Originally Posted by Athravan

A hobby is defined in the dictionary as



There is no time limit, work amount, or cost that you can stick on something and say you're doing that 20 hours a week - it's no longer a hobby, it's a job.

People take their passion to the extreme. I think it's good that people are so passionate and so enthusiastic about their collections.

Can animals be a hobby? The thing is, because reptiles are not seen as emotive animals, they are more collectable, if that makes sense. They are often not family members as a dog or a cat might be, they are collections. I don't know if that's justifiable or not, as a business my opinions on large collections of reptiles are not necessarily the same as a private individual.

I do believe that more and more stress seems to be being placed on people to actually BREED their reptiles. Practically everyone these days wants to make some money off their pets - and in 90% of the time it is breeding to make money, not breeding for the love of it. If most people were breeding and giving offspring away, they wouldn't do it. The amount of keepers who are trying to turn their reptiles into moneyfarms is getting alarming. Those people are not experienced, they are not quarantining, they are buying to sell, with no protection for the animal or the buyer, and this is disturbing me greatly.

A hobby is a passion, if you expand your hobby because you want to make money off it - it is a business. A hobby and a business are very different things.

Originally Posted by miffikins

I do admit if I go out for livefood and see a nice looking lizard etc I do think "ooooh! I'd quite like that", but luckily common sense always seems to kick in, my main thoughts being if I get this will we be able to care for it properly, will I still be able to spend as much time on my more demanding species, by demanding they need a fair bit of enrichment and time spent on them that isn't cleaning/maintanence or feeding, and will we be able to afford the electric.

I first felt when I joined this forum that the people with a massive sig of what they have must have been the better keepers, better than me because I only had leos at the time. But the more I realise that that is not always the case, there are those who keep a lot of species who are very good keepers indeed, but then there are a lot with a sig as long as your arm because they "have to have another" and want the biggest collection. I have seen a few lists of what people are picking up from Hamm, and some of them are long lists ontop of what they already have. To me coming home with 10+ new animals is ridiculous. It takes enough time to get one animal settled and get to know their preferences, never mind 10! You have to draw a line somewhere surely??

We have 10 lizards with 2 of us caring for them. We are looking for a few more but these are of a species I already keep and the addition of them to the individuals I have will be of benefit to my existing animals. I am looking to expand over and get a snake at some point. But that point is far off, when I have more time and a decent enough job.

Originally Posted by Athravan

I do believe that more and more stress seems to be being placed on people to actually BREED their reptiles. Practically everyone these days wants to make some money off their pets - and in 90% of the time it is breeding to make money, not breeding for the love of it.

Originally Posted by Sid.lola

I've got two snakes at the moment, a burmese and a royal.

I've been keeping snakes for just over 5 yrs and my Burmese is the only one I've ever actually bought. And we thought about it for months (well it is a burm!)

All the other snakes (including my Royal) have come to me because the keepers got bored of them/or didn't have a clue about even the basic care etc.

My friend's daughter bought a chameleon for example. Kept it in a viv, with a ceramic bulb...no thermostat! Cooked it to death. I only found out a couple of weeks later. So she went straight back to the pet shop, saw a spider she thought was pretty and bought that.

I know there are a few rep rescuers on here, surely the amount of animals they take in as a result of "impulse buying" is 100times what gets brought to me??

So I do think there should be more regulations, perhaps interviews at the point of sale? But I don't think it should be on the size of your collection per se, but your ability to look after them. No matter how few or how many you have, compentence is a basic requirement surely?

Originally Posted by toyah

This is a huge issue. I have never known another fancy where the indiscriminate breeding of any animal is so encouraged. Offspring are produced with no regard as to where they will end up, but as long as they sell noone seems to care.

The only qualification in reptiles for a snake being "breeding quality" seems to be that it does not have any major deformities. In any other species, a breeder using that selection criteria would be looked down on - or called a backyard breeder or puppy farmer or worse.

If you have a clutch of, say, ten bloodred corn snakes, some will be better than others. To a large degree it irritates me that if I breed a clutch of corns, the less vibrantly coloured or poorer feeding babies will be bred from ... what is the point, from the view of improving the species, when the better coloured, better feeding, stronger siblings will have babies? But unfortunately the culture is that if you spend more than about £7 on a snake, then it must pay its way!

In most other animals, a baby will cost a decent amount of money - but once it is grown, even a bit, it can't command that sum again. It might be priceless to the owner, but a rehome is normally done for a token sum. I would love if reptiles followed that "pricing structure" as I think if people knew they couldn't get their money back if they changed their mind on their new snake in six weeks time, then they wouldn't be in such a hurry to buy without thinking. I dread the thought of a snake I have produced or sold at any point ending up being handed to a rescue or mistreated, but because of constant buying and selling it's near impossible to track - and because value holds, I couldn't afford to buy back any snake someone didn't want anymore at any point in time.

A story - I wanted some new corn snake bloodlines that weren't available in the UK or Europe, so I imported. As part of doing that import, I brought in a few extra snakes to sell on to other fanciers - I needed a minimum amount in order to be able to ship, and I figured it would help split the costs of shipping over a few people who were interested in morphs not commonly available over here. The snakes went out to their new homes, and out of around maybe 15 snakes I sold (this was only last August/September), half of them have been resold already, at least once. I know of one snake who is now on his second new home since I gave him away, and is up for sale again - in just over six months!

C'mon people ... put a bit of thought into what you're buying. I accept that breeders will have to move on older animals sometimes ... either holdbacks that have not turned out to be high quality breeding animals, or young adults who have produced such high quality offspring that they can be retired early to a pet home. But those situations are a bit different to buying something and thinking a month later "I'd prefer something else instead".

Secondly, there is no separation between commercial and hobbyist. I have seen people who breed reptiles for a living complaining that prices are dropping, and so they won't be able to afford to continue ... and my response is, so what? Maybe you have to accept that reptile breeding is a hobby, not a business. The only other businesses I can think of that manage to make a living breeding pet animals are puppy mills and the equivalents for small furry pets - which people are always campaigning to have closed down or at least better regulated.

Calling this whole thing a hobby or a fancy comes naturally to me, as it has many similarities to other small animal hobbies or fancies. Numbers don't come into it, as everyone has their own "coping level" - for some people caring for three animals is too many, some people can provide excellent care for a hundred or more. I feel saying under X amount is a hobby and over Y amount is something else is not helpful for that reason.

Personally, I always consider a hobby breeder someone who breeds primarily for their own purposes - a male and female are paired with a definite aim of producing something to hold back, with the surplus being sold or traded. And a trade breeder is someone who breeds offspring purely to sell, with no intentions of holding any babies back.