Time for my Leave of Absence from this business to come to an end

My name is Jason Hormann and I got started in this great hobby back in the fall of 2001. I started out with a single male Ball Python that I got from a good friend that worked for a local pet shop. It didn’t take long after that before I amassed a very large collection of various reptiles mostly snakes including everything from Colombian Red Tails, Ball Pythons, Brazilian Rainbow Boas, Burmese Pythons, and even more obscure species such as Viper Boas and Solomon Island Tree Boas.

After meeting a few local breeder/hobbyists in the KC Metro Area I decided I wanted to breed. I bred my first pair of snakes a few years later, and produced a healthy clutch of Colombian Red Tails, if my memory stands there were 27 live, 2 still born, and 3 slugs. I managed to sell those at local shows and to a few local pet shops and was hooked. About a year later, around the spring of 2004 I started Kansas City Reptile Distributors and quickly grew that business to a full time job that allowed me to stay at home and raise my young sons who were just starting school. A few years later I was given a choice by the city that I lived in at the time to either stop my rapidly growing home based business or move it into a physical pet store. That fall I opened my retail store and grew my breeding program to a quite large set up. After 6 years of retail and wholesale I closed my store due to a struggling economy, and continued to do shows across the country. At one point I did 48 reptile shows in 52 weeks! I put over 40K miles on my van and loved every bit of it. But life happens and due to some personal hurdles I walked away from the hobby in 2016.

I had many successes while breeding Balls and Burmese Pythons, but my biggest by far was in 2008, when I produced the first US captive bred Caramel Albino Burmese. During that time I also produced some oddities including a 2 headed Bearded Dragon, as well as wild type Burmese we nicknamed the “Double Wide”. It was a twin Burm that never split in the egg. It was one body with one head, but had two spines that ran the full length of the body.

Anyhow, enough rambling. A good friend in the hobby here in the KC area, Reid from TallGrass Reptiles, turned me on to Morph Market and I was thrilled to hear there was a new market place to buy and sell reptiles. Along with that my sons who are much older now have managed to talk me back into breeding so here I am.

It’s great to be a part of this awesome community once again and look forward to the months and years to come!

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@petbasics Welcome back. As a newbie I look forward to learning from your experiences. And Go Chiefs.

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Hi Jason! Welcome back to the hobby. Glad to have you here on this forum :wink:

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wow what a life and experience that youve had with reptiles! welcome back to this community and i loved reading this!

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@petbasics thanks for sharing! Good luck​:+1::snake:

Hey Jason, just coming back myself. Remember you from way back on Bob’s forum, and our fantasy football on there. I may be wrong but pretty sure my snake hooks are from you…think that’s going back around 2004-5? Lots of changes and a lot of info to take in.

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Welcome back and thanks for sharing.

Rest of us newer, this is great opportunity to learn more from your experiences and knowledge :pray: