How much does it REALLY cost to breed Ball Pythons? A look at the first year...

[@CowabungaCarDiaries]

Enjoyed that one very interesting, we are just planning out our first attempt at breeding, with only two females and one male, I’ve bred corns for years now but never Royals, looking forward to getting into it with the kids too and getting them involved too.

[@ballpythonbreeder.co.uk_]

Hey thank you for watching - and sorry my replies are so late at the moment! I think it's a lot of fun, especially if you breed morphs because most of the time you never know what you're going to get. Best of luck, let me know how it goes!

[@j.w.7392]

Balls aren't my thing, I'm into Pits. But I found your video very informative. Because this is just a hobby for me, Id be stoked just to break even.........That would mean that my hobby is FREE! 😁

[@ballpythonbreeder.co.uk_]

Good point - there's nothing better than a free hobby! By the way, Pits will be first on my list if I ever have room to expand the collection 🙂

[@tarantularamblings3149]

This was a very interesting video ,I had no real idea about the costs . Personally i had only thought about maybe breeding one time just for the experience and even that would depend on market conditions and if i feel there are two many snakes out there already not selling since i wouldn't want seven more as pets 😂.

[@ballpythonbreeder.co.uk_]

Thanks for taking the time to watch! Some people might do better than me, but I've definitely found breeding to be a very expensive hobby 😅

[@m3gduwu560]

ofc the profit level is the same regardless of currency, as the profit margins aren't dependant on your currency but are instead dependant on suply and demand and as it stands reptile keeping is a more niche pet/hobby so the demand is a bit low, but so is the suply. The suply even more so as it's only a small fraction of reptile owners that decide to breed and sell them. These are also reasons why snakes and other reptiles aren't the cheapest pets, however still cheaper than most dogs as we as a species love dogs a bit too much and are willing to pay more than they are worth (this is especially true when we talk about something like the pug as you are essentially buying an overpriced inbred mess that can't breathe properly)

[@m3gduwu560]

Inbreeding is actually also much less of a problem with snakes aswell as snake owners greatly desire new beautiful morphs meaning that snake breeders will have to breed their morphs with different ones to get new ones leading to less of the inbreeding we ave seen in animals like dogs where we want them to look one specific way that slowly changes based on our desires, don't get me wrong the snake morph breeding is still desire based, but it's almost like reptile keepers desire unique and individual beauty over the uniform beauty of the dogs. And before you say that there are differences between dogs, and snakes, I am aware of that. However even accounting for historical periods as snakes and reptiles are still rising in popularity and dog have been number one for mellenia only being contested by cats (in egypt specifically) and even though there has been some inbreeding in that time most of it has been for an actual purpose like hunting, tracking or sled pulling, whilst dogs like the pug have been bred to look like they do, purely because we think it's cute and as far as I'm aware reptile keepers don't do that to the same extend, again people will 100% breed 2 different morphs just to see what the mix looks like, but that is mixing the genes and expanding the genepool, not inbreeding wich leeds to less healthy genes and more harmful mutations because of the much smaller genepool

[@ballpythonbreeder.co.uk_]

Fascinating points! I'm not 100% sure - but I think there are veterinarians that want to actually ban Pugs and a few other breeds here in the UK. Whether that is right or wrong is something I haven't really thought about. I can definitely appreciate the contrast you are making though, between our hobby which can (and should) produce healthy animals Vs dog breeding which seems to repeatedly produce breeds with a range of health issues. Obviously a few morphs like the spider BP have issues, but they occurred as mutations, rather than a gradual process that was aimed for. Just for clarity I always had mongrels or lurchers when I had dogs: they were way healthier than pedigree breeds. Great comments - thanks for adding to the topic!