When I move to where I can own snakes, I’ll be looking for a BP, among others - as a pet owner first. I have shown & bred cats (Devon Rex), and a few horses (American Saddlebreds), and LOVE color genetics. So a big part of me is giddy about the sheer number of BP morphs. I can imagine how exciting it is to say, “Hm. What will I get if I cross this and that” and breathlessly wait to see what’s in those eggs.
BUT… here’s what I find puzzling and different about the BP hobby…
The first thing a newbie with an eye for color & pattern notices is that almost all those exquisitely gorgeous babies that command 4 or 5 figure prices, will mostly brown out and be a beige, brown, and sooty snake after a few years. The ones likely to keep their looks seem to cost as much as a horse, or a Boelen’s.
Personally, I want an adult that makes me stop scrolling. So my first question for y’all is: Who is it that you envision as your end customer, if not pet owners? Are you all breeding with the hope of selling mostly to other breeders? Or for your own collection?
What becomes of the majority of common looking snakes that by the odds, most breeders are going to produce ? Are there really enough pet homes for all the ones that other breeders don’t want to snap up?
Second, if cat breeders want to get a particular “morph” , nobody buys breeding stock that has a 50% chance of carrying that trait and then buys another that has a 25% chance of carrying the trait to breed it to. You buy foundation stock that is expressing the trait you want or is 100% carrying it. Then you don’t have to buy additional animals when the odds fail, and pay the food and vet bills for all of them, and hope the kittens find a home. Does collecting poss hets really pay off in the long run? Is the gamble part of the fun?
Welcome~
The ball python market is very oversaturated in the US. There’s more being bred and 35k already on the MorphMarket ads.
There are a large number of those animals being bred by breeders following the few top breeders for the next big combo or new morph. They pretty much are focusing on breeding for their holdbacks and selling to other breeders.
There’s smaller groups breeding for what they would want to see and not breaking the bank on the current trends as well. A lot of these breeders (myself included) tend to sell for first time owners or some breeders wanting some of the less common combos now that things are moving to clown combos.
The possible hets are… frustrating. I have hatched a few. I never charge extra for that. It’s something that I’m sure many have been burned on in the past. With genetic testing finding new morphs it will be easier for others to not get burned on a possible het or help ID ones that can be difficult to ID.
Ball pythons are absolutely being over-produced, and I do not believe there is enough demand from either breeders are pet homes to support the number of balls currently being produced. Though to be clear, I have no numbers or hard data to back that up, it’s just the sense I’ve gotten from being part of the broader online reptile community. Much of the over-production, in my opinion, is driven by large breeders who are producing hundreds of snakes a year just to chase a handful of holdbacks or spectacular-looking (as babies) multi-gene combos that command high market prices. I’ll be honest, I really, really don’t love that aspect of this hobby. So if that seems sketchy to you, you’re not wrong. But there are a decent number of smaller hobby breeders that aim to mostly sell to pet homes, which you may feel better about buying from. There are also a lot of adult balls at rescues and humane societies, or adults that breeders are looking to retire to pet homes, which is something you could explore if you’re not married to the idea of raising up a baby.
And yes, virtually all ball pythons (aside from morphs like lucistics or albinos) will brown out to varying degrees as adults.
Though it’s worth mentioning that while ball pythons are currently the most popular species of pet snake and has the most morphs, there are plenty of other snake species with lots of morphs and cool color genetics. Corn snakes have an amazing variety of paint jobs to choose from, as do western/plains hognose snakes, boas, bull snakes, short tailed pythons, Kenyan sand boas (those are cool because “paradox” is an actual genetic morph with them), African house snakes are getting more popular and have some morphs, and even garter snakes are starting to have more morphs discovered/worked with. Of those snakes, I think the only one I wouldn’t necessarily recommend to a true beginner would be the short tailed pythons, just because they’re a bit more finicky about husbandry, and can be a bit more moody in terms of temperament.
But my long-winded point is that you shouldn’t necessarily feel limited to ball pythons for a first snake. Not trying to talk you out of balls, if that’s what you really like, just giving you some other options to explore that you might find equally interesting.
The BP breeder hobby is overrun with people who breed because a) they want to make a ton of money at it and/or b) they want to be the “first” or base what they produce on what is expensive and popular at any given time. Because most breeders have no long-term investment in adult animals (pretty much all of them get sold as babies) there’s little to no selective breeding for what they look like as adults, just the gene expression as babies. This is also a big part of why people breed hets/poss hets and play the odds - even if they don’t his exactly what they want, it’s more babies they can sell - and if they do happen to “hit the odds” they’ve done it for a fraction of the price they’d have paid for guaranteed heterozygous or homozygous traits.
I feel the same as you. I want adult animals to blow me away. So I am super selective about what genes I get into, but not only that - also getting quality lines of those genes. I love banana, but it took me nearly a year of inquiring on about 30 different animals to find one from a line of adult banana animals I was happy with. Plenty of breeders had adults that looked terrible or alternately, just wouldn’t take/send pictures of the adult animals at all. I don’t work with those breeders. I work DG, lace, and pied primarily - with enhancing genes, and good lines of those genes. Also, I breed mainly for what I want (if I get what I want, I keep it) and most of my sales end up being to pet keepers rather than breeders - and I breed a small collection of animals (I have around 20 adult BPs) which means with only 3-5 clutches a year I have plenty of space to keep the babies until I find genuinely good homes for them. And I’m not trying to make a profit, just cover the cost of keeping/feeding everybody.
