Panther Chameleon, Local Mafana

[DragnDrop]

Read the first post CarlC wrote. That should explain why 'nobody wants to do something about it for some reason'. The way things are currently in this country, it won't be easy doing a nation wide venture. You can try it, but as long as it involves herps, be prepared to have 'a day job', even if you're dealing with high end animals. You'll never make it breeding chams without a miracle.

[meow_mix450]

ya its not that we dont want too, its just not big enough in Canada. We have trouble just trying to find a captive bred Jackson.

Meow

[galad]

yes but how do we know we cannot make it bigger unless we try?
Remeber keeping herps in captivity is relativley new if compared to actual domesticated animals such as dogs and cats. I know it will never become that popular, but it seems to me like people give up before they even try. There is a way to make it more popular we just havent come up with it yet. Nothing is impossible if you set your mind to it. Plus there are quite a few full time breeders in canada so I dont know where you get the idea that there isnt. I personally know of one for sure in winnipeg maybe even two. Plus acouple that just live in manitoba.

This is not impossible it is just going to take time and pateince. BEing reptile breeders we should all have practice in those to areas. Please reconsider before throwing the idea out the window.
peace

ws

[DragnDrop]

You can definitely try, but be prepared for a very long rough journey, maybe never reaching your goal.

The Canadian geography, population and spending habits are not like those of the U.S. or even Europe. As mentioned before, shipping is going to be one big headache, one you can deal with, but it will be a headache no matter what you try. What proportion of our cities have laws against reptiles in one form or another? Chams might not be big enough to be regulated under the maximum length rule, but a lot of cities and counties are now getting on the 'threatened species and wild caught' bandwagon. That takes care of a lot of potential cham homes right there.

Big time cham breeding is trickier than something like geckos. Keeping the chams properly and setting up hundreds of hatchling enclosures takes room.... how much space do you have to spare to go big time?

A lot of people are impulse buyers, wanting a cham because of the Telus phone commercials, so for now you might make a good income from chams, but what about a year or so down the road when they change commercials? You'll end up with a supply of unwanted chams similar to what dalmatian breeders ran into once the 101 dalmatians movie faded into history... or the St. Bernards and a host of other animals.

We can make it bigger, but it's going to be slow going and will probably never rival the market that the US and Europe have. Canadians don't want to spend a lot of money on an animal unless maybe high-end snakes (Roy Stockwell can fill you in on this one, he's got a good theory on selling price). Are you willing to work your butt off to raise a lot of chams and have them sold for next to nothing like vield chams are now? There's no profit if your feeding, lighting and heating bill is way more than you can get for a clutch. Don't forget that whatever you sell your clutches for has to not only cover the cost of raising them, but the cost of keeping the parents and the entire breeding operation.

And then there's the competition. Assuming you get some of each gender, you can expect each pair you sell to be competition next year. Some hobby breeder who has a male and female will be selling offspring for just enough to recoup the cost of keeping them in the first place, profit is secondary. Can you compete with 30 or 40 of your offspring 'competing' against you for half of what you charge?

In order to change the Canadian market to support big profitable breeding operations you have a lot of things to change, some of which are next to impossible. Small time breeders are the lucky ones right now, and maybe in the future we'll have enough people in the hobby justify having as many professional full time breeders as other countries. For now, we have small scale breeders who sell locally, some ship nation wide. Things won't change that fast just because you, I or three or a hundred of us want them to. It's been improving since I started in the hobby back in the early 90's, but it still has a long way to go.

[CarlC]

Well put Hilde. You saved my fingers a good workout!

Carl

[galad]

yes well put but im am not a child you really wasted alot of time there. I know about the market and all those other things im studying business right now. Plus I know i didnt go into full details but I am not planning on breeding just chameleons.
How about for once someone starts naming some possitve things.
Why is it everyone always focuses on the negative?.

Again people love to complain but no one wants to do anything about it. Its allways; "It will be hard it wont just happen over night" " We dont have the population as the states"
"cities"
I know this, yes it will be hard but 40 years from now wouldnt you like to be able to look back and say it was hard and painfull but man was it worth it.
If not then dont even bother replying to this post I am seriously sick of the negativity.

Peace all

ws

[meow_mix450]

No one is really trying to put you down. Everyone is just giving you the heads up, on what will happen. Also people are just giving reasons why it cant happen. There isnt really much we can say that is postive.

