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Advice from experts - please

1K views 27 replies 18 participants last post by  rachel132002 
#1 ·
Hi, my 1st post.
As a teenager (many moons ago) I kept snakes, royal, boa,rainbow- although not all at once). I gave up when the
usual events happened - marriage,kids,business etc.
About 10/12 years ago I fancied another snake and bought
a Burmese. She's grown quite a bit (approx 13ft now) and
as I have just retired I am looking to buy some more vivs/snakes and perhaps get into breeding them ( I now have plenty of spare time)
My questions are:-
1. If I am successful in breeding them which ones are the most saleable - as I dont wont to end up with too many snakes. I am talking about a hobby here - not
commercial scale breeding !!
2. It would appear that the greatest interest is in the
various morphs - shame really as I prefer "natural"
3. Iam about to order some vivs, so if you reply please
indicate viv sizes etc.
Sorry about the long post - me rambling - and thanks
Fenlander
 
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#2 ·
Nothing is selling that well at the minute.


Normally Royal morphs are good sellers, along with various Cornsnake morphs.

Cornsnakes are cheaper to keep/breed. Problem is the market is saturated with hobby breeders selling their babies.

Breeding Royals would require a fairly big outlay of cash. A cheap Royal morph (pastel) would set you back £400 for 1.1 (male and female)
 
#3 ·
I'd wait for some advice before taking this as gospel but on a thread here a while back people were saying it was very hard to find pythons from specific locations as many have become crossed or breeders have concentrated on morphs. These would be normal phase large snakes but they dont sell for much which is why they are not as desirable to breeders. Cant find the thread now:censor: but im sure some of the python keepers may be able to expand on this for you!
 
#4 ·
I believe the thread you're referring to is regarding retics, and you'd need a lot of experience and room to get into breeding retics!

At the moment, nothing high end is selling because noone has the cash, and the low end stuff is dropping lower and lower in price. To get into breeding you'll have to consider the fact you'll most likely make a loss, feeding everything, heating, vets bills etc.

If it's purely as a hobby, then find an animal you really like, and know about and have a go at breeding it (although I'd advise against Iggys and Burms, they just seem to end up in rescues)

Em


PS I am no expert, just my tuppenceworth!
 
#5 ·
if you are looking to breed just as a hobby and not looking to make a lot of cash, I would suggest maybe looking into milk snakes or king snakes. A lot of people seem to be looking for alternatives to Royals and Corns which seem to be the "common" starter snakes.

I also think that the market for Dwarf Boas will be relatively strong.

Just my opinion, but thats what I would go for. All of the above are pretty hardy snakes that don't take up huge amounts of room.
 
#6 ·
I'd go with the 'breed what appeals to you' school of thought. I'd personally like to see more breeders of less common snakes in the hobby - White Lipped Pythons, Bismark Pythons etc. I know of one breeder of White Lips and it seems he has no problems at all when it comes to shifting the offspring!
 
#7 ·
get some Hogg Islands, mine are arriving soon :D
 
#13 ·
hhhmmm i saw this thread and thought - experts- no of them on here - just experienced keepers and wannabes who think they know it all lololol

seriously, if you want to breed look at what is available and what the buyers are wanting, then buy some snakes and breed them, but unless you fork out for adults then the snakes wanted may change whilst your growing up your stock.
 
#14 ·
hhhmmm i saw this thread and thought - experts- no of them on here - just experienced keepers and wannabes who think they know it all lololol
What would you class as an expert? IMO when the OP says experts they are talking about experienced keepers.....

I would also say that I did not get the impression that anyone that has posted on the thread 'thinks they know it all' and the replys that have been given so far are quite helpful to the OP and most of the posts do say 'im no expert'....

Back to the OP... the market is very slow at the moment and as has been said, nothing is really selling at the moment.

Before it gets pointed out by others 'I am no expert'

I would say if you are looking to get into snakes as a hobby and you want to breed them, you need to find something that you like, there is no real gain in breeding unless done on a huge scale.

I would advise against the larger snakes such as burms, rectics and conda's as you will find them hard to sell and most will end up in rescues as has been mentioned.

