So I have to explain my initial post to this thread. I should have referred to what I initially stated.
When I made that post I was referring to (in my mind) a cute little fella that I bought from a breeder (last year I think?) who literally had hundreds of ball pythons listed for sale on MM. And I mean hundreds. The little guy was cheaper than the shipping cost and I think the total was around a hundred bucks. He is one step up from a normal and he is the sweetest little thing! He just caught my eye one day when I was surfing! Lol
He was very thin when I got him and for about a month or so he literally begged me for food. He would stare at me through his tub. I amped up his meals to more frequently until he finally caught up to a healthy weight. Now he’s right there with the others. But I wonder what would have happened to him if I had not bought him!
All the other ball pythons I have came from mid range breeders who didn’t have hundreds of listings. The last little girl I got was from @banereptiles Nathan, who is a model breeder, as were all the other breeders I purchased from, except for the one with hundreds of listings that sent me a skinny little baby.
I suppose I should have referenced the breeder who has the hundreds of listings so I do apologize to all the responsible breeders out there!
Not that what I have to say counts for anything but hot air! Lol!
I highly doubt this will ever be a thing. It isn’t feasible for the companies doing the genetics testing to do it for every morph. And then when people are proving snakes they’re typically doing it on newer genes. Unless you mean recessives, and in that case I take it back and agree that proving out pos hets should be able to be eliminated. But I can promise you some smaller breeders or people who want to be “cheap” will still try to get deals and “prove” out pos hets instead of getting them tested, sadly.
Since chain petstores where mentioned in this thread… yes big breeders do sell off to them in wholesale lots. As a rescuer… I will say…I hear the same story over & over. Well I got this Ball python from (insert big chain petstore here) for my kid who lost interest / is leaving for college.
Honestly I think alot of people start breeding thinking they will be able to make lots of money becuase they saw some morphs going for over 1k. But then they realise that what they got isnt worth much and then have a bunch of low quality morphs they will struggle to sell. It quite sad for the animal too becuase they will never find the right home to care for them. Alough this isnt really an issue in the uk since there are about 4500 ball pythons and just under 200 corn snakes. Here demand for some morphs is also nuch higher too and sales are made much faster alough I do still sometimes see that an animal has been listed for a year once I had even seen one that was listed for over 2 years.
@nswilkerson1 I mainly meant hets. I also agree, it isn’t practical to be able to test for every morph. However, it should be possible for the more common recessive traits.
Awe! Thanks for the vote of confidence! @caron but you and everyone is absolutely right! The bigger breeders obviously can’t spend as much time on their animals as us small hobbiests, and sometimes the animal may suffer for it with some not all big breeders.
My personal take on bp market saturation is: Definitely yes! Does that mean I am going to stop? Heck no! I really enjoy it! Do I expect to make profit? Probably not! I just try to make enough to put back in with caging, feeders, supplies ect. To keep doing it!
I am not trying to sell anything here, so feel free to flag this if it’s not allowed. I just wanted to show my personal experience as a very small breeder: So even though it’s not as good in my opinion as the community here I have been giving coldblooded a real go to try and help me with sales and connect with more reptile people. So I have over 100 followers and am following over 100 have posted my MM for sale page up off and on and have accumulated over 97000 views on the MM sale site(this is probably all time? But they do keep going up daily) lowered my prices, have slightly older stock(most my males are already producing “plugs” can be ready if by next year for sure) and still NO INQUIRIES. I got nothing to keep from you all, just wanted to share my personal take for those interested. The ball python market is not good for the little guys, but like I said I really enjoy it and will do it until I don’t.
Wow Nathan! That has got to be frustrating even just breeding for the hobby/enjoyment! But that’s a good indication of the saturated market right now no doubt!
