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

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

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

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

FV = P • (1+%interest)ⁿ

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

So:

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

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

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

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

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

CV = FV • (1+%interest)^-n

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Here is what we buy:

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

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

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

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

The Timeline

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Prices at the end of Year Three are as follows:

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

The value of your Year Three production:

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

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

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

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

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

Prices at the end of Year Four are as follows:

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

The value of your Year Four production:

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

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

The Tally

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Cheers,

Colin Weaver

“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

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

Not long ago I was browsing an on-line reptile classified web site and I came across the ad of a well-known reptile wholesaler.  The ad was of the “want to buy” nature and he was offering to buy the entire breeding production that you have for sale.  After saying that he wants your production he typed in bold characters, “WE ARE ONLY PAYING WHOLESALE PRICES.”  Sadly, wholesale pricing in the reptile industry is often considered to be in the 50% off retail range (or more).  As I finished reading the ad a few choice words came to mind regarding how I felt about its audacity.  The brazen call for you to sell your production to someone else so they can make a profit equal to the person who did all the work (you) always gets me a little annoyed …almost as annoyed as I get at the idea that people regularly agree to the sale.

I have written more than once on the price of reptiles, ball pythons in particular.  Please take a moment to read the forum post I made about snake prices (on faunaclassifieds.com) back in April 2009 (http://www.faunaclassifieds.com/forums/showthread.php?t=130559).  After that, please read this post I made on my own site at around the same time (also regarding snake pricing) (http://ballpythonbreeder.com/2009/04/why-were-idiots-for-using-kingsnakecom-to-price-animals/).  Discussions surrounding how much animals should sell for are circular at best as the value of a snake is arbitrary.  What is right and what is wrong is ultimately irrelevant because no single individual can control what others do with their pricing.

Having said that we all need to understand that in the reptile business there are two basic mechanisms that determine the price of an animal:  value and margin.

Value Pricing

Value pricing is the type of pricing you set on an animal because you have an investment in its production.  This usually means you produced the animal through breeding.  When your product comes from your own breeding efforts you assign a value based on a variety of factors including (but not limited to), the amount invested in the parents, housing & caging, food, time spent, etc.  Put simply, all of those factors create value.  The production of the animal represents a lot of time, effort and money.  Accordingly, you want to see a return on that investment and you price your animals in a way that allows you to accomplish that objective.

Margin Pricing

Compared to value pricing, margin pricing is simple.  With margin pricing the sale price is not dependant upon any factor other than how much was paid for the animal.  If a wholesaler/flipper can buy an animal for $50 they sell it for $100 even if the current value price is $150.  If someone offers $75 they are likely to take it.  In the best case their profit is 100% on the original investment.  Even if they sell it for $75 after a $50 investment they still realize a 50% return.  Either way, the return on their investment is impressive.  This return is compounded by the fact that their production cost is $0.  Take a moment to notice how the margin seller did not consider value when pricing the animal.  Well, that’s not entirely true.  The margin seller does consider the value price in the following ways:

• His acquisition price must be significantly lower than the current value price.
• The acquisition price must be sufficiently low to allow a margin price that is still significantly less than the current value price.  This is necessary because the animals must be sold quickly, with as little maintenance as possible.
• The acquisition price must allow for a quick-sell margin price that still yields a 50-100% profit.  The current culture of the reptile business does not support a flipper making only a 15-20% return.  In fact, they scoff at the prospect of such returns.

Take a moment to picture two vendors at a reptile trade show.  Both are selling similar animals.  Seller #1 is you.  The animals you are selling were produced by you through your own breeding efforts.  You have a facility where you produced these animals and you have years invested in raising the parents, pairing them for breeding, incubating the eggs followed by a few months getting the babies established and ready for sale.  You are proud of your animals and you are ready to earn a financial reward for your efforts.  At the table next to you is Seller #2, a wholesaler/flipper.  He did not produce any of the animals on his table.  His arrived via FedEx the night before.  He opened the bags last night to make sure the animals were alive  but that’s it.  He did not set them up in cages, did not feed them and did not give them water.  The only investment he has in the animals is an invoice.

The show begins.  People visit your table and comment on how beautiful your animals are but they do not buy.  At the table next to you things are busy.  Cash is trading hands.  You visit Seller #2′s table and realize that he is selling the same animals as you but at a greatly reduced price.  You don’t stand a chance at moving any of your production as long as his animals are priced that way.  By the time the day is done you have not even made enough money to cover your tables fees and other costs associated with going to the show.  You are frustrated.  At the end of the show Seller #2, the flipper, comes by and offers you $3,000 cash for 10 animals that you value at $7,500.  You now have two choices:  go home having lost money or go home with $3,000.  Seller #2 walks away with 10 new animals and you feel slightly sick to your stomach.  But you did just make $3,000 and you still have a lot more animals back at the shop that you can sell for your value prices.  By the time you get home you have successfully rationalized the transaction and are feeling good about the wad of cash in your pocket.

