Breeding for profit??

[Rebecca]

How meny of you here do that?? I was thinking of starting to breed crested geckos and selling them. And no it would not be just for profit that's just a perk of it. I actually LOVE them and enjoy keeping them. I was just wondering how meny people actually make a living off of breeding reptiles.

[silent_truth]

Well, you actually introduced three things in your post.
One: Keeping reptiles for pleasure.
Two: Breeding reptiles for profit
Three: Breeding reptiles for a living.

The latter two are not to be mistaken as one in the same. Though it is possible to make a profit breeding and selling animals, one must factor in the cost of maintaining additional breeders and offspring and then you will find that the "profit" may not be there, or if it is, it is not very much. Now this applies to a hobbyist breeder, who does it as a past time.

On the far end of the spectrum, is the professional breeder who has invested a lot of time and money into establishing his/her business. Since it is a business for them, they are more likely to sell higher end animals that command much higher prices in order to compensate for the investment of capital and expenses.

How many people make a living off breeding reptiles? I believe very few in comparison to the number of people who keep reptiles. Is it possible to make a little extra money by breeding as a hobby? Sure, why not. This extra money is usually put back into feeding and housing costs anyways though.

I'm sure others have more input, but hope this helps a bit.


-Adam

[BoidKeeper]

Well what I produce I sell. I breed them as a hobby but I don't give the neonates away so I guess I do both.
Cheers,
Trevor

[Ptindy]

Unless you are breeding more then just a pair or two of crested geckos there wont be much profit. I would say it would just help pay for housing the little guys till they get big enough and then a food, and maybe a big mac combo at the end of things. I plan on breeding a couple pairs of cresties soon but that'll just be for pure enjoyment.

Mike

[bidden]

I agree, one pair doesn't give much profit at all, maybe enoght to cover costs of food while you raise them to a sellable size.


as far as breeding for a living, you have to breed a variety, the repitle industry is so unpredictable, one year leopard gecko's will sell high, next corn snakes, next cresteds, there's really no telling what the next years' 'big thing' will be.

[nita]

LOL, my nephew was discussing breeding for profit and such and I brought up that you have to have the money first to invest just like anything. He currently has gerbils wich of course he is making no money off of. I asked him how much they have cost him so far of course nothing since his mom payed for it all, told him to figure out food, shavings, cages, the animals themselves etc. Then I went on to explain how although I've spent around $3,000.00 so far on my snakes, their enclosures, food, you know the basics only. And yay I have one female old enough to breed this year and she is going out to be bred to Jamie's het-pied male so of the babies I get there will be maybe one sold, maybe. Not to mention the pastel I want to buy next year! LOL, I assured him that it would take many years to actually make any money, mine would just get spent on more snakes, food and housing for the new snakes!

[beanersmysav]

People have already explaine my reasons for breeding, for the joy of experience, and all my profit will go right to my lizards to continually upgrade their habbitats and pay for their food, housing etc.

I figure I've spent 400.00 on animals alone (Small amount compared to some of your collections). not too mention cages, food, bedding etc etc etc and over the years it's added up to alot. So maybe if I breed all the animals I get, and sell off the ones I don't want to keep I may make my money back in...4-5 years, especially since the market for some of the animals I'm breeding is somewhat dying.

But I'm really doing it for the most part to expand my collection without spending hundreds just on the animals themselves. Can't wait to have 100 baby cresteds I didn't pay anything for basicly.

[clint545]

This is my first year breeding leos as a hobby. Next year's projects are to get my Helmeteds and cresties going. Like everyone here has said, if I make a "profit" it's just going back towards feeding, enclosures, and of course expanding my collection! First and foremost they're my pets/kids!

[Katt]

Profit? What profit? Anything I get goes back into the snakes, to get A) get more snakes or B) get things for the snakes or C) pay for the utilities that keeps the snakes warm.

One fine day, I'll actually buy myself something nice with snake profit, like a hamburger or maybe some candy.

