What should be the total amount to invest to start a snake (ball python) industry in your opinion?
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That’s a very open ended question you want a huge business that it becomes your full time job and feeds your family and pays all your bills ? Or you just want a side source of income ? Do you have anything right now as a jump start ? all this helps determine how much it will cost. I guess the easier question is how much do you have lol 100 1000 10,000 100,000 the amount needed will be determined in the end buy what you have a nd what you want and how fast do you want it in my opinion.
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That depends on your end goal and I’m going to be picky.
There will never be a “total”, even Justin Kobylka, Billy Rowes and BHB are spending $10,000+ regularly just to keep up with themselves and bringing in the best of the best of morphs.
If your asking the minimum, it can be done with hets and cost less than $2000, but your playing a long waiting game and will need to know your way around the genetics with zero guesswork.
You could cut out the hets, bump the spending up to $10,000-20,000 and have a decent collection of some beautiful animals.
Now, how much can you spend and become a big name by next year? … $300,000+ just on animals, then you have to think about the storage, electric, staff, rodents, advertising.
Your best bet is to buy what you like, work to make the best examples you can of each morph and have a vision as to what you want to do with it. It doesn’t matter about it being a world’s first or 5/6 genes, you can find examples of both that look like utter trash because they were rushed projects. You can find examples of 2/3 genes that blow you away because they were made with attention to detail along the way.
Don’t just pair what you have available, constantly invest in animals that are brighter/darker/cleaner… whatever you want to make.
Sorry for that bit of a waffle, but I hope somewhere in there you find at least slightly a outlook on it.
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I would also suggest that your entry point should be different depending on whether you’ve owned and bred ball pythons before. If they’re completely new to you, you’ve never really worked with them and you want to jump in, I’d never recommend you start right away buying several thousand $$ worth of snakes. What if you starting breeding and realize it’s too much or not for you? Also as a beginner you’re going to make mistakes, we all do. But it’s better that those mistakes are not costing you potentially thousands if you screw up. On the other hand, if you’ve had balls for a while and want to jump in to breeding, it may be better to start with some higher end animals now that you’re already somewhat acclimated.
I am in the second group here, as of this month I’ve owned ball pythons for 8 years, lurked around the hobby for a while, bought and sold, but never bred. This year I’m jumping into breeding and am investing more into my breeding stock because I know exactly where I want to start.
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