthic pieds from 7 eggs.  The guy who breeds pastel het ghost to spider het ghost and produces 4 ghost bumble bees (humble bee’s).  We can go on forever.  I console myself by remembering that they are not telling me about all the clutches they had with results that were on par (or under).  How the odds work is not foreign to me and while Mr. Punnet’s square tells me how things statistically should go I know from countless times at bat that they frequently don’t.  The ratios illustrated by the Punnet square show us the likelihood that certain genes will come together but in no way does it guarantee that the genes will cooperate.  So how much stock can you put in the square?  A lot if you are producing a lot.  Not much if you are only producing a little.  Let’s explore some numbers to see what I’m saying.

The table below (which does not display correctly if you are reading this from Facebook) shows the results of pairing a pinstripe to a normal ball python.  The Pinstripe gene is a dominant trait and, according to the Punnet Square, there is a 50/50 chance that the babies will be Pinstripes.  In the first analysis I assumed that ten females all laid ten eggs each.  I then flipped a coin ten times to represent the 50/50 odds of pinstripe:normal.  The results are in the right-hand column.  Only two of the ten pairings produced results that match what the Punnet Square says they should be.  Female #1 and #7 had odds very much in favor of Pinstripes but Female #6 only had one Pinstripe in the 10-egg clutch.  As you look over the results you can see that they are quite varied.  Such is the nature of the odds when viewed on a small scall.  Now notice that the total ratio of Pinstripes to Normals is 47:53.  That’s pretty darn close to the 50/50 odds the Punnet square promised:  47% of the babies are Pinstripes and 53% of the babies are Normals.  What can we learn from this?  As the data set increases (e.g. you hatch more eggs with the potential to produce a certain morph) you are more likely to produce at a level consistent with the Punnet square.  If you only produce one or two clutches you are more likely to be the recipient of wild swings in the odds.  For example, look at the results of just producing with two females (Females #1 & #2); you would have produced 13 pinstripes and 7 normals.  Nice!  But now look at Females #9 & #10.  If theses were your two girls you would have had the exact opposite results; only seven Pinstripes and 13 normals.  If Pinstripes are worth $200 each that is a swing of $1,200; one breeder walks away with $2,600 and the other earns only $1,400.  This is part of what makes it so difficult to make a living as a reptile breeder.  No matter how hard you work you are always at the mercy of a coin toss.  There is neither financial nor mental stability in that.

The table above is interesting but what happens when you adjust the number of eggs to more realistic values (after all, every girl doesn’t lay ten eggs)?  In the table below I counted the number of eggs laid by ten of my females and flipped a coin again.  The results are shown in the table below.  Similar to the previous table there are few pairings that did exactly what the Punnet Square said would happen.  Female #4 was the only girl who produced 50/50 odds.  And just like before we can see that there are some wild swings in the odds from one clutch to the next.  Female #1 produced 5 Pinstripes and 1 Normal.  Female #3 did even better with 6 Pinstripes and 1 Normal.  But Female #6 and Female #7 did more poorly with a combined ratio of 3 Pinstripes and 7 Normals.  When you look at the average from the ten pairings you see that the final ratio was 32:28 which is pretty close to the 50/50 odds we were expecting.  53% of the babies are Pinstripes and 47% are normals.  What am I learning from this?  I can only put faith in the Punnet Square and The Odds when I am working with larger and larger data sets.  If you want to increase the ability to predict that rate at which you will produce a certain morph you have to attempt to produce an increasingly large number of them.  If you rely on small groups of animals to produce statistical results you can expect results across the board.  If you are trying to make a living out of doing this you are setting yourself up for failure.  When I was in college I worked as a waiter.  Anybody who has ever waited tables knows a few truths:  1) Virtually all of your income comes from tips and 2) while the standard gratuity is 15% you can count on a lot of variation.  When I went to work to wait tables on a Friday night I knew I was going to make some money but it was never consistent.  Some nights I would leave with $80 and others I would leave with over $200.  It’s tough to control your finances when your income is so variable.  Such is the nature of breeding a particular morph on a small scale.

As a final bit of proof for the predictability associated with ever-larger numbers I did ten trials of 1,000 eggs that had 50/50 odds of producing Pinstripes.  After 10,000 coin flips (er, eggs hatching) we can see that 49.33% of them were Pinstripes and 50.67% of them were normals.

Part of the reason I sat down to write this is that I, like many other ball python breeders, am a perpetual Punnet Square optimist.  With every clutch laid I convince myself that the odds are going to be in my favor.  And it simply isn’t true.  I produce a few hundred baby ball pythons each season.  And that production represent all of my projects and the overwhelming majority of my production is geared toward hitting on longer than 50/50 odds.  It’s no wonder that I get depressed when eggs start to hatch.  As the incubator fills I begin to mentally count morphs that haven’t even pipped yet.  And it hurts when the odds don’t pan out the way I planned.  This morning, as a 10-egg clutch of pastel x black pastel spider hatched and I saw that not one baby carried the pastel gene I was reminded yet again that missing on the odds is a constant companion.  It will deflate you and kill your motivation more than anything else.  In the business world you will often hear people say, “Under promise, over deliver.”  The idea is to set expectations lower and then wow people with the service or product your provide.  Ball python breeders like me would do well to take a page from this script.  Unless you are producing large numbers you need to underestimate what the Punnet Square says is possible.  This way you stand a better chance of being happy when little heads start poking out of eggs.

Cheers,

Colin Weaver

An easy angle on choosing an investment is price.  How much can you afford to spend?  Perhaps a better question is how much can you afford to spend on a single animal?  And an even better question is how much can you afford to spend on a single animal and lose it all?  Investing in high-end ball pythons is highly speculative.  Prices fall, animals die and economies fluctuate.  If you spend $20,000 on a single ball python there is no guarantee that you will ever make your  money back.  There is a lot of opportunity but no guarantees; this is the live animal business and prices are often set with whimsy.  Understand your own financial tolerances before you even begin to think about morphs.  Once you come to terms with where you fall on the risk-versus-reward scale you’re ready to start looking at specific projects.

