What do you breed?

[GartersRock]

But Gertie. You are basing this on your experience with cats. With mammals it is near impossible to make money and I hate the idea of someone trying. But with reptiles.. It can certainly be done.
Now having said that. If your ONLY goal is to make money. Yes. Animals will suffer.
But if you put your animals first and do it right. I know people who make money and their snakes are NOT suffering. We are not talking about dogs and cats here.
It was a pretty broad statement to say that if you are making a profit your animals are suffering. Simply not true.

[GartersRock]

Oh. And I breed or have the stock to breed soon or will be getting stock in less then a month lol!:
Checkered Garters
Wandering Garters
Flame Eastern Garters
Puget Sound Garters
Oregon Red Spotted Garters
Eastern Garters
Poss Het for Piebald or Calico Eastern Garters
Gulf Coast Ribbons
Western Ribbons
Redstripe Ribbons
Brazilian Rainbow Boas
Amazon Tree Boas
High Red TX Rat Snakes
Okeetee Corn Snakes
Diamondback Water Snakes
Very High Red Eastern Hognose's
Crested Geckos
Hairless Dumbo Rats
Reg Rats
HEY!! No wonder I am always broke for personal stuff!! I just now realized how long that list is!!! Darn snakes!! But being an artist I have plenty of time with them. Gosh... INSANE! Whew.... I think I beat everyone so far. But again... I counted the soon to breed (have babies or will get them within the month).

[garterchick]

i'm pretty sure feltzer makes money off his snakes and i'm also sure that all of those animals are well taken care of. having said that, live animals are always a "risky business", given that they can just die for no apparent reason even if you do take very good care of them (as we all know). so i certainly wouldn't go into it assuming i'd make some money, but if you're doing it right and if you're lucky, your earnings could outweigh your investment.

[bkhuff1s]

I disagree.

I just wanted to let you know that I don't hold grudges just because you don't see eye to eye w/ me on things. So no hard feelings.

[GartersRock]

Good post Tina!

[aSnakeLovinBabe]

here's a pretty generic list of animals that I have bred and /or will be breeding in the near future:

Betta fish
Guppies
Cornsnakes
Cali kings
Designer (hybrid) Kings
Eastern garters
Puget sound garters
oregon red-spotted garters
different flavors of BP's
bearded dragons
Black Rat x Corns

and a few other things I probably forgot!

But now I have to firmly disagree with the idea that you always lose money and that the animals suffer when you breed. This is not at all true, maybe with cats it is, but not necesarily with snakes. Feeding snakes is cheap when you buy your food in bulk, or breed your own food...it costs almost nothing! (especially our garters) It even helps because during the time that you are cycling your snakes for breeding, they aren't eating anything. And if you keep certain snakes in a rack system (i keep my bp's this way because they seem to prefer the security of it and they eat better for me), heating is done for every snake at the same time. My entire snake room stay warm enough for all of my snakes. If you are smart about how you keep your animals then you can make some money from it or at the very least it will pay for itself. As long as you keep your animals healthy, you should not need to spend much time or money at the vet. I have bred many species of snake already, none of my animals are suffering or in any pain and I do make a bit of extra spending money, which I of course turn around and use that to buy more snakes, or stuff for the snakes! And to ease paying the phone bill and what not. So saying that you can't make money with your hobby is false because it can be done without any negative effect on your snakes. That's not my opinion, that is a fact. Disagreeing with a fact is like, I disagree with the sky being blue. I don't know what it's like with cats, I don't really agree with buying cats when I can help one out by adopting him before he is euthanized. I know that every kitten sold at a pet store or from a breederis another cat in a shelter being put to sleep. If it ever reaches the level with snakes that it has for cats, I will no longer breed/sell snakes, and instead help them to find homes before it is too late.

And now I need to say that that was not a personal attack on anyone, but rather a leave-nothing-out-about-where-I-stand response to reading this thread.

[Tori]

By next year I hope to be breeding:

Albino checkered garters
Puget sound garters
Oregon red-spotted garters
California red-sided garters
Valley garters
Australian Water Dragons

And hopefully Flame eastern garters if I can find a male in time

[GartersRock]

Agreeing with Shannons post.

[infernalis]

Bravo Shannon Bravo!!!!! (Clap clap, clap)

[ssssnakeluvr]

Bravo Shannon Bravo!!!!! (Clap clap, clap)

what he said!!!!!!