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pecuniumTry snakes.
I'm not serious, but apparently there are a number of Ball/Royal python (p. regius) enthusiasts who are trying to convince people of that very thing.
Many people ask the question “Why is this ball python so expensive?” The truth of the matter is that these are investment ball pythons. “Investment!” comes the incredulous reply, and we respond, “Yes, Investment.” People have found a new way to invest for the future rather than in some of the traditional ways. By making this type of investment, in quality ball pythons, it gives them the control of the vehicle by which they can attain their goals. Over the last decade we have seen the popularity of the ball python increase very dramatically. Breeders, such as ourselves, and others who have dedicated their efforts to these great pythons have evolved the market to where we are today. When it all started there was only a handful of “morphs” to choose from. Now, nearly a decade later there are over 60 morphs being worked on in various collections around the world. Many of these have been proven genetic and there are even some that have yet to be proven out. Ballpython.com (This is not to single this company out, there are lots of places saying this. They just happened to be one of the first places I found on the web)
This is crazy. It's a little less crazy than spinning this line to people who are looking into cornsnakes, but only a little. It's snake oil, meant to encourage people who otherwise wouldn't plunk that sort of money down for a snake, to part with hard-earned cash (thus converting to more easily earned cash for the seller of the snake).
At the herp show this weekend, we saw snakes going for thousands of dollars. Some of this I can attribute to the same factors which make adult tortises cost appreciate at about $1,000 per year of age; sunk costs (an adult tortise eats a lot of fruits and veggies, and that means a lot of work, as well as investment... what do you think a flat of strawberries goes for in late November? When you think about the fact that a lot of tortises don't hibernate, and an adult will eat a flat at a sittig, plus a couple of cabbages, some lettuce a squach, or two, peaches, etc. and they need that sort of variety to thrive, the costs go up. And having an exotic vet make a house call [because getting a 300 lb sulcata, with a shell span of 30" into the back of the car is a tad more than I'd like to try and manage] and the costs add up pretty quickly), it costs time and money to keep them, and an "adult" ball is usually four to five years old.
They are also small clutchers (they don't lay many eggs), even though they can be induced to lay, pretty much at the breeder's whim (drop the temperature to the upper sixties, for a couple of weeks, and up the humidity, and "boom" she's ready to breed) they don't lay more than eight eggs at a time, so the number on the market isn't going to be as great as the number of say, corn/rat/king snakes, which will lay as many as two-dozen at a time, and may clutch twice in a season (we shan't even go into the African House Snake [a small colubrid, milk-chocolate brown with a lovely translucent sheen and slit pupils] which lays 9-12 eggs every 9-12 weeks. They must have a muderous predation in the wild).
On the one hand I like this, because one of the reasons B. pythons weren't captive bred so much, is the eggs are trivial to collect, in the wild. The female huddles around them until they hatch. Since they aren't dangerous, people just go and find a female, collect the eggs and wait for them to hatch. They can be imported for $5.00 apiece, there wasn't a breeder around who could compete with that (esp. when they sold for $50-100 in a pet store). These days there are a lot more being sold as captive bred (because the "normals" which crop up have to be sold to someone)
They take a while to reach breeding age/size.
So a good morph has a tolerable life as a saleable snake.
But the whole idea of buying a $7,500 dollar snake (or a breeding pair) as an investment...!?! No.
Breeding snakes isn't trivial. It's not calculus, but it rises to algebra; one can't just get an incubator, stick the eggs in and forget about it until the things hatch. They aren't native to the area in which these people live. Which means they need tending.
We've hatched chickens... want to know our best method of getting chicks... a hen. We get about a 95 percent hatch rate with a hen.
In the incubator the record is variable. One year we got 12 out of 13. The next year, four.
Snakes, well the problems go up. Humidity matters more, as does not moving the eggs (turn them more than 90 degrees, the snakelet drowns. turn them 45 degrees and they might not). They get fungus infections, and molds, some just dry up. If the medium is too wet, the rot. If the female is in a bad mood, or doesn't like the male, (or who knows what) the eggs may just be slugs.