[Rebecca]

I have MORE then enough cages/housing for the babies, I feed babyfood and CGD, and I don't have to pay for the extra lighting because I live with someone who pays the electricty(sp? sry). So really if I did decide to breed for profit, I might make it. I also make all of my cages from scratch from the wood my dad gets for free, screws and that he buys for me, very supportive parents I have ;). I don't plan on being a big breeder. I started because I LOVE crested geckos, and my town does not have any. I think, I may actually own the only ones in my town. I have spoken to lots of people who would love to own/buy them, so I already have some babies sold. I've very lucky that way. I just have to buy the stock and the babyfood, CGD. I like all the input you have given me. It did bring up a few questions in my mind that I had not thought about. Thanks everyone.

[HeatherRose]

I'm with Katt on this one...while it seems like you could make money, all it really goes into for me are more snakes or snake food... it doesn't matter to me because its just too friggin fun and neat to do, but for some that's not enough :(

[Rebecca]

I'm not one of those people, where the little bit extra is not enough. I figure I enjoy them and I know alot of people who would like to own some. I'm breeding to add more to my collection anyway. I also love the thrill of the date approching when they should start hatching. Wondering what they are going to turn out to look like, stuff like that. I bred leos for a while but decided to stop. Now I've decided to try my hand at crested geckos.

[Invictus]

For most of us, it's a struggle, if a not a DREAM, to just break even.

[Brent Strande]

Originally posted by Invictus
For most of us, it's a struggle, if a not a DREAM, to just break even.

As long as we're "dreaming," I'd rather dream about making it my living. Who wouldn't want to have taking care of their herps be their full-time job?

Obviously this can't happen for all of us, but why not try? I see everyone saying that you can't make it breeding, and that you'd be lucky to just break even. I think that that is bull.

If you buy a single pair of animals, perhaps you won't be buying a new house, but if you do breed, you SHOULD make money.

The difference is in the selling price of the animals. Sure, $30 animals may sell easier and faster, but you'll also have to sell more.

***
Say that you buy 1.1 of $100 species and they produce 15 babies. Do you really think that over 3 years (to get them to breeding age) it would really cost you the $1,500 to feed and house them? If it were a pair of snakes that would break down to:
$200 original investment
$200 caging (being gracious @ $100 per cage, rather than rubbermaid!)

That would still leave $1100 for three years of food, or $336.67 a year! That's $183.33 a year per animal.

I don't see how you couldn't make your money back on your animals IF you breed them.

Say that you take the same example as above, and pay $100 per snake, and even spend the $100 per snake on housing... if it costs you $100 per year to feed each snake, that would come out to $600 for both animals for the three years (IF it takes that long before they can breed) Now with the 15 babies being sold in a stable environment, you would still be left with $500 for housing/feeding them and profit.

If you build a rack to house the hatchlings, you can't really take that money out of your profit 100% unless you don't plan on breeding again either.

What if instead of 1.1, you were to buy, perhaps, 2.6 of the same animals. Your costs would be $1600 for stock and housing. Feeding would be $2400, totalling $4000 over 3 years, but if each female still had 15 babies, your Sales would be $9000, with a profit of $5000.
***

Keep in mind that you DO need money to get started, but if you can round it up, it should hopefully pay off if you are able to take excellent care of your herps!

I am not keeping the collection that I've got now solely for the purpose of keeping them. Granted, they're beautiful animals and I truly have a passion for them, but there's no way in hell that I'd have as much money into them as I do if there was no chance (yes I said chance as it's not certain!) of a return!

Final note, as many others have said, the money most likely does go back into the snakes, either for food, or even better, more snakes. I just wonder, if you breed, sell the offspring, and then get new snakes, how can they not be considered profit?

Enough ramblng, sorry!

Brent Strande

[Slannesh]

I think your math is a little over simplified Brent.

Not saying I disagree with you however, but there's more to keeping herps than just housing and feeding costs. Electricity, space to keep them, possible vet bills, set up for incubation and i'm sure a host of other things need to be considered as well.

Now, I don't think it's impossible to make a living doing it. But like any small business it takes a hell of a lot of work to make it happen. Definately not something to enter into lightly if the goal is to make a living. That being said I don't think most of us are trying to make a living at it. Some of us (like myself) haven't even actually started yet :)

Point is, you can make a go of pretty much anything if you're willing to put the time, effort and money into it as well as doing the appropriate research and getting the correct skills to make it happen.

[Brent Strande]

I was talking about profit, not sole occupation. And I do know about the other expenses, but, for example, if you have an incubator that costs $200, and it hatches out 20 clutches over it's lifetime, it didn't cost $200 each, but $10 instead per clutch.

And I don't think that the electricity is all that much either... especially if you don't heat with lights. My electric bills are $23 a month and so are my neighbors. I keep 12 snakes, he doesn't. The electric cost is pretty minimal.

You are very right though, it most likely won't make you a millionaire. I doubt that I could ever be filthy rich, and that's not why I do it. But I do have the idea in the back of my mind of working at this, and eventually being able to quit my day job, in order to have time to care for all my animals, and that they can repay me by bringing in enough to compensate for quitting the job.

[Slannesh]

Ah, my mistake then.

points are still valid though. Though geography and choice of species makes a big difference too. I would imagine it's in general easier to do in most of the US than in Canada simply because of population density. More people into it in a much smaller geographical area.

[Jeff_Favelle]

EXACTLY what Brent said. The people that aren't making money at this are the people who keep buying animals, flipping them, buying more animals, eventually selling them as well, etc etc etc, but NEVER breeding a damn thing. They will never make any money. You will make 100x more money by just getting a baby pair of ANYTHING, raising them up, breeding them and selling the babies, than by buying a whole wackload of adult animals that you continually re-sell and never breed. Think about it. Even if you buy 2 pairs of baby Hog Island Boas for $1,000, keep them for 3 years and breed them, getting 20 babies from each pair, 40 babies total. Even if you WHOLESALED those babies out for $150 each, that's $6,000. You cannot tell me that it cost you $4,500 to keep 4 silly boas for 3 years. No way.

Do that and repeat for 5 different species and all of a sudden, you've made $30K. Holy smokes eh? Now imagine if you dealt with snakes that are above the $200-300 price range? All of a sudden, making $100K is not so tough now is it?

You'll never make a dime until you get the animals to stay healthy and reproduce CONSITENTLY. Once you do, you have a hobby that can subsidize other aspects of your life. How cool is that?

[HeatherRose]

Breeding for profit would be an amazing way to make a living...I think it's possible, just not for me.

Although, an hour ago I had two crested geckos hatch, all goopy and googly eyed, and it reminded me WHY I'm in the hobby in the first place...:D

(Is it weird that I woke up at an odd hour this morning and felt an overwhelming compulsion to check the incubator?)

[Jeff_Favelle]

Too cool Heather. I gots no incubator fun for at least 4-6 more months, so I envy you! Incubator envy. LOL!!

[Ron]

I really don't think breeding and making a profit is very hard.

I hatched out 18 BP's (Pastels, poss het for Albino's and normals) this year and the money made from selling the normals paid for my rats for the year and probably the extra electricity. So the Pastels and the poss het for Albino income was all gravy....well it would have been if I didn't buy anything else but who can do that...lol.

I also had a little Leo project for a year and I decided after I sold the adults I would just see what kind of profit I made. I used pretty rough numbers but I came up with a profit of ~$2,000 in a year from a purchase of a trio and that was including taking a loss on the original trio. Not bad but I hate keeping bugs so the Leo's had to go.

So breeding for profit is definitely not out of the question just work with something you like so it doesn't feel like another job.

Good luck.

[rwg]

Making a profit doesn't seem hard...making a living looks pretty damned hard, and there really isn't room for a lot of hobbyists to do it. It's obvious there's a lot of hard work going into it by the full-timers, and not just behind the scenes. Building and maintiaining a business and a reputation seems like at least as much work as building and maintaining a breeding stock.

I'll be breeding at some point. I just want to offset some or all of my costs since I'm keeping snakes anyway. No reason not have some of them in pairs.

[SaIiLdVaEnR]

I know a case of this as well.

One of my friend's moronic buddies decides to create a "business" called "High End Reptiles". He has only four reptiles to begin with, two frilled dragons, and two veiled chameleons.

The frilled dragons have a fungus on their fans, and the veiled chameleons are in worse condition. He keeps the male on a potted plant, no lighting, not heating, and 6 feet in the air. The male has major deformaties on his back, and crest. The female did not get any UV as a baby, and has major deformities as well as a stump of a tail. I have told him repeatedly if he tries to breed them, the female could die.

He comes into the store I work at and asks me how to fix the fungus on the Frilleds. I said, I don't know, well, because I don't. He asks my boss, he doesn't know either. I told him to check up on it on the internet, or to go to a vet. He shrugs it off and says "Nah, its something common so I'm not worrying about it".

All I think is, what an a$$.

He then asks me how easy it is to sell tarantulas if you have a market. I said that it isn't that bad. He starts asking me questions about breeding them. Let me remind you he has no interest in spiders whatsoever. I told him that he knows nothing about tarantulas, and therefore breeding should be the last of his concerns.

He also does not know how to feed the animals properly. He doesn't give them crickets and they are fed various types of worms once or twice a week. He told me he wants to calcium coat a fuzzy mouse (for his snake). I told him that there is calcium in the bones and he does not need to do that. He refuses to acknowledge what I say.

I was furious after all of this. He obviously can care less about the animals and he only uses them to breed. Next time I see him he can expect me to rant on him.

He does not take care of the breeding specimens he already has, so who will believe him that the babies are in good condition? As of now I am ruining his reputation, and I am happy to do so as hopefully it will stop the hurting of these animals.

I told him that people will be able to find higher quality animals from a reputable breeder for a cheaper cost, he says "We'll see, I know how to bull people." Obviously not; I didn't fall for it and I will make sure no one else does.

Aidan

[MarcB]

SaIiLdVaEnR, I give your friend six months before everything he has dies and he is back playing nintendo full time!

[paulsreef]

I breed Bearded Dragons. Because of their eating habits, you must also breed crickets. If one beardie eats 12 crickets a day plus veggies and you have 100 beardies to feed, you are going to be busy. When they used to sell for $250.ea., it was easy work. Now that they are selling for $35.ea. , the hobby is still interesting and I'm still passionate about it; I just don't smile as much. If you want to make money in this hobby, breed crickets.
Paul.

[Northwestdragon]

I breed beardies as well. I am looking into the higher end stuff. For now I have 3 females and 2 males. I go through easy 5000 to 7000 crickets each week plus veggies, heat,electric, substrate, it is hard to "make a profit". Now I am going to breed snakes as well to help with that "profit margin" I guess you can call it. Here I can sell my dragons to a pet store for 45 each and that is a order under 10. Privatly they go for 80-120 easy.

I am not in it for the money, but this is my business and yes I could do it full time soon. I am looking at investing alot of time and money soon to make a profit and live off of it. It might take another year or two but it will happen.

[hhw]

I think the key to making a profit in this business is having the starting capital. No matter how you look at it, the higher end the animal, the higher the profit... and I'm not just talking about dollars and cents, but percentages. The more expensive the herp, the more capital intensive it is and then the operating expenses (i.e. food, space, heating, etc... and most importantly, TIME and OPPORTUNITY COST) become a smaller percentage. By definition, profit is revenues less expenses... if the expenses are smaller relative to the revenues, you get a higher return. Heck, with the rate of return on some of the herps out there, it'd easily be worth paying off a prime + 5 interest loan to get your capital.

The problem is making a living... with so many people doing this as a hobby/interest, there are a lot of people who don't factor in the time they spend at all when selling their offspring. This means that the prices don't reflect the true costs, making it much more difficult for someone to make a full-time living. However, there are several advantages to increased volume including economies of scale and marketing becomes that much easier when you have hundreds of satisfied customers each year getting the word out as opposed to the handful you'd get otherwise.

Anyway, if you want to generate a true profit, breed expensive animals. If you're willing to write off all your time and not get any monetary compensation though, just breed whatever you want and it will make you happy and hopefully a bit of money to buy more herps.

[paulsreef]

The trick is to also know what is going to be popular. The Ball Python craze is a good example. If you were to invest into some nice pairs today; by the time they are breeding age the market could be already flooded. Timing obviously plays a large part. I would still rather take a chance on Ball Pythons than to buy Nortel stock.

[BOAS_N_PYTHONS]

REBECCA:

This whole hobby is just that - a hobby, even though many people and myself hold large collections not all of us are looking to tip the fortune 500, although many think that way somewhere in the midst of the hobby. I get asked that alot and my answer is always this.

"I research the animals I wish to collect, raise them, care for them, and possibly breed them with some luck. In doing this they do use up financial funds and with breeding them I hope to at least break even and possible evolve the facility to the next degree to only provide even better lifestyles for them."

Cya...

Tony