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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Cheers,

Colin Weaver

“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

1. Compared to the average blog post this is long …very long. It’s more like a chapter than a blog post.
2. The purpose of this post is not to try and discourage ball python breeders. Quite the opposite, actually. I am enthusiastic about the prospects of this business and I want people who decide to be in it, myself included, to understand the consequences of their choices and adjust their behavior in order to allow an opportunity for profit.
3. I am neither an economist nor an accountant. I’m just a guy with a spreadsheet and an opinion; a perspective for your consideration. What should you do with the things I write? Take what you like and throw away the rest.
4. There is a sea of variables that can and do change the numbers I present. They only thing certain about them is that they can and should be discussed.
5. The specific numbers offered below serve only to be the basis for discussion and/or contemplation. While they seem to illustrate how much money can be lost in the ball python business they are far from being the only possible outcome. Please read this entire post in order to avoid taking any of it out of context.

With that said…

Is it really profitable to breed snakes? Can you get rich or, at the very least, become well-to-do in the reptile husbandry business? If not rich or well-to-do, can you at least make a modest living? How about a nice supplement to your existing income? Is that what it can be? Or, if it’s just a hobby, will it even pay for itself? I have asked these questions many times before. Ask one hundred people and you’re going to get answers across the spectrum. The reason for the diversity of responses is because there is a wide array of possibilities. Almost all of you will use your own situation as the starting frame of reference and that sets the stage for your initial answer to the question. But after several years of casual polling I have come to the conclusion that very few breeders have ever sat down and really crunched the numbers on their capacity for true profit. Young breeders see the prices tags some morphs carry and dive head first into the business without ever calculating whether or not it’s a financially sound investment. The complex calculations on how to make a profit occur in a few short seconds and usually only in their head. Because there is perceived opportunity for windfall profits the practice of doing a structured business analysis is cast aside and money is quickly spent on the acquisition of pythons. More often than not that investment is never recovered.

There is no simple answer to the profitability question. It is obvious to me that some people are making money in this business. The business would not have been around as long as it has (and growing) if that were not the case. However, I believe that making money in the snake breeding business is the exception, not the norm. Most people, “professional breeders” included, still refer to snake husbandry as “the hobby”. That word choice is not lost on me. Many of us are losing money and may not realize it. I do have a few ball python-breeding friends that live in beautiful homes, drive nice cars and enjoy many other luxuries that life offers. They have specially built breeding facilities and the very best in caging and other husbandry tools. By all outward appearances they are successful and making money. I am frequently impressed when I visit their facilities and it keeps me in check on just where I fit in this business. In some respects it gives me a pinnacle to which I can aspire.

And then there is the other end of the spectrum; the small breeder with a handful of animals in one of the rooms in his house. Limited time, money & resources force him to make do with what works; random aquariums, mix-and-match water bowls, space heaters and homemade racks. While the setup is otherwise functional it stands in stark contrast to the relatively organized structure and symmetry enjoyed by the bigger breeders. Limited funds force the small breeder to do without a lot of things he would like to have, including more high-end designer morphs.

So who in the wide range of breeders is making money? The assumption is that the big breeders are cleaning up and outward appearances lead us to believe it’s true. The reality is that big operations have big overhead. Enamored onlooker see only the incredible morphs with equally impressive price tags. Assuming large quantities of high-end animals translates to a successful business they are often blind to the parallel back-end hemorrhaging of money. In many ways the successes and struggles of a reptile breeding operation are merely matters of scale. The guy with 30 snakes, struggling to afford his weekly rodent bill is, by proportion, in the same boat as the guy with 2,000 snakes. This is not always the case, of course. In some ways the larger breeder will get a better return on investment (ROI) than a smaller breeder. Some things need to be purchased regardless of the number of snakes you own.

If you are a breeder reading this thinking, “Colin doesn’t know what he’s talking about because I absolutely make a profit on ball pythons.”, let me ask you this question: Are you really making a profit or do you just have good cash flow? The difference is significant. It is absolutely possible that having good cash flow is obscuring the fact that you are slowly losing money. You cannot judge profitability by how much money is in your pocket after a trade show or on-line sale. Those little bumps of money are enough to keep you high, feeling good and fairly unaware of your real situation. Without realizing it you may be floating along, doing the reptile sales equivalent of check kiting. The money from one sale or trade show carries you along until the next one (and hopefully it arrives in time). If you live paycheck to paycheck in your real life you know exactly what I’m talking about. Are some (or all) of your reptile expenses being paid with money from your day job? Is the business contributing to your personal debt? Continuing to acquire debt without seeing progress toward being in the black is a downward spiral from which you are not likely to emerge. Breeders new to the business should expect that downward spiral for not less than 2-3 years. Can you survive that long a period of time with money going almost exclusively in one direction?

To have a chance at being successful you need to perform a real-world, honest analysis of all the costs that make up your business. But for the smaller breeder many of the costs of snake breeding are co-mingled with regular household bills. This makes the real costs more difficult to calculate. For example, how much of your electric bill is attributed to your snakes? How much dish soap do you use cleaning water bowls versus your regular dishes? How much of the square footage of your house is dedicated to your reptile enterprise? How much does that square footage cost you in rent/mortgage every month? Once you begin to truly account for all of the costs you are likely to find that the wad of 20′s in your pocket at the end of a show doesn’t make for a profitable business.