I would also steer clear of corns as there are just so many breeders about and people are practically giving away thier hatchlings at the moment.

if you like the 'natural' snakes then boas may be an option, I would love to see locals being bred in the UK, not morphs, but in order to do that you will have some difficulty in obtaining true locals as boa bloodlines are very diluted, although you could get hold of some pure bloodlines but would need to import them from europe.

In terms of kings and milks, they seem popular enough, I admit I have no experience with them myself, but they can still be classed as 'starter snakes' so you may get more interest from the general public rather than just people already in the hobby.

As said above, look around, and find a snake you like.
 
#15 ·
You've had the advice from the experts now it's my turn :lol2:

If you like larger snakes then look at some of the less common australian pythons. Not only are they really nice, but they are only available occasionally.

Carpets are an exception though. Everyone has them and the prices seem to have dropped to nothing.
 
#17 ·
I'm an expert! at being a **** lol

Seriously though the snake market is slowing to a crawl. Lots of hobby breeders and not enough people with cash to buy the babies. I wouldn't breed unless you have the funds/space to keep any unsold babies.
 
#20 ·
If you have the room for larger animals then I would back up Retri's view that there is a gap in the market for boa locals. To get pure bloodlines would be tricky and require a little outlay, more of time than money. I would look into this market myself but for the lack of room (only 8 years or so until my oldest boy moves out and another room is available :whistling2:)

A good place to check out is below:
Boa constrictor Page
 
#27 ·
If you have the room for larger animals then I would back up Retri's view that there is a gap in the market for boa locals. To get pure bloodlines would be tricky and require a little outlay, more of time than money. I would look into this market myself but for the lack of room (only 8 years or so until my oldest boy moves out and another room is available :whistling2:)

A good place to check out is below:
Boa constrictor Page
thats the place in europe where you would want to import them from if you wanted to go that route :2thumb:
 
#21 ·
How about Bredls? They seem to be few and far between and fetch a decent price.
 
#24 ·
unfortunatley the reason there arn't more people breeding them is that there isnt much demand for them. took me almost a year to get rid of the last lot i had.

Personally if this was me i would be spending my money on australian pythons, i'd get myself a pair of anthill pythons, a female childrens python to go with my male and probably a pair of water pythons or black headed pythons. at the end of the day it all depends how much money you want to spend and what snakes YOU like.
Owen
 
#25 ·
forgot to say... for the love of god don't start breeding corn snakes, way too many people are doing it now and you will just end up getting stuck with loads of hatchlings..lol.. i still have ALL off the fussy feeders i had dumped on me this year even though most are eating well now, can't even give them away, nobody wants them... :/
infact the only thing that we have been having luck with recently here is leopard geckos. for some reason they have been selling really fast, could probably sell a lot more than we can produce...lol
 
#28 ·
Boas and Royals will be strong sellers, the market is flooded with corns 24/7, they will sell but you could be hanging onto them for a good while first.

Although the prices of boas/royals have fallen they are still selling, yes there's a credit crunch and no they aren't worth what they were but we were all still playing with the basics then such as albinos now the surface is broken, those have gone down and the market has expanded, a £500 albino now is more affordable than £1500 back in 06 for royals and they're being mixed and matched with everything to make single, double, triple and quadruple gened royals.

My only advice on those would be:

1) if buying boas, do not get albino to breed with albino, there seems to be a link between deformities in babies and being bred from albino x albino pairing so people like het x het or albino x het parentage.

2) if getting royals, stuff the market, buy what you want - they will sell eventually and lets face it, if you have it lying around for 6months it's better to be something you like.

3)again on royals, focus more on what you'd like to make rather than the right now, an albino and a pastel are great but in the end albino pastels aint all that, an albino pied or something however is quality and by the time you make one the prices will be more affordable on those too.

4) locale boas were relatively unseen until the past few years and suddenly in the last 18-24mnths there's been a boom in it, now is the time to buy if you want them BUT try to get wild caughts of things such as surinames and guyanas but do your research first, then do it again because WC's are more finnicky BUT people will be buying more from wc parentage than cb because so many of today's 'cb' redtailed boas have been crossed with commons and back again and noone really knows what's what and if you're paying £200 for a locale you want it to be PURE and seeing pure parents will help future sales.

Basically the world if your oyster, look around, get a feel for the market and find what you like and work from there.

Rach
 
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