Whether this is supposed to be a business or a self-sustaining hobby the ingredients of a successful breeding project are two parts personal preference, one part economic reality, and a healthy dose of marketing.  If you are 100% dedicated to money you have to breed animals, regardless of what they are, that will provide the best return on investment.  This makes it highly probable that you are going to produce some animals that bring you little joy.  And if  profit truly is your only motive I suggest entirely different lines of work.  When money is the sole objective breeding reptiles is not the right enterprise in which to be.  This planet offers plenty of ways to make great money with products that don’t poop on the shelves.  Ball pythons are depreciating assets that eat.  What other business can you be in where the value of your investments spirals rapidly downward, the costs of production continue to increase, and every ‘unit’ you sell produces a future competitor?

I suspect that all reptile breeders, even the most financially motivated of them, started doing this out of love for the critters.  I recommend finding the animal(s) that you like working with that also have a market capable of providing a return.  Easy to write, difficult to do, I know.  Animals you love that don’t have much commercial value are good to keep around in small quantities (to satisfy the soul) but most of us need to focus on animals that ride the line between joy and profit.  It’s okay to lean more to one side or the other but this business doesn’t really support going all in on one while ignoring the other.  Dedicate too much to the joy of husbandry and you’ll find yourself living in a money pit that grows continuously deeper.   Focus too much on profit and you’ll be mentioned in the same breath as other less than stellar names in the business.  Neither is desirable.

Unlike many other business ventures the world has to offer, reptile breeding requires that you derive some joy from the product making process.  I’m not talking about the so-called flippers, importers and large-scale wholesalers here; I’m talking about actual breeders.  Being a breeder and being in the reptile business are not always the same thing.  There are many shades of grey.  There is a big difference between a person who breeds reptiles to sell and the person who sells reptiles so he can buy and sell even more.  Both are in the same business but in very different ways.  In many ways breeders are idealists while flippers, wholesalers and importers are more pragmatic business people.  I know a few people who do well at both.  Breeders tend work with animals they like.  Businesspeople work with animals that make money.  The best of us attain an equilibrium between both needs.  And in this aspect of the business I continue to search for balance.  I am a steadfast idealist emulating a profit-oriented businessman.

Anybody who regularly reads what I write knows that I frequently reflect on the financial aspect of being a reptile breeder.  I think about it often which is interesting because I don’t live a life with money as the central point of motivation.  I like and want money, of course.  Almost all of us can say that.  But despite my frequent contemplations I’m not obsessed with making it.  And for lack of better words, that is a problem.  When observing other people and how they make money I have come to believe that those who are usually the most financially successful are the one’s who have a certain …ethical flexibility.  They put profit above all.  Those are dangerous words as I do not intend to imply that successful business people do things that are illegal, immoral or even unethical; they are just more likely to do things that are single-sided and exclusively profit-oriented.  Financially aggressive people see angles and take opportunities that I don’t.  From time-to-time my lack of this particular type of vision frustrates me.  And here’s the rub: even if I did see the opportunities I can’t say that I would always leverage them.  I am too well equipped to see and respect the others person’s needs.  And from a single-minded, make-all-the-money-you-can, business perspective this is a potentially fatal flaw.  In the eyes of some this dooms me to a life of comfortable modesty.  Impressive wealth is not likely in the cards.  I don’t tend to participate in “I win / you lose” business arrangements.  To steal words from author Stephen Covey I’m very much a “win/win-or-no-deal” type of businessman (and I am certainly not afraid of ‘no deal’).  This type of business means I actively trade some of the money I could be making for other, less tangible, things.  Fans and deriders of this business mentality are probably equal in their distribution.  But don’t take me wrong; it is not bad to be more aggressive [than me] when making money.  I applaud and occasionally envy the people who are better at it than I am.

Despite not taking excessive advantage during business transactions I am strongly driven to make a profit from what I do.  This only makes sense.  I am not an altruist.  Other people do not pay my mortgage.  Moonbeams and warm fuzzy feelings are not currency.  I do not give the product of my efforts without appropriate compensation; we must all work for what we have.

Allow me to offer you a scenario for consideration.  It’s comes from a business deal, but not a reptile one.  Imagine you are a professional speaker.  People come to you from all walks of life to hear what you have to say.  You charge $2,000 per person for a 5-day seminar.  There are 12 people enrolled in your next offering.  Most of your seats were sold at full retail and there were a few businesses who bought multiple seats so you extended them a modest discount.  The night before the seminar begins a colleague comes to you and says, “I have a friend who wants to take your seminar but he only has $550.  Will you let him attend for that amount?”

What would you do?  Would you let him attend at a 73% discount?  Most people can answer immediately.  It requires little thought or contemplation.  And your answer, I believe, tells to which side of the ball python business you lean.  If your answer is “yes” your primary focus is profit.  If you say “no” your focus is more idealistic.

Taking the money makes sense from the following perspective:  The seat is empty.  It is not going to sell at the retail price.  The course is going to run regardless of the someone sitting in that  13th seat and it won’t cost you anything extra to let them attend.  His attendance is $550 of pure profit for no additional effort on your behalf.

Taking the money does not make sense from this alternate perspective:  You have assigned a value to the product you provide.  Twelve other customers have paid full (or close to full) price to be there.  This lends credibility to the value of your product at the price being charged.  It is also disrespectful to those twelve if you take the $550.  Why was their seat not $550?  Are they somehow different?