But we still haven’t answered the question: can you make money breeding ball pythons? In order to get a handle on things I sat down and made a list of every conceivable cost that goes into a start-up a breeding operation. This is not a one-size-fits-all scenario but I had to start somewhere. Each of us has a different set of circumstances. Here is a list of assumptions I made:

• Initial Animal Investment. I began with ten (10) hatchling snakes. These ten snakes form the bulk of the initial investment. To avoid confusion I made up an imaginary morph (the simple recessive “NexGen ball python”) with imaginary prices and set up a breeding plan that started with the acquisition of those animals. Here is the initial animal investment:
  • 2.0 NexGen Ball Pythons ($2,500 each)
  • 0.2 NexGen Ball Pythons ($2,000 each)
  • 0.6 Het NexGen Ball Pythons ($750 each)
• Duration. I anticipated costs over a six-year investment period. This allowed time to raise the animals to adulthood while still having as many as 3 years for egg production.
• Quality of caging & husbandry supplies. I assumed husbandry was done more or less “right”. By that I mean that I assumed the acquisition of quality caging, appropriate supplies, etc. I did not attempt to budget for potential workarounds that could save money. I don’t consider the expenses I listed to be lavish, though. Money can certainly be saved by making do with less. But not having quality caging and supplies leads to increased effort when tending to your animals and that can lead to frustration and inadequate care.
• First Production. I assumed there would be no babies produced until the third year. In years 3 and 4 I assumed that two homozygous females would be held back (two each year). I also anticipated that one of the hold-back babies from year three would produce eggs in year six.
• Price Drops over Time. I made some educated guesses about the rate of decline of NexGen Ball Python prices over a six year window based on what I have seen happen with some other morphs in the past. The current rate of price declines is the single biggest nemesis to profitability.
• Quantity of Eggs. I did not budget for females laying large numbers of eggs. I assumed an average of 5-6 eggs for each female and I did not assume that every female would produce eggs each season. This is closer to real life, long-term results.
• Number of Breeders. The collection of animals was static over the six-year window, with no new animal additions or upgrades of existing breeders. While most of our collections are not really like this I wanted to keep the variables as manageable as possible.

After setting the items above as my starting point I sat back and contemplated every cost. From paper towels to web hosting to trade show fees and occasional broken water bowls, I tried to account for them all. As best I could I listed the costs in the respective years when they would be incurred. After listing all the costs I added them up.

So what was the result? In short, it was bad. Very bad. Over a six-year period the total expenses were $28,189.34. Total revenue was $22,585.00. That’s a loss of $5,604.34 at the end of the six-year window. I have to admit I was surprised by the numbers the first time I saw them. I checked and re-checked, re-worked and revised (the initial loss I calculated was over $7,300). I asked a few other breeders to perform a sanity check on the costs I estimated. They felt they were reasonable.

My base numbers suggest that, without modifying the model, breeding ball pythons is a fantastic way to lose a lot of money. Two facts make this potential loss very scary:

1. The loss is a slow leak. Your six-year annualized loss is only $934.06, a mere $78 per month. It is perfectly plausible that you don’t even notice a loss that spread out over time, especially if your reptile income and expenses are co-mingled with your normal household budgeting.
2. You already expect to lose money during the first 2-3 years (you have no production capacity during this time) so the disproportionate outpouring of money is both normal and expected. In the later years you are making a profit (compared to annual expenses) so you are even more likely to not realize that the sum total of expenses is still in the red. And let’s be honest, after doing nothing but spend money for the first 2-3 years you are ecstatic to bring in any money when you hatch babies for the first time.

Let me add insult to injury by pointing out that several costs were excluded from my calculations. Each of these has the capacity to increase the loss:

• State and Federal taxes. This is a huge deal. If you’re being honest and paying taxes on your income you can expect to lose 25-30% of your revenue to the tax man. Notice on the spreadsheet provided that you are making a profit in year’s 3, 4 & 5. You are going to have to pay taxes on your profits in these years. In the first two years you operate at a loss and in the sixth year you are close to breaking even. In the years that you are bringing in the most cash you will incur the largest tax burden.
• Interest on Loans. Did you take out a 2nd mortgage to fund this venture? Did you buy snakes using credit cards? How much of your credit card and mortgage loan balances come from things you bought to pay for your reptile business?
  