I generally discourage people from getting into breeding BPs, but you’re at least aware of these things. If you do decide to go for BPs, find a way to set yourself apart from the average breeder and be extremely selective about what genes/lines of genes you work with. Buy only the best expression, not just an animal with the gene listed.
Here is the dirty little secret about the hobby that most people are not going to tell you. Unlike traditional pets, most of this hobby is just a MLM/pyramid scheme. The big breeders are making and selling snakes under the lie that “YOU TOO CAN MAKE MILLIONS FROM THESE ANIMALS!!!” The ball python side are some of the worst offenders, but it extends to basically all of the popular species. The only way to avoid it is to work with things so obscure that no one cares about them. The rub there is that most of those are either not particularly colourful, or have zero morphs - no one cares about my beaked snakes because they are just brown snakes, no one cared about bland olive brown/green rubber boas, until someone found a Leucistic one and then the price on them suddenly doubled
So… Best to understand the world you are stepping into
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I fall into an even smaller subset of the breeders like Christina. I breed for myself, to make the things I want. Because I am doing that, I am being very selective about what I am breeding and not just slapping any two snakes together. If I plan on keeping it, then it has to meet my standards. Because I am so selective, the surplus I create also trends toward higher quality. But here is the thing with me… I do not think I have actually sold a snake in five or six years. I will either drop all my surplus with a wholesaler (usually to accumulate as store credit that I cash out on some weird non-ball species that catches my eye) or I just give them away to friends/neighbours/kids that are getting into the hobby. It is my way of keeping some degree of positivity in the hobby
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Sadly, these are also moving the way of the ball. At a show this weekend I saw a morph of one of these that was priced at $10K. It was barely different from a regular AfHouse…
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I fully agree with this, especially if your goal is to not play the MLM game. Corns definitely give you the colour options without the brownout, but you still have the MLM mindset there. GBKs offer some interesting avenues, but that corner also has a very hard line between purists and “mutts” and once you pick a side you are basically expected to stay there LOL. Milk snakes, like corns, give you a lot of colour options, but again MLM. Ditto hognose, on both counts. Chondros… Expect to pay an arm and a leg LOL. Asian rat snakes are great if you want something that is colourful but not full of morph crazy (some of them are still a bit pricey, but not in the five figure range unless you are going for the newer additions to the hobby). There are lots of oddball African and Asian colubrids/colubroids that might be worth exploring, downside there is you are probably looking at having to establish WC, which is a whole other adventure in time and costs. Candoia might be an interesting option, the come in a range of colours and also have their fun colour shift between day/night, but again, most of those are going to be WC
Keep in mind too that the overall herp market is trending downward, in so many ways – since the end of the pandemic, anyway, and then currently in light of… some other economic factors.
Overall demand is down.
Sales outlets are up (more and easier online options, more expos), so keeping up with other buyers involves flooding the airwaves at least as much as they do.
The average casual keeper seems willing to spend less than before (part supply and demand, part economic situation).
More sloppy breeding (and selling of too young and/or poorly feeding animals) makes for a larger supply of low quality animals that steal some market share away from better animals.
Added to these market forces is the fact that new keepers are possibly less informed than ever (AI slop, parroted misinformation, trends driven by clicks and affiliate links). They’re also using lower quality (or just less appropriate) equipment, at least relative to what’s available; keeping a ball python in a fish tank might have made sense 30 years ago, but now it does not. So the sales that you do get can be a headache, especially after the sale when you come to learn that the buyer wasn’t actually prepared to care for the animal well (or didn’t listen to your initial advice, or BSed their way through any vetting you tried to do) and now you have to help them salvage the situation.
Thank you! I know my little chameleon gecko babies are not bps or any other snake for that matter. However I have decided to gift my first ever hatched babies to friends who I know will take good care of them and enjoy them as much as I do. I probably will keep up with this particular hobby next year but after that I will retire the parents.
Btw I am fascinated by your beaked snakes. But I may not be able to properly house them or care for them in general properly. And I would love to have a brown rubber boa but they are so scarce and pricey when you can find them.
Another snake I have thought about is the dragon snake but owning one (WC) (price) then keeping one is pretty much out of my reach as well…..
You’re talking about those Marble ones? Yeah, the 10k is downright absurd. They’re cool, but they’re nowhere near 10k cool, and it’s blatantly that one particular big breeder (the same one who branded his name on the most recent strain of albino) dangling this mildly interesting new morph – that he has a cornered market on because really only the biggest breeders can afford to source stuff straight from Africa – and saying “look how much you could make if you buy them from me and breed them!” MLM stuff all the way down. It’s infuriating, as someone who fell in love with housies for the great little animals they are, not dollar signs in my eyes.
I think any snake species that gets taken up by a big breeder is at risk of going down that path. Particularly because often you see big breeders doing a race-to-the-bottom in terms of care parameters and breeding selectivity, and then those absolutely minimal “care requirements” end up inspiring smaller breeders towards negligence in the pursuit of profit. It drives puppy-mill style breeding.
I wish there was a way to have this hobby exist on a large scale without getting poisoned by the worst kind of capitalist thinking. These are living animals. We have a responsibility to care for them before we have a right to make money off of them.