That is not a make-believe scenario for me.  It has happened more than once in my ‘real job’.  As you might suspect my answer has always been “no”.  I have never even hesitated.  I didn’t even hesitate in the early days of my business when things were financially tight.  To my occasional financial detriment I have always had a principled approach to making money and that approach sometimes takes away from maximizing profits.  I had (and still have) an obligation to my customers and to myself that prevents me from taking every dollar possible.  It would have been catastrophic to my business if I had taken that money and my other customers found out.  It would also have been an admission that my product was not worth the retail price I was charging.  The friend who first approached me with the proposition stared at me in disbelief when I told him no.  To this day he thinks I’m crazy.  Who in their right mind would turn down an additional $550 when they didn’t have to do anything more to make it?  Well, …me.  Profit takes a back seat to ethics.  People who let profit ride shotgun are laughing at me right now… and  I’m cool with that.

Cheers,

Colin Weaver

Being one of the so-called winners in the ball python breeding business requires several characteristics and qualities:

1. Money.  You’ve got to be willing to spend a lot of it if you want to play around with the cutting-edge animals.  Heck, you’ve got to have a lot of it even if you want to eternally play catch-up.  I’ve said it before:  The high-end arena of this particular field of hobby is not for the financially feint of heart.  Here be speculators.
2. Patience.  Females take upwards of three years before you have any chance at seeing eggs.  Sure, males get up to breeding size in much less time but big genetic magic requires both the boys and the girls to come to the conjugal packing genetic heat.  You are essentially treading water with a backpack full of bricks if you spend all of your money on high-end males without also investing in multi-gene girls to go along with them.
3. An entrepreneurial spirit with a gambling addict’s judgment.  How else can I say it?  You will never get rich by putting your money in traditional savings accounts and certificates of deposit.  Betting it all on black is a good way to do it, though.  But you’ve got to be prepared for it to come up red (and lose it all).  A long time ago a day-trading friend told me, “People get rich by putting all of their eggs in one basket.  People stay rich by spreading their eggs around.”  And perhaps nobody summed it up better than the copy store clerk in Jerry Maguire when he said, “That’s how you become great, man. Hang your balls out there!” The moral is simple:  Do not walk through this life expecting reward if you are not willing to take risks.  The live animal business is packed full of risk.
4. Luck.  Even with the best genetics you still need a bit of luck.  To take things to the next level you have to hit on long odds.  The genetics of ball pythons is a game of calculated chance.  Most of the high-end genetic progress comes when people bet and win on very long odds.  At a bare minimum I’m talking about 1:16 odds.  But real magic is in the 1:32 or 1:64 range.  When you hit on a long shot it’s a payday, something that can leap your collection [genetically] forward by multiple years.
5. Business acumen.  For many of us this began as a hobby and morphed into a business.  If this is a business, treat is as such.  Crunch the numbers.  Factor in the costs.  Do the analysis.  As much as possible, remove emotion from the equation.  How else can you know if you are being profitable?  If your measure of business success is that you have a wad of cash in your pocket at the end of a trade show you aren’t in the right place.  This business is not as simple as putting two snakes together, selling the babies and then going Mercedes shopping.  The expenses of the live animal business are significant, on the rise and constant.   Cash flow does not equal financial success.

Whether you call ball python breeding a hobby or a business it has the capacity to be both personally and financially rewarding.  But you have a greater chance at achieving personal rewards (e.g. the joy you feel when you produce a particular morph for the first time) than you do financial rewards.  Reflect on your motivations and your aspirations and define your goals; both tactical and strategic.  Do so and you will find that the opportunity for financial success is much more likely.

Cheers,

Colin Weaver

They say the first step on the road to recovery is admitting you have a problem.  Well, after several years of denial and inner-confusion I have come to realize that I have an odd sort of problem.  Now that I know I have it I’m not entirely sure what do to about it.  It vexes me because it’s part of me, I internalized it long ago.  People who don’t suffer from one type of affliction or another often don’t understand why people struggle with such things.  Skinny people who eat to live can’t figure out why fat people live to eat.  People with no particular desire to gamble are baffled by the compulsion others have to do it.  Souls at the mercy of a bottle of Jack Daniels are odd to people who don’t have any desire for a drink on Friday night.  The problem I have may be just as elusive to understand as those just mentioned.  My problem is the strange combination of ball pythons and money.  It’s a multi-faceted problem with the ever-present “too much out, not enough in” issue riding on top of the heap.  But the problem I’m writing ab out today is not how much money is coming or going; it’s about how the money goes after it comes.

Like many other reptile enthusiasts I live with the delusion that I will one day be solely employed as a reptile breeder and that I will be financially prosperous as a result.  That dream and that day, however, are not yet here.  I already work 40+ hours/week as a breeder but that’s only after my ‘real’ job is done.  As I get closer and closer to my goal I wonder just how much my perspective will change when the only way I can pay my bills is by selling a snake.  I suspect it will not always be a happy feeling, especially during times such as these when superfluous income is all but gone in the bank accounts of many Americans.  People will always have to buy groceries, fuel and underwear, etc.  They do not have to buy a new snake.  I am living proof.  Over the past year I have gone from buying multiple new snakes each month to one or two every other month.  I notice it in my seemingly stalled collection and I am sure that the breeders to whom I have been a steady client (e.g. source of cash) have noticed it as well.  Nobody is happy with the current state of affairs.  Compounding the problem are the recession-proof bellies of my snakes; they eat as much today as they did a few years ago when money was more readily available.  I endure this, of course.  Snakes not properly fed are as valuable as having no snakes at all.  Some things simply cannot be set aside.

But buying hundreds of rodents each week is not a problem for me.  I enjoy feeding my animals and, while expensive, I don’t mind the cost in the long run.  Considering the return you get in the form of babies you do quite nicely on the dollars that go down the throat of a snake.  Again, I am fortunate that I have another full-time job that can help offset any cost overruns that arise.  What’s more, feeding my snakes is often therapeutic.  I am mentally at ease after a day of good feeding.  Cage-after-cage, thump-after-thump I can feel the stresses of my life falling away.