Lets say they buy one of these breeding pairs ($15,000, out of pocket)
They get the incubators (mid-range, with some decent bells and whistles) $250.
Feed for the year (frozen rats, at $1.00 per, x2 x75 =$300)
Electricity (depends on the area, but we'll say, for the sake of argument they opt to get a Helix Control system, 5 watts times 10 hours a day 18 kWr per year, at .10 = 18.00 + the $200 for the system)
Vet bills (not less than $50 per visit, plus meds) at $100 per snake per year.
So add another grand to the up-front cost.
Eight eggs.
Hatchlings go for a lot less than the adults. They'll be lucky to get $1,500 for them. That's if they go to a show, so put $500 out as the cost of the booth.
Now, they won't lose money, on the show, if they manage to sell one.
Lets say they get eight eggs. They sell three at the show.
Now they have to get rid of the rest. A dealer isn't likely to give them more than $500 ea. for them (I am assuming a generous dealer, with a proven market, someone willing to pay top-dollar, because they have turnaround. Total for the year... $7,000, less taxes. So, in the firsts year they've recouped a bit less than half of their $16,500 "investment".
This assumes, everything is perfect. The snakes they bought bred true (some of these are dominant traits, they may have bought a heterozygous snake, or two). They hatched perfectly. They were in time for the show. They had a fall-back market. They sold all the snakes, they didn't have medical emergencies (like egg binding, where the female fails to lay all the eggs) which adds another $500 to the medical bills for the year. Neither of the snakes just up and died (We had a male ball. Good snake, apparently healthy. Suddenly his belly turned red and three days later I had to bury him. Actually we took him to the herp vet at Cal Poly SLO and she did a necropsy... he just died).
So if they keep this up for a few years they'll be ahead. Heck, if they keep a couple of females they'll have more breeding stock.
That, my friends, is the rub. It takes four-six years to get a ball-python up to breeding weight. That's if they eat steadily. They are nottorious for deciding they aren't hungry. We've never had one skipp meals for more than about six months, but I've heard stories of as long as a year and a half. Breeding a female who's not eaten for months is a quick way to an early demise for her.
And while your stock is getting old enough, the guy who sold them to you in the first place, is selling them to other people, and breeding his stock.
The market will glut. People are fickle. They want the newest, the brightest, the most rare. The people who are collecting them at 5, 6, 7 thousand dollars a pop, aren't going to pay that when they become common.
If one knows where to go, one can get in on the market for a lot less. Maia didn't by a het morph (unexpressed) of a genotype which is more fickle. That would have cost $275. It was male. Borrow a couple of females (common among people who are doing it because they like snakes, not for the money) for an "egg-lease" (where the eggs are split between the owners, the male owner usually getting the lesser share, though that's often just the odd egg in non-even clutches. Horse owners do a similar thing, where one person agrees to house, feed, maintain (farrier, trims, blankets and the like) as well as prescribed vet-care (catastrophic care is negotiaged, often with a policy being bought, and one person pays the premiums, and the other any deductibles) and the mare is bred, with the owner getting the horse back, and the lessee getting the foal. Sometimes this is a three year deal, and the owner gets the foal of a second breeding; which is usually the case when the lessee has a stud which is to be bred to the mare, but I digress)
So the market glut will be quicker than people think.
Parallel... Lavender cornsnakes cost about $100 these days. When they came on the market, they were going for as much as $1,500 the breeding pair. That lasted about five years (it takes about three years to get a female to breedable size, less if you care less about her living to a ripe old age).
This is like ostrichs, or llamas. Yes, people can make money at it (friend of ours has hatchlings of a rare (i.e. new) Columbian Red Tail morph, they are worth $15,000, out of the egg (as soon as they are known to be good eaters), but someone off the street? Someone who has a snake, or two, and is thinking about breeding them... gonna lose their spare money; if they are lucky.
If they're not lucky they are going to take some of their nest egg (or the grub stake they were thinking of buying a house with... "just think how much easier it will be to buy one with an extra $50,000 from selling a dozen baby snakes") and piss it away.
Want to bet the snakes get the short end of the stick?
I'm not serious, but apparently there are a number of Ball/Royal python (p. regius) enthusiasts who are trying to convince people of that very thing.
Many people ask the question “Why is this ball python so expensive?” The truth of the matter is that these are investment ball pythons. “Investment!” comes the incredulous reply, and we respond, “Yes, Investment.” People have found a new way to invest for the future rather than in some of the traditional ways. By making this type of investment, in quality ball pythons, it gives them the control of the vehicle by which they can attain their goals. Over the last decade we have seen the popularity of the ball python increase very dramatically. Breeders, such as ourselves, and others who have dedicated their efforts to these great pythons have evolved the market to where we are today. When it all started there was only a handful of “morphs” to choose from. Now, nearly a decade later there are over 60 morphs being worked on in various collections around the world. Many of these have been proven genetic and there are even some that have yet to be proven out. Ballpython.com (This is not to single this company out, there are lots of places saying this. They just happened to be one of the first places I found on the web)
This is crazy. It's a little less crazy than spinning this line to people who are looking into cornsnakes, but only a little. It's snake oil, meant to encourage people who otherwise wouldn't plunk that sort of money down for a snake, to part with hard-earned cash (thus converting to more easily earned cash for the seller of the snake).
At the herp show this weekend, we saw snakes going for thousands of dollars. Some of this I can attribute to the same factors which make adult tortises cost appreciate at about $1,000 per year of age; sunk costs (an adult tortise eats a lot of fruits and veggies, and that means a lot of work, as well as investment... what do you think a flat of strawberries goes for in late November? When you think about the fact that a lot of tortises don't hibernate, and an adult will eat a flat at a sittig, plus a couple of cabbages, some lettuce a squach, or two, peaches, etc. and they need that sort of variety to thrive, the costs go up. And having an exotic vet make a house call [because getting a 300 lb sulcata, with a shell span of 30" into the back of the car is a tad more than I'd like to try and manage] and the costs add up pretty quickly), it costs time and money to keep them, and an "adult" ball is usually four to five years old.
They are also small clutchers (they don't lay many eggs), even though they can be induced to lay, pretty much at the breeder's whim (drop the temperature to the upper sixties, for a couple of weeks, and up the humidity, and "boom" she's ready to breed) they don't lay more than eight eggs at a time, so the number on the market isn't going to be as great as the number of say, corn/rat/king snakes, which will lay as many as two-dozen at a time, and may clutch twice in a season (we shan't even go into the African House Snake [a small colubrid, milk-chocolate brown with a lovely translucent sheen and slit pupils] which lays 9-12 eggs every 9-12 weeks. They must have a muderous predation in the wild).
On the one hand I like this, because one of the reasons B. pythons weren't captive bred so much, is the eggs are trivial to collect, in the wild. The female huddles around them until they hatch. Since they aren't dangerous, people just go and find a female, collect the eggs and wait for them to hatch. They can be imported for $5.00 apiece, there wasn't a breeder around who could compete with that (esp. when they sold for $50-100 in a pet store). These days there are a lot more being sold as captive bred (because the "normals" which crop up have to be sold to someone)
They take a while to reach breeding age/size.
So a good morph has a tolerable life as a saleable snake.
But the whole idea of buying a $7,500 dollar snake (or a breeding pair) as an investment...!?! No.
Breeding snakes isn't trivial. It's not calculus, but it rises to algebra; one can't just get an incubator, stick the eggs in and forget about it until the things hatch. They aren't native to the area in which these people live. Which means they need tending.
We've hatched chickens... want to know our best method of getting chicks... a hen. We get about a 95 percent hatch rate with a hen.
In the incubator the record is variable. One year we got 12 out of 13. The next year, four.