• Investors. Did you get financed by an investor to start this business? If so, what type of return are they expecting and on what schedule do they expect it? Most [real] venture capitalists operate on about a 5-year window. Did your investment capital come from a family member? The inability to repay a debt is even more stressful when family is involved.
• Merchant account fees. Do you take credit cards? If you do you are paying 2-3% on each sale and you will usually have a minimum $25-$60 monthly fee. I did include the new PCI DSS annual fee being charged by merchants. I have seen this number as low as $60 and as high as $100 depending on who does your credit card processing. Taking credit cards is expensive. Expensive snakes are frequently bought on credit. If you don’t have a way of accepting credit you will miss out on many sales.
• Facility costs. All of this was done assuming that you were running this operation out of your home. With only 10 ball pythons it didn’t make sense to rent a place or build a separate building on the property.
• Inflation. My calculations assume no increase in rodent prices, mulch prices or other frequently used supplies. It is almost certain that these prices will increase during the six-year window.
• Business Management Costs. Several other values were listed but not assigned dollar values: web site design, liability insurance, compensation for your time, corporation fees, animal permit fees, etc. Costs associated with any of those will increase the loss.
• Veterinary bills. It’s possible that none of your snakes will need to see a vet in a 6-year window but it could hurt (financially) if one of them needed some care. Good reptile vets are expensive. A single visit can easily cost you several hundred dollars. I recently had a bill that exceeded $1,000 for one snake. In addition to the vet’s charges it is likely that the problem will take your snake out of breeding rotation for the entire season. Something like that will hurt you from every angle. The losses linked to a single vet visit can cascade and lead to a lot of unrealized profit. It is wise to budget for vet visits and be pleased if you don’t need to use the money.
• Accountant fees. Assuming you are a legal business you will need the help of an accountant to identify and quantify your deductions. Deductions can save you a lot of money and help offset losses. But accountants cost quite a bit of money, too. Find one you like and trust. They are incredibly important to you. I am fortunate to have an accountant that knows me on a personal and professional level and has handled my business and personal finances for more than a decade.
• Abstract vehicle costs. The cost to drive a vehicle one mile is more than the cost of the fuel it burns. Wear and tear on your vehicle is accrued one mile at a time. I go to at least eleven reptile trade shows each year (and that’s low compared to some breeders). For me, the mileage there and back again adds up to just under 9,500 miles/year. If you begin to factor in vehicle depreciation for extra mileage, 2-3 additional oil changes, tire wear, etc. you could easily attribute another nice chunk of change to the costs. In 2010 AAA estimated the average cost/mile (including fuel) to be just under 48 cents per mile. If that is true my trade show travel costs are an additional $4,500 per year. Even to me that number seems excessive. I hope this number is way overstated for the real additional costs I incur in those 9,500 miles. But even at $.13/mile (AAA’s fuel cost estimate) I’m still spending $1,000-$1,200 on fuel to go to/from trade shows each year.

Want to see the actual numbers? You can view a PDF of the ball python profit analysis worksheet here.

If you would like to tinker with the ball python profitability numbers yourself you can download my Excel spreadsheet here. Download the spreadsheet and tinker with the numbers to see how your specific situation works out.

If these numbers freak you out, please calm yourself. Don’t start planning your exit strategy from reptile breeding just yet. I’m not liquidating my collection and neither should you. I am optimistic about the future of the ball python business and I know good money can be made doing this. I do not believe, however, that most of us will. As I have written before, there are going to be winners and losers. Pick which one you want to be and adjust your behavior to meet that objective.

So what does it take to be financially successful in the reptile business? How do we turn the scenario outlined in the numbers into a profitable venture? I have several recommendations that I break into two general categories:

• Actions that directly affect the bottom line
• Actions that indirectly affect the bottom line

Note: I am open to ideas and suggestions to expand/contract this list. If you have an opinion, send it to me and I will update my post with your input.

Actions that directly affect the bottom line

1. Treat reptile breeding like a real business. Why? Because it is. Costs must be managed. Decisions should be made with the bottom-line in mind. This includes your pricing structure as well as your expenditures and investments. As much as possible you need to remove emotion from the equation. Do not purchase animals that do not specifically fit into your projects. The dizzying array of morphs will often lead to impulse buys. Sure they are pretty to look at but how long is it going to take to make money off the investment? Is your money better spent on something less exciting with greater profit opportunity?
2. Get an accountant. A qualified accountant will help you with writing off the costs associated with animal maintenance (food, bedding, etc.) and will also serve as an invaluable source of advice on how to depreciate the value of your breeders (for tax purposes, that is). It’s can be very complicated and there are many ways the numbers can be manipulated. Only an accountant is going to be able to help you do what’s in your best legal and financial interest.
3. Determine factors that make up the cost. Partner with your accountant on this. You have to know the absolute bottom line dollar amount it takes to produce a baby snake. Excluding the amount invested in the parents the cost to produce a black pastel is equal to the cost of a ghost lesser killer clown. At a minimum your lowest sale price for an animal must always be higher than this. I do not know a single reptile breeder who can tell me the dollar amount it takes to produce a baby ball python. Importers know their landing cost (cost plus freight) so why don’t breeders know their production cost? Because it’s hard to calculate. Because of this prices are often arbitrarily set. The long-term economic viability of such approaches to pricing is suspect to say the least. Spend some time reading about pricing theory to learn more about this. I believe that reptile pricing requires a balance between cost-based and value-based pricing. Cost-based pricing will help you get a better handle on your actual production cost and maximize the return on early production while value pricing will help you to maximize your profit by pricing animals based on their perceived value in the industry. Learn and understand the following concepts in pricing:
   • Price skimming (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price_skimming) – This concept should sound very familiar to people in the investment-level designer morph business. You should also read a little bit about “S-curves” in economics (http://www.hsdent.com/s-curve/) as they provide some insight on how new morphs permeate the industry over time.
   • Cost-plus pricing (http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-cost-plus-pricing.htm) – While this may be a viable strategy for pricing Mexican Black Kingsnakes it is not a good strategy for designer morph ball pythons. In addition to their actual cost to produce ball pythons have a perceived value that contributes to their price. This pricing model does not adequately account for that.
   • Value-based pricing (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Value-based_pricing) – This pricing model applies most directly to new ball python morphs whose price far exceeds the actual production cost. This type of pricing is extremely important to the high-end reptile business. The amount someone will pay for a designer morph is directly linked to perceived value, not actual value. You have to be able to determine what this value is in order to achieve optimal pricing. The initial price for a new morph plays a big role in its long-term viability (e.g. for how many years will it be profitable to intentionally produce them).
4. Always Be Upgrading. You must relentlessly upgrade your collection. From one breeding season to the next there is no cruise-control. The genetic quality of your animals must increase every year. To do this you must:
   • Hold back some of the better animals you produce or;
   • Reinvest aggressively in new animals or;
   • Both
5. Control costs through meticulous record keeping. Track what you are spending, learn from it and adapt. You are going to find that you spend a lot more money on things than you would have guessed. The more vigilant you are in tracking your finances the more careful you tend to be with your spending.
6. Define a realistic budget. Stick to it. Create a realistic (e.g. one you can afford) weekly/monthly budget for repetitive costs like rodents and other supplies. Make the budget realistic enough to adequately feed your animals. Do not acquire more animals than you can afford to feed. Females have to have the right body weight to consistently produce.
7. Know when to cut your losses. Not every animal is going to be a winner. Regardless of gender you are going to come across poor performers. They may be poor feeders, poor breeders or both. While every animal deserves more than one breeding season to prove itself you cannot continue to hold on to an animal year after year if it is not producing for you. Murphy’s law guarantees that the person you sell it to will have wonderful success with it but you can’t worry about that. If the animal is not performing for you on a consistent basis it’s time for it to move along. This helps you to make sure every slot on the rack is there to help you make a profit.
8. Breed your own food. If you have a large collection of ball pythons it is worth giving some serious consideration to this possibility. I know several breeders who do and each of them assures me that it A) saves them a large sum of money, B) does not take as much time as you might think and C) can be wonderful because you pretty much always have the exact right size meal for your animals. My current calculations suggest that I can reduce my monthly feeding costs by 42% or more. And if I were to do so I would probably have a surplus of rodents that I could sell to offset the costs even further. Having written that I do have to acknowledge that there will be a sizable investment in getting set up to breed rodents but that cost will be recouped over the next year or so.