The money that goes out to make my reptile collection better is almost effortless to spend (inasmuch as money can be easy to spend, that is).  Buying rodents, water bowls, paper towels, soap, cypress mulch, plastic tubs, etc. is relatively easy money to say goodbye to.  I see all of it as an investment that will pay itself back in the near future.  Paper towels to clean poop?  No problem.  That translates to healthier snakes.  Healthier snakes help to make baby snakes and baby snakes are how I make money.  Cypress mulch?  Not a problem.  It’s a more natural bedding and my animals do very well on it.  They feed better and it’s easy to clean.  Clean cages and solid-feeding snakes means better breeding results.  Better breeding results means more baby snakes.  If you can name a reptile supply/necessity I can quickly tell you how I justify it as an investment in making the business better.  I am at peace with the money spent.  This, however, is not always the case.  And this brings us back around to my problem.

In my ‘real’ job I go to work for two weeks and, “Poof!”, a paycheck appears.  That money only represents the last two weeks of my life and that is not a sizable investment in the form of time.  Because I do not have a lot of time invested in making that money it is easier (mentally) to spend.  I often apply a simple but far from foolproof measure to determine value when spending money:  Do I get more time out of the money when I spend it than it took me to make it?  For instance, if I make $50/hour I often ask myself if the $50 that I am about to spend is going to translate into more than one hour in return.  Going to a movie costs $10 and lasts 2 hours.  That has the potential for good value.  It’s not an exact science.  Shawshank Redemption:  excellent value.  G.I. Joe – Rise of Cobra:  not good value.  Life is full of gambles.  Another example is when I pay my mortgage.  Spending that money grants me my home for another 30 days but it takes less than 1/2 that time to make that money.  Again, my simple criteria for value is met.  The whole perspective is terribly unscientific and easily picked apart, I know, but it is only one of my most basic measures of value.  At $50/hour it takes me about 8 hours to make $250 (assuming a 35% tax rate).  For me to go to the grocery store and spend that $250 on groceries that will sustain my family for the next several days is a reasonable price to pay.  But what happens when that $250 is money from the sale of a ball python?  Things change for me in a hurry.  And this is my problem.  When I look at a baby ball python I see it, like all money I make, in the form of hours of work.  How long did I have to work to make that snake?  In the most simple scenario it is not less than 9-12 months, from the end of one breeding season to the hatching of the eggs from the next.  Taking $250 from the sale of a ball python and blowing it on groceries that will only last a few days breaks my equation.  The groceries no longer have value when using this ‘snake money’.  I need the money from the sale of a ball python to last …a long time.  In my head I need those $250 to be spent on something that will last as long or longer than it took me to make it.  As a result, spending snake money on daily expenses breaks my rule on the value of money spent.  How do you make $250 from a snake sale last 10 months or longer?  Buy something tangible, of course.

If I can’t shake my definition of value, I’m doomed.  I don’t stand a chance as a full-time reptile breeder with no other source of income if I can’t bring myself to spend this so-called snake money on the trivial daily expenses that come about.  What makes this problem even more unexplainable is that I know that my system is flawed.  I didn’t spend the past 10 months producing one $250 snake.  I produced hundreds of snakes in that time.  I should be looking at their combined value rather than their individual value.  If I produce 300 babies at an average price of $500 each (a guess) that means it took me 9 months to make $150,000.  I don’t make that much in 10 months at the thing I call my real job so why do I find that money so much easier to spend on the necessities of life?  In short, I don’t really know.  I just do.  That’s where my logic is broken.

Writing all of this is an effort at self-treatment, my own self-help manual written by me.  Stay posted for the day that I tell you that I’m a full-time snake breeder.  When that day comes you’ll know I’m cured.

Cheers,

Colin Weaver

The next best way to build a great ball python collection is to buy babies from other breeders and raise them.  Other people always have something you don’t and there are tons of animals out there just dying to fit perfectly into your collection.  Bring your wallet (or purse, as the case may be) and be prepared to spend.  Building a nice, high-end ball python collection is not for the financially feint of heart.  Buying a baby pastel genetic stripe is definitely faster than taking the six or so years it would take you to make them from scratch for yourself.  The premium you pay on such an impressive animal is, in part, compensation for the fact that the person from whom you are buying the animal has already paid the six-year price to produce it.  That investment of time and the risks associated with it are worth money.  And we all must pay for it.  Now that you have this wonderful animal in your collection you are still stuck waiting for it to grow up.  If you’re lucky you can get your male up to breeding size in less than a year.  Females are going to take no less than 18 months, most likely 24-36 months before you’ll be able to do anything with them.  Once again you have to hurry up and wait for your collection get to the next level.

Being patient sure is hard sometimes…

Don’t want to raise babies?  Want a shorter path to being a baller in the ball python business?  Simple enough:  buy adults or subabults from someone.  That shaves the time down to less than a year in many cases.  Or does it?  Before you drop cash on an adult ball python you need to seriously ask yourself why the person is selling it.  There are many legit reasons, of course.  But a huge number of ball python adults that get sold are animals that have problems of some sort.  I’m not suggesting that they are sick, though.  The problems I’m speaking of are more subtle.  When you buy these adults you may be unknowingly paying someone else for their problem.