Here is what happens to you in the aftermath of the trade show:

• On the Tuesday after the show you post your remaining animals on an Internet classified site.  You price them based on value.
• You decide to search the site to see who else is selling animals like yours and are horrified to see that Seller #2 has listed the actual animals you sold to him at the show and he is selling them for less than your value price.  The snake you just listed at a value price of $500 he is selling for a margin price of $400.  He is able to do this because he paid you less than $250 for it at the trade show (as part of your $3,000 deal).  He will sell before you and make a $150 profit.
• Knowing you don’t really stand a chance at getting $500 when animals just as good as yours (actually ARE yours) are being sold for $400 you reduce your price to $400 to match Seller #2.  And the market value of the animals is now officially $100 less than it was last week.
• Frustrated you rail against Seller #2 every chance you get.  You label him the destroyer of the trade.  People like him are the reason that animal prices fall so fast.

A month later you attend another reptile trade show.  Your animal, once value priced at $500, is now on your table for $400.  You had to lower the price to stand a chance against Seller #2.  Feeling like you are now competitive you expect to have a great show.  Things do not go according to plan.  Seller #2′s table is a mad-house yet again.  When you visit his table you see that your $400 animals are now $325 on his table.  Once again, you don’t stand a chance.  At the end of yet another miserable show you don’t wait for Seller #2 to visit you.  You go see him and you bring a tall stack of animals with you knowing all too well that you are about to sell them for less than half of their value.

And so the cycle continues.  You, the breeder, continue to lower the value you place on your animals in order to try and stay competitive with Seller #2.  He always seems to have lower prices than anybody else.  As time passes the value of your animals decreases while the costs associated with their maintenance continues to rise.  Because Seller #2 prices his animals based on margin rather than value you cannot win.  Seller #2, the so-called destroyer, continues to ruin the market.

But here is a little revelation for you:  Seller #2 isn’t the destroyer.  You are.

Seller #2 can’t sell animals at margin prices if he can’t buy them for less than 50% of their value.  And it was you, faced with the prospect of a money-losing trade show (or your mortgage being late, or your car breaking down, or your divorce, or whatever…), that decided to make something rather than nothing.  Your decision to place such a deep discount on value has created the market for the margin seller.  The margin seller, of flipper as he is so often labeled, is not ruining the trade.  He is a businessman, an innovator within the trade.  He has identified a market opportunity and is exploiting it.  Despite being frustrated by him, I will never fault him for that.  The person(s) accountable are the one’s that continue to sell their animals to him.  If breeders would wise up (which I have no hopes of them ever doing), the flippers would dry up and go away.  You wise up, they dry up.  The expression “no margin, no mission” applies to all business ventures; yours and the flippers.  When you sell to a flipper/wholesaler it is you who is slowly drying up.  It will one day be you, because of frustration and a lack of profitability, that goes away.  And when you do the wholesaler will move on and find another breeder to consume.  If the breeders would stand fast, resist the temptation to sell to the flippers, it would be the other way around.  But I see no signs of that ever happening.  As a diverse community we lack the business acumen to do so.

Flippers exist because breeders allow them to.  Flippers also exist because people almost always purchase reptiles on one factor:  price.  Don’t bother disagreeing with me.  I have been in this business for too long and can say with confidence that in excess of 85% of all transactions are price-driven.  People go on forums and talk about how quality is important and how they are willing to pay more for an exceptional animal but most of them are not going to stick to those guns when the wallet-pulling moment is at hand.  I’ve seen it too many times.  I am not kidding when I tell you that I have seen people buy animals that were sick, emaciated and near-death simply because they were $50 cheaper than a beautiful, healthy and vibrant animal at the next table over.  In fact, I was at a trade show yesterday where a sickly ball python morph was being sold for a ridiculously low price.  This prompted the question, “Why is it so cheap?”  The honest answer from the seller:  “I just picked it up in trade.  It has a respiratory infection.  I’m selling it as-is.”  What kind of a moron would buy an obviously sick snake in order to save a few bucks?  Well …that snake sold within five minutes of being put out for sale (and there were multiple people who were interested in buying it).

Regards,

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…

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

What a polarizing animal the python has become.

