Good species to start breeding?

[Rum_Kitty]

I am interesting in aquiring a couple of snakes to start breeding when they reach maturity. I'm not looking to make buckets of money, I'm aware making money on breeding isnt usually what happens, its mostly going to be a hobby. I would like a species that is fairly easy to breed and one which the value isnt going to drop on a whole lot in the time it takes them to grow to maturity, as seems to happen with some of the royal morphs, and a species that there is a decent demand for. I realise its hard to predict what will be in demand but does anyone have any suggestions?

ETA: Also not a species that will grow over 10ft!

[oakelm]

Well everything will drop in price that is easy to breed/commonly bred. The ones that will hold the value will be rare species because they tend to be hard to keep or breed. I recommend cornsnakes for a first breeding attempt for egg layers and BCI's for live bearers. Neither species in normal form is worth much, so from one breeding you may or may not cover the cost of the parents but you certainly wont cover the cost of keeping them for 3 years to get them up to breeding weight. You can take a short cut and acquire adult animals but then the cost you put in initially is more. If you breed do it for the fun of it and the pleasure of keeping the snakes in the mean time, you will make a loss thats just the way a first breeding is. But then once you have been breeding for a couple of years you can start adding to your collection with slightly more difficult animals to raise and breed, demand for animals really is impossible to predict, this year I thought I was going to have trouble selling up the corn side of things but they flew out the door but corns arent ment to be as popular anymore, everything depends on what people fancy at the time.

[ian14]

I found both last year and this year that corns really are not selling well, simply because the market is virtually flooded. Unless you are going to look at breeding high value rarely seen morphs then, although easy to breed, you have the possibility of lots of hatchlings that take an age to sell.

Hognoses are just as easy to breed and are also very popular - to give an idea at a show last year I managed to sell just 2 corns but an entire clutch of hognoses.

[Rum_Kitty]

Thanks was concerned about breeding corns because of the difficulty of finding homes, I will consider both tho thanks!