What are some of the legitimate reasons that adult ball pythons get sold?:

1. The breeder is decreasing the size of his/her collection.  This is often done because large collections are very expensive and very time consuming to maintain.  Scaling back from 1,000 breeder females to 750 means that there are going to be 250 perfectly good girls coming into the marketplace.  It is, however, almost an industry standard that these girls get dumped into the marketplace shortly after laying eggs.  This means their weight is down greatly from its norm and if you don’t get them early enough in the season you are going to be hard pressed to get them to lay eggs again the following season.  If someone sells you a 2,100 gram het pied female you might be thinking, “Sweet!”.  But what you don’t know is that she weighed 3,000 grams 5 months ago, laid eggs a month ago and has only had 2 meals since laying.  Females that were 3,000 grams last year aren’t often going to lay eggs the following year when you only get them back to 2,700 grams.  The seller of the animal is not obligated to tell you this, of course.  It would be nice if they did rather than letting you have unrealistic expectations for the coming season.
2. The seller is having some sort of financial crisis/hardship.  They don’t want to sell the animal but they need money for some imminent need.  You can often get some nice animals this way.  But keep in mind that when the going gets tough breeders aren’t going to go through their collection and pull out the best animals to sell.  They are going to pull those that were not quite as good as the others.  Maybe they are often reluctant feeders or have laid eggs each year for the past three years.  The chances of going (laying eggs) four years in a row are lower than they are for going three years in a row, aren’t they?  The first adults someone is going to sell are going to be the least cool their collection has to offer.  Don’t get me wrong, though.  This won’t always be bad.  Selling the worst animals in an awesome collection may still mean that you are getting some exceptional creatures.
3. The animals have been upgraded.  I have an outstanding male spider het albino that I raised from a baby.  He is a fantastic feeder, a great breeder and doesn’t have even the slightest head wobble that many spiders often have.  He aggressively courts and breeds multiple females each year and has produced several albino spiders for me.  I held back the first albino spiders males I produced, of course.  They are now adults.  Why do I need a spider het albino when I have multiples of the real deal?  I don’t.  So it’s time to offer him for sale, let him go to work for someone else.  I’m not getting rid of a problem animal.  Quite the contrary.  He is a rockstar but my collection has moved on.  These are nice animals to find when they come along.
4. Proven hets are being replaced with the homozygous form.  A breeder may have 50 adult albino het females.  It makes sense to replace them with albino females (at the very least).  Once the breeder has raised up the replacement albinos he/she will often look to sell the hets.  He is managing the size of his collection to a consistent and stable size while increasing its genetic quality.  There is absolutely nothing wrong with the albino het females; they were good enough to be the breeders for several years but now its time for them to move on to make room for a new crop of albino females.  While these are good animals to add to you collection be sure to keep in mind that they are likely to only hit the market just after laying eggs (as discussed earlier).
5. A breeder bought an entire collection from another breeder who is getting out of the hobby and they are liquidating it to make money or they are getting rid of the animals that they don’t want to add to their own collection.  This happens a lot.  Like many business ventures, many wanna-be breeders just don’t make it.  A large number of people get big into reptile husbandry with dreams of an easy and large payday.  And they are frequently ready to get out of the business in less than two years.  Because of this, entire collections get bought and sold on a regular basis.  I have purchased entire collections more than once.  When I do it I usually have my eye on a few choice animals in the collection and sell off everything else at a profit.  Doing so helps to offset the cost of the animals I want to keep.  In many circumstances you reclaim all (or more) of you investment and still have the animals you wanted to keep.   Having it work out this way is not a slam dunk, though.  Collection flipping requires a little bit of skill and is logistically a lot of work.  Not everybody is good at it.  I’ve seen people get completely burned doing it.  I have made my share of mistakes, too.

What about the illegitimate and hidden reasons many adult ball pythons get sold?

1. The snake is a poor feeder.  Maybe it only eats once per month.  Better still, maybe it only eats mice.  A 2,500 gram female ball python will need to eat mice like Pez in order to get them to a good weight for breeding.  One medium rat can easily weigh as much as 6-8 adult mice.  Not only is it a chore to feed that many food items it is also comparatively expensive.  Eight mice will cost you about $4 on the low end.  A single medium rat is more in the $1.75 range (depending on how you get supplied). Mouse feeders will more than double your food cost in addition to the time and energy spent.  Heaven help you if you are buying your food items from a pet store.
2. It prefers gerbils or African soft-furred mice.  Just what you need; a snake on a special diet.  Not only do gerbils and ASF mice tend to be quite a bit more expensive they are both notoriously more aggressive than typical lab rats (and mice).  There is a stronger need to chaperone the feeding event when the predator is at increased risk of becoming the prey.
3. She’s a 3,000 gram girl, nice and big.  She has laid eggs two out of the last three years.  Sound good, right?  Problem is she only laid 4 eggs each year.  Big girls who don’t lay lot of eggs get farmed out quick.  They are genetically weak and have a low return on investment.  The best decision is to move them out and replace them with new animals that produce larger clutches.  It’s simple math on behalf of the breeder.
4. A beautiful adult male comes up for sale.  He appears to be a great shortcut to breeding success.  The only problem is that he’s a crappy breeder.  He shows absolutely no interest in females.  I know several breeders who have gone through multiple males before they found one that was a good breeder.  What happened to the seemingly gay males?  They disappeared into the collection of some other aspiring breeder, of course.  I can guarantee you that the ad listing them for sale didn’t read, “Beautiful Adult Male Pastel Lesser – Crappy Breeder”.  How can you tell the difference between this male and the great breeder who is being replaced by a better animal?  You can’t.  The only thing you can do is trust the seller.
5. It’s stolen.  I’m always amazed how many ball pythons get stolen.  They get stolen at trade shows and they get stolen right out of people’s collections.  It happens with some regularity.  I suppose there may be nothing physically wrong with the animal; you’re just getting it at the expense of someone else.  You have no way of knowing this, of course.  At trade shows where I am a vendor I am often offered animals for oddly low prices.  I know what the animals sold for two years ago and now they are offering me what appears to be a healthy animal for a price that is way below what they would have paid for it and certainly less than it is currently worth.  How can I not wonder about its origins?  Wouldn’t you?  If I buy it and post if for sale on-line am I going to get an email from someone telling me that the snake was stolen from them?  That has never happened to me but it has happened to others.  In an industry that is largely based on personal reputations I’d like to avoid ever being wrapped up in a situation like that.

