a question about herping careers

[Reticsrule]

i was wondering if you guys know any sites that have a list of careers that involve snakes and herpetology. my mom seems to think that anyone that keeps snakes is going to have a crappy life and not make enough money to support themselves. i told her she was wrong and she told me to show her some careers that involve snakes that pay well so im hoping you guys can help me out so i can prove her wrong. thanks

[creepiecrawlie]

well, veterinary careers surrounding reptiles I believe might pay pretty good. You could be a curator at a zoo in the reptile department. I am to wanting to become a herpatologist. But look at steve irwin, jeff corwin and all them, they look to be having good lifes (but they are zoologists)

[Reticsrule]

im not really interested in a veterinary career even though i also think that they pay well. im looking somewhere more along the lines of actually working with a lot of snakes. thanks for the reply though

[creepiecrawlie]

that is what I want to do. I want to work in field work. I researched that in technology ed. and they said field work can pay anywhere from 28k to 100k :jawdrop: (that is from an australian herpatology page)

[-okapi-]

http://www.bobclark.com/about.asp
You could make a living breeding different morphs of python, just like Bob Clark

[beanersmysav]

Haha you could make money breeding almost any kind of snake, but ball pythons would be one of your best bets for sure. Just point her towards some of those websites selling $40-50,000.00 snakes a piece (, and ask her how much she made last year
http://www.cuttingedgeherp.com/pythons/list.nhtml hell here you can buy a pair of het Blue eyed leucistic for $50,000.00 imagine what one homozygous specimen would cost. :-p and there's many more morphs out there, and many more to come that are, and will be worth about the same.

[Reticsrule]

i would love to be a breeder but i know i would have like a 1% chance of becoming as rich as Bob. i have always wondered how many of those 5k+ snakes a breeder will sell in a year let alone the 50k snakes. can anyone give me an estimate on that?

im also interested in field work. does anyone know how common field work jobs are? i dont think there would be very many but i could be wrong.

[creepiecrawlie]

When I researched on herpatology and looked for available field jobs there were quite a few. A lot of zoos send research teams to certain places in the wild to collect information. You could be hired from some zoo,mueseum (spelled wrong?), and other places to go to the field. Or you could be like Austen Stevens, Jeff Corwin, and Steve Irwin and basically work in the field which would work real well if you had a TV show. Or something like that.
Most of them I saw were for zoos who were hiring people to work in the field

[Jase_on]

I would imagine that starting your own high end breeding company would require a huge amount of cash to get going, after you buy breeding adults in the species you wanted as well as all the equipment and a facility large enough to house everything. Also, many of the breeders who are at the pentacle of the industry like Bob Clark would probably say that they had quite a few not-so-profitable years before they became as well known as they are today.

Probably you best bet would be (as many has already said) would be field jobs, while you will probably never reach the celebrity or money of Corwin or Irwin, you could still have a very rewarding career in a field that you are passionate about.

[Reticsrule]

i dont plan on becoming the next irwin or corwin, im just looking for a job that pays fairly well. i would love to do some kind of field work for a zoo or somethin similar and im glad to see that people are saying that there are a lot of field job opportunities. thanks for the advice and keep it coming

[peterm15]

some high end morphs go for like $100 000.. then u have places like reptilla that make good money off b-day shows. ect ect... both thoes you can achieve at any time...