Snakes, well the problems go up. Humidity matters more, as does not moving the eggs (turn them more than 90 degrees, the snakelet drowns. turn them 45 degrees and they might not). They get fungus infections, and molds, some just dry up. If the medium is too wet, the rot. If the female is in a bad mood, or doesn't like the male, (or who knows what) the eggs may just be slugs.
Lets say they buy one of these breeding pairs ($15,000, out of pocket)
They get the incubators (mid-range, with some decent bells and whistles) $250.
Feed for the year (frozen rats, at $1.00 per, x2 x75 =$300)
Electricity (depends on the area, but we'll say, for the sake of argument they opt to get a Helix Control system, 5 watts times 10 hours a day 18 kWr per year, at .10 = 18.00 + the $200 for the system)
Vet bills (not less than $50 per visit, plus meds) at $100 per snake per year.
So add another grand to the up-front cost.
Eight eggs.
Hatchlings go for a lot less than the adults. They'll be lucky to get $1,500 for them. That's if they go to a show, so put $500 out as the cost of the booth.
Now, they won't lose money, on the show, if they manage to sell one.
Lets say they get eight eggs. They sell three at the show.
Now they have to get rid of the rest. A dealer isn't likely to give them more than $500 ea. for them (I am assuming a generous dealer, with a proven market, someone willing to pay top-dollar, because they have turnaround. Total for the year... $7,000, less taxes. So, in the firsts year they've recouped a bit less than half of their $16,500 "investment".
This assumes, everything is perfect. The snakes they bought bred true (some of these are dominant traits, they may have bought a heterozygous snake, or two). They hatched perfectly. They were in time for the show. They had a fall-back market. They sold all the snakes, they didn't have medical emergencies (like egg binding, where the female fails to lay all the eggs) which adds another $500 to the medical bills for the year. Neither of the snakes just up and died (We had a male ball. Good snake, apparently healthy. Suddenly his belly turned red and three days later I had to bury him. Actually we took him to the herp vet at Cal Poly SLO and she did a necropsy... he just died).
So if they keep this up for a few years they'll be ahead. Heck, if they keep a couple of females they'll have more breeding stock.
That, my friends, is the rub. It takes four-six years to get a ball-python up to breeding weight. That's if they eat steadily. They are nottorious for deciding they aren't hungry. We've never had one skipp meals for more than about six months, but I've heard stories of as long as a year and a half. Breeding a female who's not eaten for months is a quick way to an early demise for her.
And while your stock is getting old enough, the guy who sold them to you in the first place, is selling them to other people, and breeding his stock.
The market will glut. People are fickle. They want the newest, the brightest, the most rare. The people who are collecting them at 5, 6, 7 thousand dollars a pop, aren't going to pay that when they become common.
If one knows where to go, one can get in on the market for a lot less. Maia didn't by a het morph (unexpressed) of a genotype which is more fickle. That would have cost $275. It was male. Borrow a couple of females (common among people who are doing it because they like snakes, not for the money) for an "egg-lease" (where the eggs are split between the owners, the male owner usually getting the lesser share, though that's often just the odd egg in non-even clutches. Horse owners do a similar thing, where one person agrees to house, feed, maintain (farrier, trims, blankets and the like) as well as prescribed vet-care (catastrophic care is negotiaged, often with a policy being bought, and one person pays the premiums, and the other any deductibles) and the mare is bred, with the owner getting the horse back, and the lessee getting the foal. Sometimes this is a three year deal, and the owner gets the foal of a second breeding; which is usually the case when the lessee has a stud which is to be bred to the mare, but I digress)
So the market glut will be quicker than people think.
Parallel... Lavender cornsnakes cost about $100 these days. When they came on the market, they were going for as much as $1,500 the breeding pair. That lasted about five years (it takes about three years to get a female to breedable size, less if you care less about her living to a ripe old age).
This is like ostrichs, or llamas. Yes, people can make money at it (friend of ours has hatchlings of a rare (i.e. new) Columbian Red Tail morph, they are worth $15,000, out of the egg (as soon as they are known to be good eaters), but someone off the street? Someone who has a snake, or two, and is thinking about breeding them... gonna lose their spare money; if they are lucky.