The moral of the story is that there is no substitute for starting with babies, investing the time and earning good results with quality animals.  The temptation to take the short path and buy adults is too much for speculative breeders to avoid.  Unless you personally know the seller and have detailed and accurate knowledge about the origins of the animal you are doing little more than buying a scratcher lottery ticket when you decide to buy and adult ball python.  You might win big.  You may also get screwed and come to realize that you actually paid someone to take their problem off their hands.  Fortunately, I think it’s true that you won’t lose the majority of the time.  Most ball pythons are perfectly good animals.  All I suggest is that you take the time to question and prod.  Does the story being offered with the sale make sense?  Can you handle the result of the animal not being a producer for you?  If so, speculate your heart out.  If not …buy babies and invest the time.

Cheers,

Colin Weaver

The idea behind breeder loans is “together everybody achieves more”.  If I have an adult female pastel and you have an adult male spider we won’t produce anything but spiders and pastels by working alone.  But together we can have a chance at producing Bumble Bees.  This appears to be a compelling synergy; a win/win!  On paper a lot of things look good.  Plans nicely laid out on paper have a bad habit of being pummeled by reality, seldom working the way we intended.

There are things that need to be considered when contemplating a breeder loan.  There are a lot of ‘what if’s’ that can happen and if they are not adequately vetted prior to entering into the arrangement things can get ugly, feelings hurt, egos bruised and friendships shattered.  Breeder loans require you to consider many things.  On  the bottom of the list should be how cool the animals you are going to produce will look when added to your collection.  Keeping your eyes on the prize is typically good advice but when it comes to a breeder loan you may find that a fixation on the end result will do more harm than good.  Listed below are just a few of the things that need to be pondered.

Consideration #1:  The values of the animals entering into the transaction versus the value derived from the union

What is the financial value of the parents entering the breeding arrangement?  If I have an adult normal female (say, 3,000 grams) that is het for orange ghost and you have an adult male Ghost Mojave ball python, things are financially lopsided.  Dividends paid on an investment are based on the number of shares owned (e.g. the more you put in, the more you get out).  Because of this, dividing the clutch is not a matter of 50/50 division if the initial value of the animals is used to determine how the bounty (e.g. babies) are to be divided.  Currently my adult female het ghost ball python is worth a small handful of hundreds while your adult Ghost Mojave is worth a few thousand dollars.  In this example I will assign arbitrary values of $600 for the big adult het ghost female and $3,000 for the adult Ghost Mojave male.  The total value of the parents is $3,600 which means that my female is a mere 16.6% of the total value.  Using this as a single measure I should get 16.6% of the value of the production, you should get 83.4%. But which 16.6% am I entitled to (genetically speaking)?  The genetics of this particular union can yield:

• Normals, 100% het ghost
• Orange ghosts
• Mojaves het ghost
• Ghost Mojaves

Producing ghost mojaves is obviously the most desirable result, with male ghost mojaves being arguably at the top of the list.  If a single male ghost mojave is produced, who gets it?  The 16.6% equity I have in this breeding arrangement isn’t going to cover it so I’ll need to pony up cash (or something else in trade) for the difference.  And that is only after we agree that I get first crack at taking it.  What happens when I really want it for my collection but you already have a client who is ready to pay you cash for a male?  Well, that’s a problem.  Who wins?  Your desire to make money or my desire to upgrade my collection?  The same situation is true regardless of the number of ghost mojave’s produced.  To keep it equitable I won’t be able to walk away with a ghost mojave without going out of pocket.  Using the values I assigned above I won’t be getting a male mojave het ghost either.  The cash value simply isn’t there, especially if the clutch size is on the smaller side.

Because my 16.6% equity in the project isn’t substantial enough for me to get one of the higher-end animals (assuming any are actually produced), how does it benefit me to participate in the arrangement?  In theory it doesn’t.  Lopsided deals provide lopsided benefits.  The end result of such a lopsided arrangement is that I am doing little more than helping you to better your collection and/or your bank account.  Compared to the gains you stand to make neither my wallet nor my collection are going to get better.  But the parties in the arrangement could be cooler about things.  I have seen people split the clutch evenly, regardless of the value of the animals in the arrangement.  In this circumstance friendship supersedes business and the party with the more valuable snake is freely giving money away to a friend.  You can wordsmith it all you want but that is what is ultimately happening when someone splits a clutch down the middle.  Deciding if that is worth it (or if it will pay itself back in the form of good-will in the future) is a personal matter that must be independently evaluated.  I can’t offer you any advice on this angle other than to say I don’t do it.

Splitting clutches down the middle without considering the value of the animals involved is never going to go unnoticed by the person giving more than the other.  I do not care what they say to your face, they are aware of the reality.  If the total value of babies produced is $6,000 and I walk with $3,000 after only having contributed 16.6% of the investment you (the 83.4% shareholder) are not going to be able to forget it.  You have essentially given me $2,004 out of your pocket.  Have you ever just handed a friend that much cash for no particular reason?  If you are running a business the answer should be no 100% of the time.  The person giving more will expect something in the future.  Trust me.  It will manifest as a sense of entitlement or an expectation of future favors.  One way or another they will expect to be “paid” at some point in the future.  They may deny it and they may not even be conscious of it but it will eventually come back around.