Postive statement that will never happen
"Well in two months half on Canada population will start to breed chameleons, not just panthers or veilded but mellers and all the stuff they have in the states!

Like we wish you luck you but theres a lot you have to do. Not only 1 person can do this all. Plus here in Canada people arnt willing to spend that kind of money. ITs a fact that we dont have the popluation as the states.

Meow

[CarlC]

Even when you look at the market in the states you see a overload of certain morph's of pardalis and more calyptratus than you can shake a stick at.

It's gonna take more than population. You need to get people to open up their pocket books. Even then it would be tough. Unless there is the potential for the buyer to make a killer return your in the same boat.

The next thing is there isn't much interest in Chameleons in Canada. Ya sure this forum is good but look at the attendance. It is the same people. Unless you have a whole population of keepers hidden somewhere the market just isn't there.

You have great idea's. I like the whole set-up idea. Think about the price. If you can't get people to buy for $150 whats gonna make then pay $300-$400. This I am guessing would be for the more common morph's. What would you do in a situation with a Ambilobe or Ankaramy? A killer bloodline in the states is going for $400-$600 each. I am guessing Canada the price would be closer to $1000. You would need to make up for all the costs to get the bloodline. I am sure if you talk to the people selling on KS you will find that most have jobs to go along with the Cham business.

At one point since I have been keeping and breeding I had 300+ chams in the house. You would not believe how fast you burn out when you spend more time on the animals than you have in a day. There is no day off. If your not cleaning cages or feeding chams your cleaning or feeding crickets. Your way past your usual 1000 or 2000 a week. Your now ordering 10,000. This isn't including the silkworms, waxworms, superworms and roach's. Now it's time to figure in the Hydro bill.

The idea about a magazine is also very good. You would be in direct compatition with the Chameleon E-zine. You would have to find authors to contribute. This is gonna be incredibly tough if you don't have a name that is known in the world community. You would have to find a printer that could do it within a limited budget. To get people's attention you would need high quality article's with color photo's. This would cost a small fortune. Press time alone would push the budget to the limit. Once you add in all the prepress work, plates, ink and paper your broke. Your subscription base would have to be huge. I can tell you this would be tough to achieve even in the states. You would need a worldwide audience. If you use alot of advertising to help cover costs you would have to presnt ads from around the world. This means you would probably have to hire a salesperson for each continent you have subscribers. Look at the contacts list from the CIN. It contained people from around the world.

This isn't to bring you down but you need to see the facts before spending the time and effort. I have been keeping Chameleons for a long time. I have seen alot of people come and go. They all had great idea's but in the end they never worked out.

Carl

[galad]

its funny you say you do not want to put someone down yet you talk to them like a child. I am done obviously I would have to do this all myself and that is bs . Quit complaining if you do not want to even try to do something about it. HAve any of you ever tried?
seems to me like your all scared of commitment.

How many times do I have to say i will be breeding other things then chameleons as well. Read my posts and maybe youll be able to quit wasting your time typing things i have already said.

you guys really know how to upset someone.

again dont complain if you are not willing to even stick your foot in the door.

[CarlC]

Well listen kid. I really think you need to grow up! We have all pointed out things that you should think about. Yes there is the possibilty of success but it is slim.

You have no idea what you are getting into! Plain and simple. If you don't like it to bad.

Am I willing to invest my time and effort into a project I know will fail? No.

Am I willing to get involved with someone who can't see what is obvious? No.

I tried to explain to you what would be involved. If you think you can afford to go ahead than go for it.

I know because a group of us tried to do this in the past. Guess what, it never got much farther than the planning stages. This project involved many well known keepers and breeders at the time. The group was breeding a good variety of species.

I know many breeders the world over. I have seen their collections in Holland, Belgium, Germany, Austria, Switzerland and all across the states. I know what they expect in a publication.

Unless you cater to the experianced keepers and breeders you will not have the subscription base. If you are looking to just provide something basic you will find that you will not get a loyal group. These people come and go.

I can tell you that until you make more of a name for yourself you will not get the participation of people that would provide the articles for your magazine.

You can breed all the species you want. If there is no market for them then there is no market for them. You will not be able to change that. Then comes the problem of getting a good variety of animals. To get good high quality fresh imports for breeding you will need to start importing yourself. I highly doubt you would have the market to get rid of the animals you didn't want to use. Since you are importing directly from those countries you are not buying a few animals. You would need to import hundreds. And guess what, most exporters from those countries will very seldom ever just sell you Chameleons. You would need to buy all the other stuff. Now your looking at providing housing for just about everything. Do I really need to go on?

I am past the point of having my foot in the door. You my friend haven't even approached the door yet. Were just trying to help you from having the door slammed in your face when you do get there.

Carl

[Chris_Anderson]

Originally posted by galad
im studying business right now.

Then you should be able to understand why the necessity of profitability and the lack of demand will limit the ability to increase supply until you are able to change the demand in some way which is difficult to impossible to acomplish to the extent needed when you are so severely limited by population size. you may be working with other herps too but to increase the diversity of chameleon species, you still need to invest a hell of a lot into each species of chameleon which will be very draining and in reality, with the market in canada as it seems to be, unprofitable and as a result, not lasting. I'm sure you'd like to see it happen but the REALITY is you aren't addressing the actually issues.

Chris

[marisa]

You can breed a million species. It's not breeders that make up the market, it's buyers. Canada doesn't have the buyers for many species right now. We have a totally different population than USA so comparing the two markets is like apples and oranges.

You say "don't complain unless you do something about it" What do you mean by this? Breeders can't force more buyers. I could say "Darn there is not a good Canadian market for pet squirrels, I am buying 50 and breeding them" That's all fine and dandy but unless you have a lot of buyers, you have no market and a bunch of squirrels. Just my opinion on the whole thing.

I'd love to see lots of Mellers up here, but then again why breed tons of them if there is no one out there for the buying.


Marisa

[VI Reptiles]

Sorry to break it to you but Canada has like 20 classifieds on Kingsnake.ca. If you look on the U.S classifieds there thousands of bps, theres hundreds of geckos, theres hundreds of lizards, theres hundreds of monitors, theres thousands of most of the snakes. In canada I dont know ONE big supplier of reptiles. On the U.S classifieds I can think of 10 or MORE! These guys are selling probably 100 animals a week but It all depends. I bet if they make $100,000 every month and have 1 thousand bps, 1000 colubrids of variety, 1000 geckos of variets, 200 monitors of variety, etc, they are spending $75,000+ on feeding them, heating them and lighting them every month. But if they have their own feeders they will spend $25,000 - $30,000 still for lighting and heating. I know that when Im 20 I am going to start living in an apartment and later move down to California and have my own house unless the Canadian market starts getting better.


Vi reptiles

[galad]

looks like im moving to the states then. Sorry for loosing my cool everyone. But i was really looking for positive input. I know about all the negatives thats why I said you guys are wasting your breathe. I was looking for people to take that risk and try to help out. Why is everything always about money. I really dont care about making a huge profit, I really just want to help out the future generations of herpers.

Carl I used to think you were an alright guy but that kid comment tottaly un-necessary. Quite childish actually. Yes you might have tried it in the past carl, but hey that was the past this is now. Maybe you didnt have the right group of people with you before, not to say they were not good at what they are doing. But sometimes people just dont come up with that one idea that can set everything off with a bang. This is not something we can just give up on, and say oh well we tried it once but it didnt work out so whats the point. Imagine if Devinchi or Thomas Eddison had given up after the first try. Where would the world be today?



As for the others. why do you continue to state the obviouse. Obviously I am not going to be breeding anything that there is no demand for, do you really think I am that stupid.
I also know I am no where near the door yet. its going to take me a decade to get there, and prob anouther to get my foot in there. You guys need to understand I am not some stupid kid off the streets. The way you talk to me it's like you think I have no common sence at all.
Am have a very good head on my shoulders, and am very carefully planning my future. the probleme is negativity drives me insane and i say things i do not mean.
For instance Chris Anderson used to think I know nothing about chameleons and he felt sorry for mine because they must receive awful care. I ask you now Mr. Anderson do you feel the same way??

But hey now I look like the evil one. After everyone has twisted the meaning to this post around 180 degrees.

Its not the breeders that make up the market its the buyers.
well who would have known, good thing that was pointed out.
Not to be rude but come-on now

peace

ws

[meow_mix450]

its true it would be better off moving to the states if you are planning on making a business out of your hobby. Canada isnt the place to do it

Meow