If they're not lucky they are going to take some of their nest egg (or the grub stake they were thinking of buying a house with... "just think how much easier it will be to buy one with an extra $50,000 from selling a dozen baby snakes") and piss it away.
Want to bet the snakes get the short end of the stick?
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no subject
Date: 2006-09-25 04:04 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-09-25 05:15 am (UTC)People think if they keep the cage small they won't get a six-foot long monitor, that the alligator will stay cute and cuddlesome, the reticulated python won't get large enough to need two (or three) people to safely handle.
TK
no subject
Date: 2006-09-25 06:55 am (UTC)I fucking love animals though, and I can't keep them caged, so I set up all these hot rocks and a big branch in front of the window that gave the most light in my living room. And Jose made that his lounge. And grew and grew and grew. Two years in a cage the thickest point in his body (just in front of his hind legs) was no bigger than my wrist. Two years of free range, he was as big as my biceps.
no subject
Date: 2006-09-25 07:36 am (UTC)Reptiles are not inhibited by enclosure, and lizards no more than others. Reptiles have a phylogenic tendency to a given size. While individuals will vary, they will vary around the set point of the species, and restricting their habitat will not prevent this (though it is true that green iguanas [the typical domestic pet] do grow to smaller sizes in captivity than in the wild.
They have a captive lifespan of about 20 years, though, which is more than twice the wild expectation of about eight.
For reference:
Age and expected size This includes references to other scholarly works. Also note that between the age of 2 years, and 4 years, the expectation is that the animal will increase by a factor of not less than 100, and as much as 400 percent.
Housing Note the warning that the iguana will outgrow the cage, and moving to a larger cage is fruitless, and getting one large enough to house the adult is the only practical option.
For a more detailed explantion of why getting a larger enclosure, from the beginning is a good idea, look here
Myths
Fictions
no subject
Date: 2006-09-25 05:11 pm (UTC)Fish aren't fish either
Date: 2006-09-25 03:02 pm (UTC)Investing in Snakes
Date: 2006-09-25 04:17 am (UTC)B
Re: Investing in Snakes
Date: 2006-09-25 05:14 am (UTC)I can find half a dozen web-sites (all of which happen to have "investment" morphs for sale) touting this as a good idea.
TK
no subject
Date: 2006-09-25 04:26 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-09-25 05:17 am (UTC)Maia and I breed snakes, this was a way to save money (because the food was cheaper to raise, and getting to point of homeostasis between mice and snakes meant owning more snakes).
We are breaking even on them.
TK
no subject
Date: 2006-09-25 05:07 am (UTC)My impression is that snake-breeding for morphs/color-variants was much like breeding new cultivars of things like Iris, Amaryllis, and Hemerocallis. Check the fancy high-end catalogs and you'll find many stunning New Introductions, at stunning prices. Five years later most of those cultivars will be in the mid-range collections, and ten years later they're likely to be in the Cheap Bargain Catalogs. For plants, that's been pretty much standard for years, and breeders (& gardeners) have established a stable system for handling it. Snake-keeping seems to be a newly-expanding hobby, however, especially among Yuppies (as I still call them) -- the kind of people for whom Making Money is an over-riding factor -- and is still susceptible to that kind of hype. I suppose it'll go much as Pedigreed Dog-breeding has -- so much attention paid to conformation/physical appearance that many undesirable genetic traits are perpetuated. (And yes, I know that many dog-fanciers are now attempting to reverse this trend, but once the gene-pool has been constricted and befouled, not much can be done.)
no subject
Date: 2006-09-25 05:30 am (UTC)Because they don't range far from place of birth (cornsnakes, which are tolerably peripatetic for snakes, might range over some three square miles in a lifetime; at least that's what the literature says) inbreeding has been going on for eons.