Actions that indirectly affect the bottom line

1. Don’t grow away your money. (Yes, the word-play is intentional.) The quality of your collection is more important than its size. Come to terms with the fact that being bigger does not mean you will make more money. In the short term (think decade or so) it may be the opposite. In fact, some larger breeders are actively trying to get smaller. Many new breeders begin with aspirations of building collections that rival the big names in the business. Put simply: dumb idea. Eight out of ten of the people who read this don’t have any real idea how big those collections are anyway. We give them credit for being huge (and some of them are) but we don’t know for sure. If you could sit one of the big names down for an interview I’ll wager each of them would fondly reminisce the days when their collections were smaller.
2. Be financially and mentally prepared to not make money for the first 3-5 years. Building a solid collection of quality breeding animals takes time. The time required to grow these animals to a viable breeding weight are well understood. Don’t bank on exceptions to the rule. Do not become a ball python breeder unless you are fully aware of the fact that real profit is several years down the line. Most people who are making good money in this business have mature collections and they have spent years recouping their investment. It is only after many years in the business that you begin to really have a chance to earn. This business is littered with the shrapnel of wanna-be breeders who didn’t make it much longer than two years before throwing in the towel. Almost every single one of them lost a huge amount of money and came out on the other side wondering what they were thinking in the first place. Strap yourself in for the long haul or don’t do it at all. Breeding ball pythons for profit is not the get-rick-quick scheme that some people think it is.
3. Sell out without being a sellout. Don’t lead the way on price declines. Prices are going to fall. Someone is always going to be on an Internet classified site selling a particular morph for an absurdly low price. That is never going to change. I’m frustrated by them as much as anybody but they don’t dictate my prices. People come to me at trade shows, look at an animal I am selling for $2,300 and say, “I can get this on-line for $1,500.” I often wonder what they are doing at the show talking to me. Shouldn’t they be at home ordering their new snake? If the other deal is that great why are they here haggling over my animal? If you produce a quality animal you should not be willing to match (or beat) the lowest price out there. If you do, the guy with the lower price is just going to lower his even more. If you produce quality animals you will get a better price for them. On this point, I recently had a customer who wanted a spider ball python I had for sale. Another breeder was selling a smaller spider for about 30% less than mine. The buyer wanted me to lower my price to match the other animal. The other spider was not as well cared for as mine and it had a very noticeable head wobble. My well fed, beautifully patterned, wobble-free spider was exceptional in contrast. Knowing that my animal was higher quality I declined to match the price. The buyer bought the cheaper, skinny, head-wobbling animal instead of mine. He got what he paid for. I was not disappointed and was amused a few hours later when my spider sold for a fair price. My point is two-fold:
   • You don’t have to lower your price to the lowest current price (or lower) in order to sell your animals. I anticipate that more than 90% of breeders completely sell out of animals every season. There is not enough supply to meet the demand for ball pythons. I turn customers away multiple times per week because I am sold out of the animals they want.
   • You should not always accept the first offer you receive for an animal. Another [less offensive] offer is coming shortly. Be patient. Quality animals will always sell for fair prices.
4. Create a database of customers and track their animal interests. A query-able database will come in handy as you begin to produce greater morph diversity. Being able to match your existing inventory with previous customers is a great way to generate quick sales. Think of it as a ball python tickler file. You don’t have to be a SQL DBA to make this happen. If computers aren’t your thing, use a spiral notebook.
5. Market yourself as much as you market your animals. This business is not any different from many others and a general truism in business is that people buy from who they know. Some sales experts suggest that as much as 85% of a sale can be based on the personalities of the people, not the product being purchased. While there are a number of people who buy with price as their sole selection criteria there is a thriving market for higher-quality (and higher-priced) animals. When everything else is otherwise equal people will buy from you because they know your name and know who you are. They like , respect, and trust you. Spend some time observing how people talk about others in the industry. With few exceptions people don’t refer to the name of the business, they refer to the person(s) behind it. Because reptile breeding operations are always small in the number of employees it is the name(s) of the owners that are known. Work diligently to make sure people know your name.
6. Have an excellent web site that contains up-to-date information. A web site is a marketing tool, plain and simple. Static web sites do nothing to encourage people to come back again and again. Whether you do it with photos, videos, how-to articles or blog posts you have to do something that makes people want to come to your site and see what you’re up to. In the reptile business pictures are probably the best way to do this. “But I’m not good at that stuff”, is a common argument I get when I tell people this. You don’t have to be a professional photographer or an award winning author to have an interesting web site. More than anything you just need to do something. There are plenty of tools available that will allow even the biggest computer noob to set up some slick looking web sites. On this planet a lack of technical saavy is not really an option and, increasingly, not really an obstacle. As a corollary to this you need to make sure your web site doesn’t fall out of date, isn’t ugly, difficult to use or unprofessional in appearance. Any of those things will decrease your credibility.
7. Be willing to pay for quality. Buy the best animals you can realistically afford. Do not buy the cheapest animal you can find. Junk in, junk out. Remember that.

The bottom line to all of this discussion is this: if you don’t diligently plan to make money, you won’t. The ball python husbandry business has the capacity to make you as much money as you want if (and I do mean if) you are a smart, calculating and realistic in your approach. The next step is an individual one.

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

I’m self-employed.  I have been that way for almost a decade.  In addition to my reptile enterprise I am a founding owner of a small information technology (IT) company.  Because I have a passion for computer networking and information security I long ago decided to start my own business doing the thing I love.  That is a theme familiar to a lot of self-employed people and if you are not currently self-employed I’ll wager that a good number of you aspire to one day be so.  For those of you not currently at the helm of your own enterprise let me remind you of an expression I’m sure you have heard before:  “The grass is always greener on the other side of the fence.“  Owning your own business does nothing to eliminate the stress and frustration you experience in your current job.  Often times it’s quite the opposite.  When you own your business the stresses simply multiply and take on a different form.

It was a little over a decade ago that I found myself increasingly frustrated that other people were making lots of money because I was good at what I did.  With great frequency my bosses would come to me in order to implement some intricate piece of computing voodoo for one of our clients.  When the job was done I got my regular paycheck while the company owners were moving into ever larger houses and driving ever nicer cars.  I have to admit that I spent a good amount of time annoyed and disenfranchised with the arrangement.  Thankfully, I had a moment of clarity, a simple epiphany that changed things.  I came to terms with the fact that my employer had offered me a certain sum of money to do a job and I chose to accept that money.  By accepting that sum I gave up the right to be angry about actually doing the job they had hired me to do.  Despite being no longer happy with the pay I was receiving I had, quite literally, sold my right to whine and complain about it.  As long as I chose to accept the money they were paying me I also chose to accept the other circumstances I did not like.  I alone was responsible for the situation and that was a powerful realization.  I chose to no longer accept the money they were paying me and that meant I could do one of two things:  renegotiate my salary or quit.  I decided that even if they doubled my salary they would still be making too much money off of my off my particular skill set.  So I quit.  I did not, however, quit on the spot.  I developed a plan and spent the next year acting on it.  About ten months after I decided that I would be the one to earn the greatest profit on my skills, I gave my notice.  Two weeks later I hung out a shingle of my own.

My maxim during that time was, “leap …and the net will appear.”  And leap I did.  It was about two paycheck-free years later that the net finally appeared.  Gambling against common business practice my partners and I chose to forgo salaries in exchange for reinvestment and getting the business solidly in the black.  It was a tough time for my family.  Our household income had been cut by more than half  and the impact on our qualify of life was profound.  More than once I thought we weren’t going to make it.

But that was a long time ago.  Today the company I started is a success and it has led directly to the financial betterment of my family.  I am in charge of my own financial fate.  It would seem that I have achieved one of my original objectives.  But I find myself reminded of another famous (and over-used) saying:  “Watch what you wish for because it just might come true.” Despite having a successful business I long ago realized that the reasons I started it were at least partially flawed.  My motivations were not technically wrong, mind you.  The flaw was that I had come to the incorrect conclusion that being passionate about doing a certain thing meant that I should start a business doing that thing; that doing the thing you love and owning the company that does it was a desirable pinnacle of achievement.  The reality is that if you start a business doing something you love you are in grave danger of that ‘love‘ turning into ‘loathe‘.  You may one day wake up and realize that the thing that once brought you joy has become a passionless burden; a thing no longer done for the soul but a thing now done to pay the mortgage.  What a terrible thing to do to your passions.

In the years since I started my IT company I have come to one very sobering conclusion:  I do not own a business.  I own a job.

My business does not make money unless I am there to deliver a product.  The more I work the more the company makes.  If I don’t work the company doesn’t make money.  And that responsibility is exactly what I wished for ten years ago.  Oh crap!  My wish came true!  One problem is that I am a finite resource, limited by many things, the number of hours in a day being one of the most menacing.  But that’s not the worst problem.  I realized long ago that I wasn’t going to get any sleep until I am dead.  The biggest problem is the reason why I started the business has gradually been sucked out of me.  Years ago my fascination with computers was just a hobby.   The hours spent on my hobby eventually landed me a job in the industry.  With my focus still firmly on the technology, I became excellent.  And then I made the same mistake that many others had made before me.  I concluded that a love for technology can be taken to the next level by becoming the owner of a technology company.  A more wrong conclusion could not have been made.  This ‘thing’ that once provided nourishment for my soul has now become necessary.  I have to do it.  And that takes much of the fun out of it.  The responsibilities of being an owner have changed my perspective and my original passion along with it.  What was once a labor of love has been reduced to …work.

But my technology company is only one of my enterprises.  I also own and run an exponentially-expanding reptile business.  And what was the motivation that led to the beginning of East Coast Reptile Breeders?  Same as most of us, I suspect.  I am fascinated by reptiles and have a passion for working with them.  Long ago it was a hobby and because I love reptiles so much I could think of no better way to immerse myself in them than to start a business breeding them.  Uh-oh!  Second verse, same at the first!   Those motivations sound eerily similar to the one’s I had when starting my other venture.  Does this mean I am doomed to watch the joy I derive from reptile husbandry morph into a passionless repetition of daily process?  I hope not.  It goes without saying that is not why I started doing this.  Many years ago I went headlong into reptiles as a business with the same seemingly pure intentions as before: I wanted to make money doing something that I love.  That’s the sales pitch we have all been given (and I bought).  And today I am having a conscious confrontation with the possibility that, if left unchecked, I will one day grow to loathe reptiles.  Does that mean I need to take a preemptive action and distance myself from them (e.g. become a hobbyist again) in order to preserve the joy they bring me?  That question is rhetorical for me because I can’t see myself ever doing that.  Regardless of the long-term outcome, I continue to grow the size and reach of my reptile business.

Some of the warning signs are already here.  For example, it was not too long ago I paid a generous sum of money for yet another exceptionally beautiful snake.  This snake is so exquisite a creature that it is worthy of being stared at by groups of people for hours on end.  But what did I do when I got it?  I verified its sex, created a feeding card, labeled a tub and put it in a rack.  As both a living thing and an investment I take meticulous care of it but I don’t spend nearly enough time appreciating it.  There was a time when I used to.  And that is a symptom of some joy being lost.  Unlike last time, however, I am keenly aware of it.  Perhaps I can act on it before it progresses any further.  But how?

And so here I am, in possession of some of the most beautiful snakes imaginable.  Even so, I seldom take time to appreciate them.  But why?  Well, because I, like so many others, am busy being run by my business.  I can’t sit around and stare at pretty snakes all day.  I’ve got cages to clean, bowls to wash, floors to sweep, orders to pack, photos to take, ads to run, phone calls to take, emails to respond to, supplies to order, and paperwork to fill out.  And when all of that is done I’ve still got multiple hundreds of hungry mouths to feed.  With all the to-do’s that come with business ownership who has time to stop and enjoy the reason they are doing it?  I am, quite truly, owned by my business.

Small start-up businesses can often be exclusively run by the people who started them.  A husband/wife team can do a lot.  But when the business is small you spend all of your time working for it rather than working on it.  That is an incredibly important distinction.  There has to come a point when you let go of the day-to-day processes and take on more of a …leadership …role in your company.  You have to transcend from being a hands-on technician to being a leader and that is not always a natural thing to do.  However, if you don’t the business will consume you and you may (will) begin to lose your passion.  I believe it to be inevitable.

Letting go of the technical details (e.g. cleaning cages, feeding snakes, washing bowls)  is often harder than staying in control.  Nobody can care as much as you.  It’s not possible.  When you delegate control to someone else you do so knowing that they are not able to care about your business the way you do.  And so you have to come to terms with the fact that the efforts of someone else will have to be good enough.  If (and I do mean if) you can find the right people you will have a chance.  Unfortunately, finding the correct people can be incredibly difficult and payroll is the single biggest leech on a company’s economic viability.  Churning your way through a few rounds of bad staff can drain your payroll accounts and leave the work still incomplete.  This is particularly difficult in the reptile business because the work is insanely repetitive.  It’s hard for anybody to stay motivated when every day is pretty much a carbon copy of the one before it.

It is now twice that I have been in this position.  I have been unable to let go of the day-to-day operations of my IT shop and I have paid for it with some of my passion for the business.  I have also struggled to let go of the day-to-day maintenance of my reptile collection.  In fact, I am so busy taking care of my animals that I often neglect to take the time to actually sell them.  And that’s just plain stupid.  No margin, no mission.  Because I am so motivated to avoid trading my enthusiasm for control I am forcing myself to go through the pain of letting go.  I no longer want to own a job.  I want to own a company.  For now I have found good people to help me maintain my collection.  Doing so frees me up to focus on developing the business, expanding my customer base and my presence in the community.  But I didn’t just flip a switch and magically let go.  Because I am a control freak I find that baby steps work best.  For instance, I still feed all of my animals, I still check and spot-clean cages on a daily basis and I still do all of my animal pairings during breeding season.  Letting go of the latter will probably not occur for a very, very long time.  When it’s me vouching for the genetics of the animals I sell I just can’t see myself delegating that particular responsibility.

And so that’s where I am.  I’m a business owner with a history of being owned by his business.  I am increasingly conscious of my self-imposed limitations and how my past actions have produced some undesirable results.  My motivation to avoid letting the past repeat itself is prompting me to make some changes in the way I do business.  I’m kinda’ anxious to see where this goes…

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

I have been keeping reptiles for about 20 years and I have been going to reptile trade shows in a vendor capacity (on and off) for a little more than half of that time.  I took a hiatus from the reptile scene in the early part of this decade but I have been back in full swing for more than four years.

In the early-to-mid 90′s reptile trade shows were awesome events; the excitement and enthusiasm could sometimes be carnival-like.  Both vendors and customers came from all around the country to participate.  Show dates were comparatively few and far between and the Internet, as the average persons knows it today, was not reptile-enabled.  There were far fewer breeders (even though many of today’s names remain the same) and many of the animals that are commonplace today were available to most of us only in pictures.  Outside the potpourri of animals in our own collections all most of us could do was look at the small assortment of available books.  My top five books were:

• The General Care and Maintenance of Burmese Pythons by Philippe De Vosjoli.  A tiny and concise book, printed in black & white, but still one of my favorites.  My affection for this book is more sentimental than anything; it was my first book on reptiles.
• The Reproductive Husbandry of Pythons and Boas by Richard Ross.  A bible to reptile keepers.  I really wish there was an updated version of this book, one that reflects all the things we have learned over the past 15-20 years.
• Completely Illustrated Atlas of Reptiles & Amphibians for the Terrarium.  This book is mammoth in size but short in the amount of detail it has on each species.  But in a time when the inventors of Google were still in middle school there weren’t many choices for getting information on obscure reptiles.
• Kingsnakes & Milk Snakes by Ron Markel.  Still relevant today.  Would very much like to see it updated.
• Rat Snakes: A Hobbyists Guide to Elaphe and Kin by Ray Staszko, Jerry Walls, and John Quinn.  Another excellent book, also still relevant.

Don’t be even a tiny bit confused.  These weren’t just books that were in my personal library; these books were in my hands every single day!  I spent hours upon hours poring through the pages, memorizing the images, the content, the latin names, everything I could.  I didn’t just read these books, I consumed their content.  I read them with such frequency that  their pages fell out.  I loved the Kingsnakes & Milksnakes book so much that one day in 1994 I jumped in my car and drove 18 hours to Arlington, Texas just so I could meet Ron Markel and talk to him about gray-banded kingsnakes.  Completely broke and sleeping in my car I spent a week hanging out with Ron, learning everything I could from him (Ron thought I was staying in a hotel.  I was too young and proud to admit otherwise).  It was such a cool experience.    I never made it the rest of the way down to Del Rio, TX to search for gray-bands of my own but a few weeks later I bought a captive-bred pair of them from Brian Barczyk at the Mid-Atlantic Reptile Show (MARS).  To this day  I still owe myself a trip to southern Texas to hunt for kingsnakes.

I digress.  I didn’t sit down to write about books and road trips from the 90′s.  I’m sitting here to write about trade shows.  Having been back on the Mid-Atlantic trade show scene for several years I must say that it is no longer what it once was.  The excitement and novelty of those days so long ago are all but gone.  The market is saturated and it is getting worse.  But it’s not the number of animals that seems to have saturated the market, it’s the number of shows.  The number of reptile trade shows being hosted on the east coast of the US has exceeded critical mass.  A few days ago I sat down to work on my list of show appearances for 2010 and was blown away by the addition yet more reptile shows in the Mid-Atlantic and surrounding area.  Vendors have been complaining for a long time that there are too many shows.  But there the shows are and more and more are being added all the time.

There are several factors at work causing this increase in the number of shows:

• Not everybody knows it but the Hamburg, PA show was actually two different shows.  For years there were two different promoters with different show dates.  The shows were held in the same place and to the customers nothing looked different.  The politics of reptile trade shows has produced a situation where one of those vendors is no longer able to host their show at the Hamburg armory.  In response that promoter has launched a list of multiple new shows in Pennsylvania and surrounding locations.
• The promoter of the White Plains, NY show, which is one of the best trade shows on the east coast, added another show on Long Island last year.  That show continues  to struggle to match the White Plains event.  Both of those shows are outside the Mid-Atlantic but White Plains is a good enough show that it attracts people from quite a long way away.  Me, for instance.  I travel almost nine hours to get there.  I know other vendors who come from several more hours away than me.
• NARBC tried to host a trade show in Northern Virginia.  The show lasted two years before poor attendance caused its cancellation.  Northern Virginia is brimming with reptile people but even NARBC’s first-rate shows didn’t survive in the over-saturated mire of the Mid-Atlantic scene.
• Repticon continues its northerly march, expanding up to Baltimore in 2010.  Prior to this they only went as far as Charlotte, NC.
• One show promoter in the Mid-Atlantic area hosts monthly shows in Virginia and Maryland.  The shows are poorly advertised and poorly attended by vendors and customers alike.  At most these shows should happen every other month (and that’s me being generous).  The show promoter can’t resist the dollars made by the trickle of patrons coming in the door so he continues to try and jam more and more shows down the community’s throat.  More and more vendors are no longer supporting these shows.  Despite the continuing and ever-increasing lack of participation from customers and vendors alike the promoter insists on adding more and more show dates to the schedule.

Show promoters can’t force vendors to come to shows so let’s focus our attention on the real culprit:  the show vendor.  Show vendors are duplicitous.  We say we want fewer shows but we support the promoters when they add new one’s to the schedule.  But why do we do such things?   The prospect of money, of course.   To understand how the money presents itself I recommend you visualize a polar bear fishing at a hole in the ice.  Imagine each morning a polar bear wakes up and hauls himself down to a hole in the ice.  For hours upon hours he sits, patiently waiting for a sea lion to rise up through the water and poke its head through the hole.  Most days the bear goes hungry, leaving at the end of the day with nothing to show but a wasted trip.  It is however, inevitable; a sea lion will eventually poke its head up through the hole in the ice.  The key is for the polar bear to be there when it happens.  When he is, …delicious!  It’s a polar bear payday.  It’s the prospect of getting a meal that keeps the bear coming back.  The sea lions are few and far between, sometimes eluding the bear for painfully long periods of time.  But they seem to pop up just enough to keep him coming back.  It’s an inconsistent and inefficient process but he doesn’t really know any other way to catch the sea lions.  With seemingly limited options he is, at this moment, preparing for his next trip to the ice hole.

• Show vendors are polar bears.  They require a consistent and steady supply of food (money).
• Customers are sea lions (Pardon the crassness of referring to you as a consumable but the reality is that vendors don’t spend money, time and energy to go to shows to socialize and display animals; they are there to give you reptiles in exchange for money.)
• Trade shows are ice holes.  Despite the ease with which they can be created they will freeze over and disappear if left alone.

These days there are so many holes in the ice (trade shows) we don’t know when or if a sea lion (customer) is ever going to poke his head through and spend some money (become a meal).  In response we (the vendors) need to make sure we never miss an opportunity, knowing full well that most of our time at the ice hole is going to be wasted, fruitless.

What the polar bears don’t know is that by running from hole to hole they are helping to create more holes.  The more holes there are the less likely it is the bear will be at the right place at the right time.  The sea lion may pop up through the hole but the bear was staring down into the wrong one.  Opportunity missed, another wasted effort.  If I could sit all the polar bears down for a chat I would tell them not to spend all day in front of the holes.  I would tell them to cover most of them up in order to get rid of them.  By eliminating most of the holes in the ice they can focus their attention on the best producing holes; achieving a similar end-result with a lot less overhead.

Alas, most polar bears are too caught up in the cycle of running from hole to hole to break trend.  They system has them and they can’t break free.  It’s a shame, really.  They are running themselves ragged, effectively chasing nickels when they should be focusing on dollars.  The joy they once derived from going to the ice hole is gone.  It has become a chore encapsulated in frustration.  While the costs of policing all of the ice holes continues to rise profitable results continue to decline and the cycle is made even worse as a result.

The solution is easy to write but tough to implement:  If we (the vendors) stop supporting the show promoters by buying tables they will stop having so many shows.  The trickle-down effect is that customers won’t continue going to trade shows without quality vendors with quality products.  The vendors I have spoken with this all give me a similar argument; that it’s better to go to the show and make a little bit of money than to stay home and make no money at all.  This, however, is only an opinion, not a fact.  I suggest that there are ways to better your business each weekend without going to trade shows.  Consider the following:

• Rather than going to yet another local trade show that is poorly run, poorly attended and barely profitable, stay home and work on your web site.  Have you looked around at reptile web sites lately?  Most of them are in poor shape, terribly outdated and incomplete.  My own site suffers from this in some places.  Web sites are a lot of work if you want them to be good and you can get the time to work on them by foregoing a trade show each month.
• Pick a web site and go take a peek at the list of supposedly available animals.  Most reptile web sites (mine included) are not up-to-date.  Few have actual lists of animals that a person can really shop from.  Some have available lists that are several years old.  That’s damaging to your credibility in the long run.  So rather than going to the next trade show spend that time taking photos of your available animals and posting them up on your web site.
• Update your content, add updated pictures to your photo gallery and incorporate new content into the site.  Make your site better each month by skipping a trade show and adding new information that will cause people to come back on a regular basis.  Static web sites with unchanging content don’t need to be visited on a regular basis.  If you take the time to populate your site with photos, discussions, how-to articles, videos, etc. you will find that you get a good amount of traffic and that traffic will lead to sales.  Most of us don’t have time to do all of this, especially if you spend so many of your weekends doing trade shows.  Skip the trade show and you have created the time necessary to get this work done.  It will pay for itself in the long run.

I am bailing out on a long list of reptile trade shows in 2010.  I just don’t see the value in doing them anymore.  My efforts as part of the reptile community are better spent doing other things.  Don’t get me wrong, I will still attend every Hamburg and every White Plains show.  They are quarterly, which is reasonable and they are still solid staples of the business.  But all of these smaller shows …I’m done with them.  They are a waste of time for vendors and customers alike.  Vendors:  join me on this.  If you do we can make the industry better by restoring value to the trade show scene.

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