From a business stand point do you think it's better to be a specialist and focus on a single species like Will Leary and carpets for example?

Maybe you feel having a diversified collection with several different species is the way to go.

With me I guess I'm a little of both. I like to focus and work with a couple main species but who knows what the future holds.

Diversify man without a doubt...Too many niche markets out to limit yourself to just one...

Diversify man without a doubt...Too many niche markets out to limit yourself to just one...


I am not 100% sure how to answer this. I guess my answer would be to always work with what you are passionate about working with. Wether it's one species or many. Your passion will show through and you will do ok. Even if you do not do great (as far as sells) you will still have the animals that you are passionate about working with. So always work with what you are passionate about and then branch out and expand as you make a name for yourself and feel comfortable in doing so.

Without a doubt single species. For me anyway...

I think by nature we always want diversity even if we don't breed all the different species we keep. It's hard not have a bunch of different things in our personal collection but I like to focus on one or two things when it comes to breeding.

I think by nature we always want diversity even if we don't breed all the different species we keep. It's hard not have a bunch of different things in our personal collection but I like to focus on one or two things when it comes to breeding.


Yeah thats how I'm looking at it as well

For me the focus is on the balls -- it doesn't hurt to diversify and lord knows I got a few other things living in the snake room but I think everything else falls under a "cool I got eggs" kinda thing rather than any purposeful breeding. :D

I am not 100% sure how to answer this. I guess my answer would be to always work with what you are passionate about working with. Wether it's one species or many. Your passion will show through and you will do ok. Even if you do not do great (as far as sells) you will still have the animals that you are passionate about working with. So always work with what you are passionate about and then branch out and expand as you make a name for yourself and feel comfortable in doing so.

Agreed.

For me , I'm not wired to find joy in just one thing. While I do have an immense love for the boas , if they were all I focused on then a little of the love would fade as I got everything dialed in and it was just auto pilot going through the motions. I'd still get a kick out of baby season but running on auto pilot sucks.

There is soooo much out there that I want to keep that having a few side projects on hand isn't a bad thing. I just added a new species , non-boid even , and I'm super excited about it. I'm even narrowing down the list of what else I'd like to have. Too many species may be a bad thing but diversity isn't bad. In the end , the passion & love for the animals you really want to work with has to be there.

Great topic. Over the years I've kept a little bit of everything. Boas, colubrids, an afrock and retic here and there. But I always went back to keeping mostly boas. Right now boas are all I keep with the exception of a few day geckos.

I thougth about this subject alot when I was at a show recently. Being at table full of boas and only seeing a few sold, while people with cornsnakes and leos were selling everything they had on their table can get a little frustrating. But at the same time I would rather sell 1 boa for XXXX dollars online and ship it, than than have to sell 20 something smaller animals at a show to make the same amount.

I think that having a variety of animals available is only going to help somebodies sales. I think that there are probably a few guys out there who do only 1 thing and they do it excellent. Wanting to have more marketable animals was very small part of why I decided to pick up some day geckos. The main reason for me getting them was I really liked the animals themselves.

People who keep animals that they truely love and not just because of the market for them I think are always going to be the most successful. And for me if there is a species that I love I don't see any point in just having 1 :D I'd might as well get a couple, and then a couple more, and well, you guys know.........Take Care, Nick

Great question!
I have a friend that goes to the shows and has a retail reptile business and he has a bit of everything and does very well. I really think it depends how much your drive is business related or just collecting and if you will sell online or retail or both. For example look a BHB reptiles, they hatch a crap load of corns and Im sure it has to do with what sells! There are your bread and butter animals that pay the bills like corns and kings and the such. also its a smart business strategy! think about it a 9 year old gets a twenty dollar corn today and becomes a loyal customer and 10 years later hes laying down a grand for a high end morph. On the other hand there are niche markets if you can read the market well. Look at Gus Rentfro and Vin russo , these guys have made a name for themselves with locality boas and dont really have to sell their product , their product sells itself! Look at Ralph and Kevin , these guys were breeding balls when balls really had no following.In a nutshell if money or space wasnt an issue I would build a 10,000 square ft building and be swarming in reptile poo:D You have to look at any business with supply and demand as a major factor. I believe the reason the ball market is so strong is because there is a huge demand. We havnt even tapped the european or japanese market yet. Keep your eyes wide because the ones that can put up the capitol I guarantee you are already tapping those markets. Even when new breeders are entering the market daily the demand is so huge it will take a long time in my opinion before the supply will overcome the demand. dont get me wrong i love the boas and especially the locality boas as well as balls. I would breed reptiles even if I never made a dime. So why not breed because you love it and making money from it makes it that much better. I really relate my dream of someday leaving my day job to breed full time to a kid that dreams about playing profesional sports. Nothing would be better than getting paid to do what I love and I truly believe if you put in enough effort at anything you will succeed! Wow that was a mouthfull:eek:

Good topic. For me I have always tried to concentrate on retics from a breeding standpoint. I have a couple pets too here and there. But I have recently decided to try my hand at balls. I prefer to stay with 2 maybe 3 species though. To me its easier to have species that can breed right along side each other in the same room.