Friendship and money do not go together.  Entering into financial dealings with people you call friends is a sure-fire way to lose them as friends.  I write from a position of experience.  I ruined my relationship with a very good friend over debates about who gets how much of a combined reptile investment.  In my business ventures outside the reptile world I have business partners with whom I am friendly, but we are not friends.  We don’t hang out and we rarely socialise outside the office.  We maintain a positive relationship because we do not burden our business dealings with an excess of friendship.  The model works.  People who are in business with their spouse may relate to what I am writing better than most.  Seldom is tension greater in an office than when it occurs between two people who sleep in the same bed at night.

Consideration #2: Uh, Quarantine?  …And re-introduction.

I treat every snake coming into my collection like it has mites and any other potentially bad things that we sometimes see.  Translation:  My “Welcome to the team” party is the snake getting Nix-ed and quarantined.  It’s unlikely that any of us would knowingly enter into a breeding loan with someone who has mites in their collection.  Knowingly sending your animal to a collection that has mites is just silly.  Regardless of the opportunity for financial gain, you cannot do it.  I know people who have done it, though.  I also know people who have lied to the other party about the presence of mites in their collection.  They told me it wasn’t a big deal because they would just treat the snake for mites before sending it back home again.  Really?  Seriously?  People get shanked for less in prison.

More to my point:  How do I bring your animal into my collection and quickly let it mingle with my breeding stock (or vice versa)?  Unless I’m breaking my own quarantine rules, I can’t.  Who am I kidding anyway?  If the het ghost female is mine and the ghost mojave male is yours the animals will be in your collection, won’t they?  That’s probably the most normal way breeder loans take place; the female goes out on loan, not the male.  But the same problems are still there.  How can you bring one of my animals into your collection and immediately let it be with your male?  You male is going to be making the rounds through other girls in your group so if my animal has something bad your male becomes the vector for spreading it through your collection.  Are you really ready to take that risk?  Stop staring at the dollar signs you think you see at the end of the tunnel and focus on what I am writing.  Is the fallout of something wrecking your collection really worth what you might gain from this breeder loan?

And how am I going to safely reintroduce my own animal back into my collection?  If I stay true to my quarantine principles I’ll have to separate her just like any new animal.  The logistics of doing it right and the consequences of doing it wrong are just too great for me.  Being willing to loan out an animal and then have it come back again means you are likely to make exceptions to your own rules.  As I write this my snake collection is 100% mite free and has been so for several years.  The thought of having a mite come into my building is one of the most terrifying things I can think of.  I’m not kidding.  Having to treat a large snake collection for mites is a monumental undertaking.  It is such a daunting task that it is far easier to never let a mite come into the collection in the first place.  Meticulous tenacity and an unyielding focus on prevention is the only way to avoid it.  Being lured by the prospect of getting a certain morph or financial gain is enough to make some us let our guard down.

You might not have a problem this year or next year but what about the year after that?  The more often you have animals coming in or going out the more likely it is that something bad will be riding along with them.  Sooner or later it is going to catch up to you.

Consideration #3:  Paper, Cypress Mulch, Aspen?  Does Bedding Really Make a Big Difference?

In my experience the type of bedding a ball python is raised on is not trivial.  The transition from paper to mulch and then back to paper can produce an animal that refuses to eat for months.  I have seen it several times.  For example, a friend of mine who keeps his animals on paper had  a ball python that ate well.  The animal went out on breeder loan for about a year.  While away the animal was kept on mulch (and fed just fine).  When the animal was returned and put back on paper it would not eat.  It did not eat for almost a year.  The animal became part of my collection where it was once again placed on mulch.  It ate 3 rats the first day it was back on mulch.  It had been perfectly happy on paper but being on mulch did something to change the snake.  I don’t have a word to define it, I just know it to be true.

What type of bedding will your animal be kept on while it is away?  What impact will that have when the animal returns home.  Maybe none.  Maybe a lot of unexpected frustration.  What good is a female who comes home from a breeder loan that won’t eat enough to get up to size for the following year?  Whatever it is that you gained from the breeder loan may need to be enough to compensate you for this breeding season as well as the next if you have an animal come home with a feeding problem.

Consideration #4: Food & Feeding

Who pays to feed the animal while in another person’s care?  Is that cost negligible?  For some, yes.  For others, no.  If you have a snake for a year and it eats 40 rats @ $1.50/rat you are down $60.  Not a large sum of money but in a business that has a nasty habit of nickel and diming people to death it’s the sound of yet another coin hitting the offering plate.

Snakes that cost $50 cost just to much to feed as snakes that are worth $5,000.  This is a cost that should be evenly distributed between the parties.

Consideration #5:  The Silent Investor and the Swoop-In

“It’s like it’s both of ours, we’ll just keep it at your house.”  You feed it, you clean it, you keep it warm and make sure it is grows into a big snake so we can make baby snakes.  After you do all the work I will take my cut.  What’s my cut?  We worked that out years ago.  When you made the deal did you account for the time an effort required to take care of the animal during the last few years?  If you are like many of us you didn’t put sufficient value on your time on the front-end.  We seldom do.  Taking care of snakes in the future is always worth less to you than the snakes you just took care of.  Call it sentiment for life spent (life is a currency and the balance is always heading toward zero), call it a sense of value for efforts put forth.  If you put years of time into raising a snake from a hatchling to a successful breeder you are going to be mentally more invested at the end than you were at the beginning.  That sense of being vested is worth money in your mind.  It is not likely to be worth money in the mind of your partner.  He/She was outta’ sight, outta’ mind for the past several years and will do little else than swoop in to collect the return on their investment when the babies hatch.  This is certain to leave a bad taste in your mouth.

Neither party can de-value the time invested by the person holding the animals, especially if the loan is going to be long-term.

Consideration #6: The Snake Got Sick.  Worse Still, It Died.

