I’m not entirely familiar with boas, but my guess is that there simply isn’t as large of a market for them, thus the lower availability and higher cost. My understanding is that boa females can take 3-4 years to reach maturity, as opposed to 3 years needed for ball python females. On top of that, boas are a little more expensive to house and feed, so I guess I can understand their higher cost as babies. Are there any other reasons as to why boas tend to be more expensive than ball pythons?
I think it is because of turn over.
With a royal pythons there are masses of breeders out there and buyers from all angles. When your selling a snake to a unknowing customer once you get past the “it’s not venomous” part it’s sold. With boas there is still the ‘constrictor’ in its name, which is a put off.
Also boas don’t have the huge array of colours and patterns available that pythons do, I mean even your standard Royal is beautiful, so selling them to people that want a “designer pet” to show off is more difficult.
On top of all of this boas end up in shelters A LOT so adding that extra few quid deters potential buyers that, if cannot afford a boa, should not be thinking about buying one in the first place.
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I always assumed it also has to do with clutch size. Think about retics that lay 40+ eggs compared to a boa giving birth to 10-20 babies. Also like stated above they take longer to reach breeding age unless you power feed them.
I thought the same from viewing current offerings. In reality, less breeders of boas compared to those of ball pythons, and the fact that so many of the newest genes that haven’t had a chance to come down in price, have been incorporated into the genes we have had a while.
It seems like everyone is going nuts with VPI T+, blood, and leopard. I am holding out for a single gene IMG but every time I see an IMG boa for sale, it has these other genes in it and a price tag beyond my interest. Same applies to the fire/diamond gene, and I will be rather ticked if people are so stubborn to sell a pure white snake with 5 other potential genes and Jack the price way up when it’s only a guess if it even carries those genes.
I just like boas for pets, and this has made it difficult for me to acquire my dream animals.
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Boas can’t be bred as frequently as Ball Pythons. (giving them a year off between litters is important for long term health). Boas also need to be 1.1 where as with BPs you can breed a single male to half a dozen females without any real consequence. Boas are more delicate when it comes to feeding, if you try to power feed a Boa it will shorten the life span, rarely get them to breed any earlier and increase the chances of complications when they do breed. With those things in mind, a fair number of people shy away from them as they are looking at keeping the animals with a business angle. If you are keeping snakes to try and make a living, why keep 2.2 boas that you have to wait 4 years to breed, then only breed every other year, when you could keep 4.10 ball pythons in the same amount of space and breed sooner and annually.
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I agree with what you said but I would also like to add that although a boa is a good pet snake, it’s not exactly like a ball python in the sense that it’s a manageable size for a newcomer to snakes. Ball pythons on the other hand get to a max of 5 feet or so where as boas get a good bit bigger and are more girthy which would be intimidating and offputting to someone who is new.
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Boas aren’t really an easy species to breed and when they do there can be a host of issues. Certainly nothing like ball pythons
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