Within the portion of our country that is paying attention we are divided into two distinct groups.  One one side we have reptile owners from every walk of life; blue collar, white collar, broke-as-a-joke and stinking rich.  Some of these reptile owners have a single python while others have many and breed them for profit.  And we have owners who fit everywhere in-between.  Their levels of personal responsibility are as diverse as they are.  I’m sure there are some who have no business owning a reptile.  The overwhelming majority, however, are quite responsible.  They respect their animals, take care of them and work to ensure that they don’t impose on the rights of others who are not as enthusiastic about snakes.  And yes, many of them actually love their snakes in the way that the average person loves their dog or cat.  No, pythons are not as affectionate and attentive as my Weimaraner (not by a long shot) but they do have personalities.  Each snake is unique.  And if you were to spend some time with them you would also come to realize that truth.

On the other side of this debate is a small, well-positioned group of misinformed individuals who are calling for a federal ban on pythons; not Burmese pythons …all pythons.  Maybe.  Nobody on this side seems to be python savvy enough to know that there are actually different kinds of pythons with the overwhelming majority of them being quite tiny compared to the sinister Burmese.  I’m not entirely sure where they stand on other types of pythons and I don’t think they know either.

Eradicating the existence of pet pythons in America is such an easy thing to stand for, isn’t it?  Pythons are huge, menacing, people-eating machines that are actively slithering north from Southern Florida toward the back yards of the Washington DC suburbs where they will stalk your pets and hunt your children!  Well, that’s the way the media tells it, at least.  The truth in this debate is not so newsworthy so the media (with the help of bad info from supposedly scientific organizations) is fabricating the truth to better their ratings.  And why not?  Ratings equal dollars.  From what I gather chaos, revolution, murder, drug overdosing Kings of Pop, financial downturns, forest fires, celebrity clothing choices, car crashes and Burmese pythons are the things that sell newspapers and ad space.  From the Discovery Channel and the History Channel to a few dozen newspaper columnists around the country and all the way up to Senator Bill Nelson, who is a living, breathing example of misinformation incarnate, people who know absolutely nothing about pythons are calling for their nationwide ban.  Their numbers are small but, as I wrote earlier, they are well positioned in the media and are able amplify their noise.  The original rallying cry was the establishment of a population of Burmese pythons in the Florida Everglades.  An unfounded fear regarding their ability to migrate north has generated a small amount of hysteria and rather than taking the time to find the truth they have planted their flag and are trying to rally troops to support a ban.  Senator Nelson has to support this ban in order to get money from the Humane Society of the United States so I can at least give him credit for being a true politician and supporting the voice with the fattest wallet.  The newpaper boys and girls advocating a ban are just parroting things they heard someone else say. I seriously doubt they have any real opinion of their own.  So  I forgive them.  They are puppets of the media juggernaut and know not what they do.

Two groups of people; one that understands pythons and is asking, “Really?  Seriously?”, and one that seems to have gotten their undergrad degree in large constrictors by watching Ice Cube and Jennifer Lopez in 1997′s Anaconda.  Their masters thesis was complete as the credits rolled on Samuel Jackson’s Snakes on a Plane.  Armed with that level of education about the true nature of snakes they could have done themselves a favor by hiring Mr. Jackon as their spokesperson and could have used this as their slogan:

“HR 669.  When you absolutely, positively, got to ban every mother fucking snake in the land …accept no substitute.”

The call for a ban on pythons has no real merit.  It is based on irrational fear and misinformation.  And Senator Nelson embodied the desire to play on people’s fear when he unrolled a stretched out python skin during a Senate hearing in early July 2009.  He wants to protect the Florida Everglades …or so he says.  How does banning pythons in Seattle protect the Florida Everglades?  The truth is that he wants special interest money from the HSUS and other organizations who want to ban the ownership of exotic animals.  And the Burmese python is a great entry point; a way to get a better foothold on the banning process.

Just how many Burmese pythons are there in the Florida Everglades?  I have heard numbers as low as a few thousand all the way up to multiple hundreds of thousands.  People who don’t support a ban like the lower number while proponents of the ban like the big one.  The real number:  unknown.

How did Burmese pythons get into the Everglades?  I do not doubt for a single second that at some point in the past some knucklehead released a snake into the wild that should not have been released.  But it is not a verifiable fact that the current Everglades population comes from a released pet (as the media loves to suggest).  Defenders of python freedom point to Hurricane Andrew as the culprit because it caused a massive release of non-native species into the Everglades.  The truth is that nobody will ever know for sure.  We would do a lot better pointing our attention at eliminating the Burmese python from the area rather than playing blame games.  If you need volunteers to go down and collect them, call me.  I’m in.  I can also rally dozens, if not hundreds, of other snake enthusiasts who will agree that a mass collection effort will be a wonderful pastime.

