question for breeders

[nimrodfiftyfour]

I am starting up my own little breeding operation and once I get some successful hatchings plan to expand a lot. I want this to be a reliable source of income breeding various gecko and snake species. My question is how many of you can tell me what it would take to make a reasonable amount of money at this, maybe around 10-20k/yr eventually. This would be after expenses from breeding leos now, and eventually fat tail, pictus, crested, and 3 or 4 dwarf boa species (rubber, rosy, hogg island). Thanks for any input.

[marisa]

If you are only breeding geckos, and a couple snakes...I really have no idea how you would even get close to 10,000 profit.

I mean sure if you had morphs of each species that no one else has or are TOP OF THE LINE, and even then literally hundreds of them.....maybe?

Usually the people who are making money with only a few species have hundreds of the species and some extraordinary examples.

Marisa

[nimrodfiftyfour]

Thats what I was planning on down the road. Tons of reps. from each species. Those are also just starting species, I would spread out from there most likely. I'm just trying to figure out how feasable it is, and how many people do it at this point.

[wyz]

This question comes around really often.

And the answers are allways the same..

Don't start depending on income coming from herp breeding unless you have done it for years, have a solid reputation, have an established list of customer and know what you're getting into. and so on and so on..

When rough calculating this we can think that there's a gold mine in there, but in reality a few are lucky enough to make steady income year after year from breeding herps.

WYZ

[DragnDrop]

If you search the General Discussion forum, you'll find lots of info about that. In short - it's not as easy as it sounds, and it's getting harder with all the small 'hobby' breeders joining in.

[Rhonda]

Personally I would never attempt to do this as a sole source of income. I consider this to be a fun hobby that pays for itself. You also cann't rely on your animals to produce every year because sometimes they don't! There is also a possibility you could get stuck with offspring that don't sell but you still have to afford to feed and care for them not to mention the vet bills if any of your reptiles get sick.These are things you must consider. In other words, "don't quite your day job" right away!