The result is that painfully damaging recessives seem hard to find. Lavenders, for example, are all bred out of one snake, which was the result of a previous extraction from one, or two, snakes decades earlier. As a result it seems things like head, tail, and the like, are pretty stable; and hard to change unless one goes to intergrade breeding.
The only thing, as well, which people care about seems to be (at present, who knows about fifty years from now) is color, and pattern, variations. The other thing which is likely to discourage changes in structure is just how much genetic theory it takes to try and trace out possible variation in snakes.
There are some programs for computing color variation (and genotype) for snakes, but with four (to six) actual pigments in play, and various levels of expression, the people playing, seriously, with color manipulation are tolerably aware practical geneticists.
So I'm not really worried about that; though there are some morphs which are less hardy, more finicky about food, etc. They tend to be less popular; and so less valuable, though there are some fanciers who take pride in keeping them.
There are also fanciers of lizards which require unbelievable complex arrangements to keep, much less breed.
TK
no subject
Date: 2006-09-25 05:48 am (UTC)If nothing else, for them to be happy and healthy, they'e way too much work for someone who doesn't really like them to take on. This won't lead to anything good.
no subject
Date: 2006-09-25 06:07 am (UTC)No one is going to be running infomercials for them, the way they do in the wee hours for alpacas.
This is being pitched to hobbiests, people who are already interested in snakes.
What's being done is to play this as making the hobby profitable, and to convince them to pay thousands of dollars for a pet.
The snakes will be well treated (think of how much money one is sinking into them, up front) and will end up either as expensive pets, or sold at a loss to someone who wants them, once the bloom is off the rose.
TK
no subject
Date: 2006-09-25 07:13 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-09-25 07:24 am (UTC)But people who fall for that snake line probably think food is made by some ingenious devices in the back room of the supermarket.
no subject
Date: 2006-09-25 11:11 am (UTC)Siamese cats were a local fad. Except that local irresponsible breeders had inbred them until they were dumber than rocks and incredibly mean. So off to the animal shelter.
The same thing will happen to the reptiles.
no subject
Date: 2006-09-25 03:11 pm (UTC)Ehrm... NO. Just no. Absolutely not. The wrongness of it is staggering to me, for all the reasons stated above, and also because this is not investing, it's speculation. Speculation involves many things, including recklessness. And if I were Queen, recklessness and animal custodianship would not go hand-in-hand.
I'm not Queen. But still. No.
no subject
Date: 2006-09-25 04:12 pm (UTC)The thing is, there's not any intrinsic value to the snakes, it's all based on, "market pressures" which will change.
The only people making money are the one's selling the expensive snakes now.
TK
animals as investments
Date: 2006-09-25 07:48 pm (UTC)We had box turtles as pets. 'Quiet, clean, don't eat a lot, and sleep six months of the year' was the way my mother described them. (It's usually less than six months hibernation, but picky, picky...) They had an outdoor enclosure with water, shade, and lots of room to wander or dig. They also started reproducing, but in twenty years we only had one live past two years old (mortality over 95 percent).
P J Evans
Re: animals as investments
Date: 2006-09-25 08:03 pm (UTC)A bit of luck, and some drive, can make someone who wasn't at the head of the queue a pretty piece of change (Our friend with the $15,000 hatchlings bought a trio of columbians for a couple of grand and they were het for good colors. He bred the line and now has some which no one else has... he's made enough out of it to pay for his hobby [which includes a lot of snakes now] and a few perks too).
But the odds are against one. Right now Maia and I are hoping to get some interesting stripes (in cornsnakes) but those aren't likely to be $600 snakes, not even likely to be $200 snakes.
And we know the cycle. When we started keeping snakes, amels were going for $150, to $300 (depending on market) these days the go for $30.
Breaking even is the idea. If we get a really pretty color, we'll be a little ahead.
But the work required to make it a living... no. I'm not looking to set up a 600 female breeding facility with four rooms, and absolute light and climage control; plus space for the mice.
It's just not worth it. At that point they stop being a pleasure, and risk becoming a chore.
TK