I think in general, it’s reasonable to question the ethics of producing ball pythons in any more than small quantities. I’m very similar to Nathan - I currently have about 5 breeder size females, even when my growout girls get up to size I won’t have more than 8 or 9. And I do believe a huge part of the issue is what we as a hobby accept as common practice in terms of standards of care and numbers. It’s extremely common practice to keep a hundred breeding snakes in racks barely big enough for them to curl up, with no substrate/interaction and with their sole job being to produce hatchlings that end up just being sold to the highest bidder - is there any way that’s ethical? Not in my opinion. It’s done because it’s easy and because people have accepted it, but that doesn’t mean that the standard shouldn’t be better. If folks come in and see that they can put 50 snakes in small racks and plow ahead, there’s no barrier to make folks really think and prepare. If our standard of care was higher - larger racks, substrate and enrichment, standard practice to wait until females are 3yrs old, giving girls years off, vetting buyers rather than selling to anyone who pays, etc. - would we have less of an oversaturation issue? I absolutely think so. There are folks out there producing thousands of babies a year. That’s not sustainable, but is it ethical? I don’t see how it possibly can be, especially when we think of things like puppy mills and backyard breeders in other popular pet species. I hesitate to talk about ethics because it’s a hot button topic, but the ethical standard of care in the ball python “industry” definitely contributes to this investment-object “gotta catch 'em all” mindset with breeding, rather than a more careful, considered approach where people choose their projects more carefully and are prepared to care for animals long term. Heck, we have big, well-known breeders openly admitting they cull healthy non-gene project animals and nobody bats an eye, which is crazy to me, that the market exists in a space where that’s just something that happens.
I never, ever plan to have more than 10-15 breeding animals at a time. I know that if I got up past that, my standard of care would be in jeopardy because I’m only one person with limited time and resources. But my standard isn’t everyone’s standard, and I can’t tell you how many people are out there with hundreds of animals in every project imaginable producing way more animals than they can possibly responsibly care for/find homes for. Will definitely second what bane said, the BP market is not good for the really small scale breeders. No big breeders want our stock because it’s not stacked enough, but most pet keepers also go to bigger producers with dirt cheap prices. I have a clutch of babies right now, my one clutch of the year, and all are currently being assist fed. I won’t sell them until they’ve taken 10 consecutive meals on their own, which may very well mean none of them will be for sale until well into next year. I am prepared for that. I don’t earn any money - I’m lucky if I make enough to cover my keeping & feeding cost, with no consideration for veterinary care, photography equipment, show costs, etc. I did a reptile show last weekend and at the end of the weekend I had sold enough jewelry that I only lost $45, which is a win for me with the table & gas costs.
This is another part of the problem though. Recessives aside, we shouldn’t need to test for ANY incomplete dominant genes. Incomplete dominants are visible to the eye, and no one should be breeding them if they can’t reliably ID them. I come across so many ads with things like ‘possible pastel’ ‘possible cinnamon’ ‘possible enchi’ when those morphs, 9/10 times, are plain there to see. And even with “recessives” if there was more quality control there wouldn’t be as much question. People sell animals without hets listed all the time to move them quicker, or pair animals with really subpar gene expression just to have the gene in the pairing even if it’s not good quality . And my entire monsoon project is based around one “66% het” and his offspring. I can’t afford to pay $4k for a 100% het, but I can use my eyes!
Another important fact for anyone hoping to hit the lottery. Let’s say you produce a new never before see morph. Now you might think this is the coolest thing you’ve ever see from your parent’s eye. That doesn’t mean anyone else will agree. If the 50 or so people who can drop $20,000 on a snake don’t agree the price has to drop.
Where when BHB produces a new morph people accept it is cool because he says it’s cool. That’s not a knock on BHB. He has earned his reputation.
Wow! That’s a great point! And of course BHB has a LOT of exposure on the internet, YouTube etc which of course increases popularity which increases sales etc…… again not picking on him specifically but using as an example….