A snake on breeder loan dies.  Oh, dear.  How do you handle this?  Did you discuss it before you went into the arrangement?  Once in a blue moon a snake will roll for no observable reason and with no warning.  It’s rare but how much would it suck if it happened while a buddy’s snake was visiting your collection?  All the wondering that will take place is sure to put a strain on the relationship.  Was the animal not properly cared for?  Is someone to blame?  How about replacing the animal?  Is there any expectation on that front?

Because it is rare  it is likely to be dismissed on the front-end.  Eyes once again too focused on the end result with no real attention being paid to the nasty little realities that creep in from time to time.

Last year I had a snake of my own develop a problem with one of its hemepenes.  I immediately took the snake out of breeding rotation and sent it to the vet.  I got it back six months later.  Needless to say it missed the breeding season.  My bill?  It was well over $1,000.  I talked with my vet at length about things I can do to diminish the likelihood of it happening again.  There were no definitive answers; sometimes things just don’t go right.  What would have happened if this was not my snake?  What if it belonged to a fellow breeder and was with me on loan?  His problem developed very early in the breeding season so none of the girls became gravid by his effort.  Now we have no babies and more than a grand in vet bills.  The snake was in my care so is it my responsibility?  Or is it yours because the snake belongs to you?  Perhaps we both should contribute to the bill.  Should the contribution be evenly split?  These are things to discuss before a breeder loan begins, not when the snake is already at the vet.

Despite not being thrilled about having to spend money on vet bills I must say that I am glad the problem was mine and mine alone.  Having to try and sort things out with the owner of the snake would have made a bummer of a situation even worse.  And yes, the snake is doing great now.  He is cleared for action this coming season.

Consideration #7:  Helping Another Herper Get A New Morph Makes One Less Customer For You

For me this is a business.  Relationships with other breeders are nice but there are less financially strenuous ways to have friends.  I could play softball or fantasy sports if I was just in this for the friendship.  I hear World of Warcraft is a great way to have lots of friends and you never even have to take a shower or leave your house.  So no, I didn’t get into the ball python business to make a lot of friends.  It’s a nice fringe benefit, though.  It is callous to say but friendships are secondary.  Letting friendship entice you into entering into a breeder loan is going to make one less customer to whom you can sell your production.  You just helped them get the morph that you could have charged money for!  Wanna’ make it worse?  Congratulations!  You already did.  You just helped them produce the same morph in as little as a year.  This means they are now a direct source of competition for you to sell your animals in the future.  Give it some serious thought:  If everybody has all the same morphs because we help each other to get them through breeder loans who are you going to sell you animals to?  The massive influx of people getting into the ball python breeding game?  (<— That’s me being facetious.)  Seriously, this is called the ‘ball python business’, not the ‘ball python co-op’.

A fellow breeder and friend regularly tries to chastise me on this topic.  He is constantly trying to get me to breed my animals with his and when I refuse he tries to use our friendship as a weapon, suggesting that I should do this because we are friends.  I tell him that I will not do it because we are friends.  He thinks I’m rigid and missing the bigger picture; that this is about comradery more than money.  Uh, no.  Nope.  Negative.

Consideration #8:  Trust but Verify

It’s not cool to think about but what would happen if the person with whom you worked a breeder loan decided to lie to you about the results of the pairing?  Unless you are there when the eggs are cut you have to rely upon the level of trust you have in your breeder loan partner.  In general I think that most of us would not consider a breeder loan with someone who did not already have our complete trust.  And it may be true that they are worthy of trust but go back to what I wrote a bit earlier.  They may have just spent a year or more taking care of your animal and have developed a greater sense of their contribution to the arrangement.  They may no lonber buy into the original terms.  A sense of entitlement, financial stress or just plain greed may push them into a bad place; a place where they lie to you about the animals produced.

I hope it has never happened and I hope it never will …but c’mon, this is the reptile business.  Some of the greatest people I have ever met are in this business and so are some of the most deceitful.  If you decide to enter into a breeder loan be sure that your character judging skills are well polished.

Conclusion

I love being a  ball python breeder.  I find it personally fulfilling.  Hatching a morph for the first time or, better still, hatching a morph that has never before been produced is such an incredibly rewarding experience.  Those rewards come at a price, though.  Animal husbandry is dirty, repetitive, expensive and monotonous.  I spend multiple hours every day maintaining my ball python collection.  By the time I finish it is time to begin again.  The financial costs are impressive and money always seems to be flowing in the wrong direction.  From feeder rodents to building supplies the annual costs of breeding are far from trivial.  It takes multiple tens of thousands of dollars each year (each month for some breeders) just to break even.  People don’t create money pits out of love.  They do so with aspirations of a payday.  For me, the breeder loan is the antithesis to my efforts to make a profit.  Business is about balance, calculated risks and the rewards or failures that follow.  The breeder loan is a case study in “risk versus reward”.  Does it make sense to put so many things at risk?  Friendship, other animals, your wallet; all are on the block when you decide to co-mingle collections.  My analysis is that it is not worth it.  My ball pythons will breed with my ball pythons and yours can breed with yours.  Produce something cool and I’ll buy it from you.

Cheers,

Colin Weaver
East Coast Reptile Breeders

…hope you enjoy your stay.

The one moment in time toward which all other efforts point; that brief instant when a baby snake pops its head out of the egg for the first time.  After all these years I still get excited.   364 days of cage cleaning, record keeping, feeding, water bowl changing and male/female pairing all comes to a conclusion at this moment:

Bumble Bee Ball Python Hatching

And it is so worth it!  I’ve seen it time and again but it never loses it coolness.  Earlier today I was checking eggs (and happened to have my camera) and caught this bumble bee just as he pushed his head out for the first time.  Seeing their first tongue flick is such a cool thing to witness.  In the photo this little guy is about 3 seconds old.  How awesome is that?!

This is the best time of year.

Click the image below for a close-up.

[View with PicLens]

Cheers,

Colin Weaver