I continue to be disappointed by the media’s propensity to hop on to the coat tails of the side of an argument that gets the most press.  I understand why they do it but it still disappoints.  It also diminishes my ability to trust everything else they say or print.  If they so eloquently lie to the public about pythons how much truth is there in their reporting on fossil beds in Montana?  And oh what a wonderful thing the Burmese pythons is shaping up to be. It’s a win-win for the media.  They get to sell a lie that invokes fear and then clean up on the ad revenue sold because of increased readership/web traffic.

Cheers,

Colin Weaver

I’ve been in and around the snake business for almost 20 years. I took a hiatus for a few years when I got married back in the latter part of the 90′s but I’ve been back in it full-force for many years now. While these days I am mostly a ball python breeder I spent a lot of time with a lot of different animals in my earlier years. Ball pythons in the early 90′s were not even a little bit what they are today. Most of the people who read this already know that.  Back in the 80′s albino burmese were the big deal and things like albino kenyan sand boas and hognose snakes were just getting rolling.  Pete Kahl and Brian Sharp were starting a firestorm in the boa community with their albino strains.   Jungle carpet pythons were the coolest thing in the carpet world and all that mattered in the world of chondros was that you could actually breed them successfully; never mind all this locality stuff we’ve got today.  Juno road in Texas was Mecca for grey banded kingsnakes and blackhead pythons and womas were borderline mythical.  I remember seeing a pair of womas at Tom Crutchfield’s place in the early 90′s and thought I had seen the holy grail of snakes.  I also remember seeing the first albino alligator around the same time and thought it wasn’t real until it blinked.

Anyway, to my point.  Somebody once said that hinsight is 20/20.  I can’t begin to express to you how true that is.  One of my fondest and most embarrassing memories about being in the snake business took place at the Mid-Atlantic Reptile Show (MARS) somewhere around 1994 or 1995.  I can’t remember the year exactly.  Anyway, Ian Gniazdowski and I had been friends from college for several years and I often helped him at his table during the shows.  Back in the 90′s the MARS show was actually a cool show.  All the big names were there (even though they weren’t necessarily “big” names yet): Barczyk, McCurley, Gniazdowski, Barker, this list goes on.

None of the other parties of this conversation will remember this but me (and it will be evident why after you read it).  Ian and I were standing at his table and Kevin McCurley from NERD walked up carrying a ball python.  It was a bit unusual looking but it didn’t immediately grab me.  Ian and Kevin were talking about ball pythons and I wasn’t paying too much attention.  During the conversation Brian Barczyk walked up and joined in on the talk.  Within a minute or two Brian had agreed to buy the ball python from Kevin for an amount that is nobody’s business but Kevin’s and Brian’s but I remember thinking, “Why the $%$#@ did Brian just pay that much for a frickin’ ball python?’  Over the course of the next few minutes several more ball pythons were purchased for dollar amounts that I thought transcended insane.  And here’s where I made the single biggest mistake of my life:  I turned away from the three of them, muttering under my breath, “A ball python is a ball python.  Anybody who pays more than $65 for one is crazy.”  And that was the last of it.  I blindly kept my focus on breeding burmese, rainbow boas, kingsnakes and boas.  Little did I know that if I had paid a little more attention, just a little more, I may have been there at a moment when it was all beginning.  Instead I walked away, arrogant and blind to the opportunity.  Had I not been such a fool on that day you might know my name the way you know the others who were in that conversation that day; Gniazdowski, Barczyk, McCurley, and Weaver.  Huh?  Who the hell is Weaver?  Oh, he’s the guy who walked away from the conversation that defined the next fifteen years of the ball python industry.  Smart guy.

The lesson learned that day is that I don’t know it all.  People have insights that I don’t see and I need to be less arrogant and open to the possibilities.  Ball pythons could have been a bust.  But they weren’t  and my close mindedness cost me more than just a few dollars.

Pay attention, something new is coming.  Don’t miss it the way that I did.

Cheers,

Colin (ahem!) Weaver

Click on each thumbnail for a full-size view.

[View with PicLens]

Albino X Albino Het
Albino X Spider Het Albino
Super Pastel X Black Pastel
Bumble Bee Het Ghost X Orange Ghost
Clown X Pastel Het Clown
Ivory X Yellow Belly
Pastel Lesser X Black Pastel
Pinstripe X Pastel
Pinstripe X Spider