Quote:
Originally Posted by LeapinLeo
I am planning on catching a wild gravid female garter this summer and I have a very good plan on selling the babies. I was wondering though...
1. Will the new babies have parasites when they hatch?
2. would $30 be a good price to sell agarter snake?
3. Will I make a decent sized profit from selling them?
4. Can they be kept in large numbers as babies?
5. When should I start feeding the new babies?
sorry for all the questions but I need to know lol.
(be warned, more questions may come)
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1. Quite likely.
2. If these are regular easterns you will have trouble selling them at all, because anyone can pick up a wild one. If you drop your price to $20 or less, and sell them in large lots, some kingsnake people will buy your little ones to feed to their snakes.
3. You will find that shipping is quite expensive, and most people will not want to pay shipping for your common garters... another reason they will be hard to sell.
4. You will need to seperate the babies, as they are prone to bite each other when they are excited about a food item. You will also have trouble with the smaller babies getting enough food when the larger babies are eating.
5. New babies should be offered food the day after they are born, but may not eat for up to a week. I had 20 babies from a gravid WC that I collected, and lost 14 of them because they refused to eat at all.
I hope you don't do this, for the sake of the animals. If you want to make a profit selling garters, you will need to purchase breeding stock that are a desirable species or "morph" and breed them. Then your offspring will be valued high enough to make the work you will have in raising them worth the effort. However, I want to warn you that when you raise and sell garters of these more desirable types, the "profit" when divided by your time expended, will come out to less than minimum wage.