While @monty_pituophis meant recessives and of course @nswilkerson1 is absolutely correct about it not being feasible at all for all genetic traits, especially incomplete dominant. I think it would be very helpful if let’s say some of the more common ones were. I mean on one hand we could test known similar morphs to see if they are they are genetically the same, like lesser/butter, phantom/Mystic ect. On the other hand there are many cases that it is very difficult for anyone to be 100% sure on some snakes incomplete dominant morphs. I agree with you on always using quality genes, but there are plenty of morphs that can mask others or just dominate the whole animal, piebald, any lucy type animal, even strong morphs like g-stripe, clown ect. Also you can have morphs in the same animal that do similar things and when added with others it may be hard to be completely sure, and all good breeders (all of us) would never state something to a buyer that we are not sure on! I understand some newer breeders not having experience to always correctly identify the morphs in a snake, but there are great breeders that are not always positive, depending on the morphs used. That’s why you get some statements like poss yellow belly, could be Mojave or mystic, ect. I for one would absolutely love for more genetic testing to be available!
I’d have to say there are definitely too many ball pythons.
Big breeders mass producing them is probably the biggest reason there are so many out there.
I’m very aware of how the market is, and thus have begun being very selective of my pairings.
Next season will be the same, I’ll only pair animals that I want to advance my own projects with or will produce nice looking animals.
It sucks because I really like ball pythons, because of their genetic variety and relatively easy temperament…. But I am thinking I might have to move my focus away from ball pythons and focus more on the species I have that aren’t as overly saturated in the market.
I definitely feel the same way. I’ve been breeding ball pythons only since 2020, and the first 2 years I was able to sell a good chunk of my ball pythons from my first 2 clutches, yet I’m still sitting on 4 from that first clutch and 3 from the second clutch. I haven’t been able to sell any on Morphmarket since then, and not all of them are single or 2 gene combos either. My Pastel Chocolate Mojave dbl het DG Hypo male is one that I thought would sell fairly quickly, but I haven’t even gotten an inquiry on him yet and he’s been listed for sale (on and off because I kept going back and forth on whether I want to keep him) for about a year now. I’m thankful that I have a full time job that allows me to continue taking care of them for as long as I need to, as I have no intention of selling any of them wholesale, but I have so many ideas for projects that I want to make and I just can’t afford to breed more than 1 or 2 clutches every other year, if even that. Honestly, if you don’t have some sort of way to make yourself stand out above the others, then you are out of luck (in my opinion). I hate my voice, my mannerisms, and showing my face on camera, but I’ve gotten to the point where I’m seriously considering making TikToks and YouTube videos with my phone, just to hopefully get that extra bit of recognition.
I’ll be honest, I’ve wondered about the ethics and sustainability of the number of ball pythons being produced and sold since I re-entered the reptile community a few years ago. I just can’t imagine that there are enough good homes out there for all those snakes, and it seems like there are more and more people jumping into breeding them every day.
I have no issue with people who breed balls thoughtfully and ethically, but every time I see someone being all, “I have this male normal and female pastel, I’mma put them together and make cute babies cuz it seems like fun!”…I cringe. “Because it seems fun” or “Babies are cute” is not a good reason to breed anything.
Honestly, if someone is thinking about getting into breeding reptiles, I’d encourage them to look for a species other than ball pythons. Balls are great, but there are loads of other amazing species that I don’t think get nearly enough love. I know that if I ever decide to breed anything, it will definitely not be ball pythons.
Yes I do feel the same way as you and it’s hard sometimes not to say, “What’s wrong with you, instead of “Oh that’s nice that you want to breed just for kicks and grins with no thought to what you are doing or for that matter what you are going to do with 8 to 10 babies?” Plus the 2 parents!
I think in some cases, people just don’t realize how over-saturated the market is. I’ve seen people on here back off from ill-advised breeding plans after the good folks here inform them of the realities of the ball python market, and I totally respect that. Not everyone who keeps reptiles is plugged into the wider goings-on and may very well not realize just how many ball pythons are currently being produced.
What I find frustrating is when someone is informed that breeding their normal or common single-gene is not a great idea, and why it’s not a good idea, and responds with something to the tune of, “You’re not the boss of me, I’m gonna do what I want!”
. And my entire monsoon project is based around one “66% het” and his offspring. I can’t afford to pay $4k for a 100% het, but I can use my eyes!