With things changing all the time, I think its better to be into a variety of species. That helps you to have what becomes hot. Besides its more fun to do different animals.

In a nutshell if money or space wasnt an issue I would build a 10,000 square ft building and be swarming in reptile poo:D

Lol, now there's a dream! Wouldn't it be great, though?

I have bred mostly leopard geckos and a few African fat tails up to this point, but I'll be expanding that list as some of my snakes grow up. I enjoy working with a variety of species and having something new happening all the time.

At shows, I find there is more traffic coming by my table when I share with a snake breeder and we have greater diversity on the table.

i should just stick with one species but i dont thing would be alot easer if i did stick with just one but when i see something i like and want to breed i just have to have it and try it

I think in todays market you need to do more then one species. But then I also think that you should only breed the animals you have interests in.

I think it's a case-to-case basis. Like for myself I'm starting out with Balls really, but I also have Boas and Bloods that I do intend to breed as well. I think that diversifying yourself gives you a better point of view on how to tackle issues you may have with other species.

...you gotta get some hogs.
stop with the floating the opinion balloons thing. LOL !
i know i'm eventually going down for some.
i used to have a three species limit.
now i've realized that it's gonna be three SNAKE species, and since my cresties arent snakes, they can stay.
just come to grips with it man ! (you can still keep the leopards)
ck

The last two years, I've found it hard for myself to spend money outside of ball pythons. I really like to focus at one species at a time to get the projects off the ground, but have so much interest in others as well that I've finally given into the idea of investing in non-BP projects.

I have focused on a few different groups of animals I think are sweet, and more or less those will be my pet projects for when nothing is going on with my BPs, I have a tendency to get bored when projects go "stale" and nothing is going on, so it'll be nice to have other species to play with.

I think in this market you definitely open yourself up to a larger sales market when you're diversified, however, you can't always have the same focus on individual projects when you have too many things going on.

While I want many many, I'm realistically going to narrow it down to 5 or so, so I can selectively breed, and produce top notch specimens for myself, instead of just producing multiple species just for the sake of producing and selling.

I mean really, why did most of us get into this? Our love for the animals! Money is great and all, but personally I do it for the real enjoyment of the animals, and dinking aspects. Anything I make will likely be put back into my projects.

So from my point of view, a happy medium...specializing in a few species you like.

From a mass market viewpoint, multispecies is definitely the way to go...with HUGE overhead you need to move animals.

I agree with some of the others in that you should work with the species you are passionate about. If that be one species, a couple, or several, it will show that you care about the animals you have. If you are breeding animals you don't like or aren't passionate about, that will show in those species as well.

Personally, I breed a couple species. Currently I am breeding balls, retics, boas and cresties. I hope to find pairs for and eventually breed my Black STP and my Green Tree Monitor as well, but those aren't priorities for me, as I'm more concerned with taking my time to find the right animals to pair with the ones I have for those species. I have been cutting back on my boa projects a bit, lately, as I've found that I just don't have as much time and desire to really run with those projects. The only ones I'm keeping of those are my moonglow project, as I really want to produce one some day. Other than that, I've been focusing on balls and retics.. the cresties just kinda do their thing, I don't really need to do much besides feed them and decide who goes where. They are cute little buggers, though, so I'll keep expanding my colony for a while.

This one question is a tough one for me since I have ADHD so working with a variety helps me out. I find something I like in everything that I work with so to me concentrating on just one thing would be great but how I would go about picking that one thing is beyond me.

The only downside for me at least is the 'jack of all trades master of none' part. No matter how much I try to learn and keep up with all the latest news I have difficulty keeping up it all due to the time I can devote to researching them. So from a realistic business stand point I would rather concentrate on just one species that I can specialize in.

I work with what I like... I actually just stumbled upon breeding ball pythons when I acquired what turned out to be a sexual pair from a friend when she was moving and couldn't take them with her. After that first clutch hatched, I got more and more balls and sold all the rest of my other snakes and lizards. Since then I have added a few more species to the collection again that I am very excited about - b.c. imperator, b.c. longicauda, woma python, borneo python, florida king. Now that I have a small number of ball python breeders I can be patient with all my other projects that are still in juvenile stage. I can find fulfillment watching them grow while still being occupied with the ball hatchlings that come around.