Transcription
There are countless pieces of content talking about the mistakes that new breeders make when they get into the ball python industry. So for this week, we are not going to be covering the mistakes that new breeders make. And instead, we are going to be talking about the mistakes that established breeders make. And we are going to be doing this with another episode of the podcast that we are developing with Bob Vu of Bob's Balls and Will Marose of Royal Canadian Reptiles.
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I can't wait for you guys to see it. My name is Stephen with Leviathan and let's get to it. I think an established breeder, being a breeder that's been doing this for multiple years, you're uh you already have a following, you're you could might be doing this full-time even. Um, and in my opinion, one of the biggest mistakes these guys make, or even myself, is uh getting to the point where you stop upgrading, right? You're like, "Oh, I'm just going to You're not shopping anymore. You're not going to shows anymore. You're just everything's in-house, which is great when you're producing most of your own stuff, right? Because you're producing new project stuff, but now you're not adding new projects. Maybe Will produces an animal that can skip me two years ahead, right? Instead of me being able to make triple heads at my own collection, I can just call Will and he was like, "Oh, I already have a DG double head sunset puzzle." I'm like, "Oh, great. I can just buy that mail and skip myself two years ahead." And when you're not making those type of moves, even though we're making money off of this industry, which I've seen guys do. I've seen guys make 50 60k a show and then come home, pocket it all, right? Jam it in their pocket. Espec This happened a lot during co I did the same thing. Made a bunch of money, pocket it all away. And then sometime then you'll start to feel yourself slightly like man you're watching Instagram reels and you're watching these new guys get into the industry and produ outproducing you. They're producing animals that you're like oh my god I can't produce that for another three years you know and I just now made heads and these new breeders are moving forward because they're spending money. They're still buying stuff. Um they're upgrading. They're making upgrades. Um and just got you got to get with the times man. And it's in this industry now with shed testing, you can get left behind really fast, right? Because people are using head-to-head pairings and making doubles and stuff like that. So, you can get left behind pretty fast and you got to got to stay ahead of the curve a little bit if you want to be that breeder that stays uh making money in this industry and producing, you know, uh cutting edge projects.
>> Yeah. Yeah. I definitely want to come back to this in more like depth on like upgrading and how you should go about doing that. But what do you think are
>> uh for sure like what Bob mentioned I mean I complacency like getting complacent with your collection getting complacent with your projects thinking uh you know it's fine for me to just keep making desert ghost puzzles. Well it is right now but in 3 years four years 5 years everyone's gone past you in that project and now they're into DJ puzzle antics and whatever the wherever that project goes. Uh so again, not not upgrading. Um also something I see some guys do, not a ton, but uh bringing too much um out too much drama into the business. So you see guys getting in fights on in on Facebook or uh making like really like posts that are just like in poor taste. Um, and when that that sort of stuff happens, a lot of people just kind of like, I don't want to deal with this, you know, and they just move on from from that breeder. Um, but yeah, I I mean, there's tons of things forgetting the the basics of breeding, right? forgetting going like we we always think like I've done it myself where I'm like I I if I time this female right I only have to pair her once and you know if I breed with an ultrasound and I'm like really on top of it and then you forget that like I'll go back and I'm like well how many females am I pairing this male to? It's like well I'm only pairing him to five females. Well then why don't I just pair them pair have him go in once a week and make sure those females are bred once a month or once every eight weeks. you know, forgetting those kind of things that that the basics of breeding, the basics of your like your rodent production, the how you sell sold snakes in the first place, like things like that. Some guys get to a point where they think like, well, I don't have to advertise anymore. I'm big enough. I'm Amazon now. And there's always another one coming, right? There's always another breeder right on your heels. There's always somebody else with the similar animals that are, you know, maybe have better salesmanship than you do. Maybe they producing more animals. Maybe they're getting better odds. Why is that? Like it's not Sometimes odds are just odds. But sometimes it's you didn't upgrade their your male. They did. You didn't hold You sold those females instead of holding them back. They didn't. You know, those things uh like expanded over years and years and years make a huge huge difference.
Yeah. Yeah. >> I I kind of feel not so much that we are established like we're going into our sixth breeding season at this point. So I don't know what point you decide that you're an established breeder.
>> I say you are.
>> All right. There we go. There we go. So we're we made it.
>> You made it. [clears throat]
>> You guys over you guys are 100 clutches in. Yeah.
>> Oh yeah.
>> 100 clutches is like you produce se 6 700 babies. You're pretty established breed.
>> Yeah. So with this I feel for us something that we have like struggled with and it's just a learning curve and it's like trying to do it but rodent stuff I mean I feel like especially for established collections rodent and rodent production and all of that stuff like not paying attention to it or just being bad at it like we've been like what do you guys feel on rodent stuff?
>> You guys know right now I'm already go going through it on the rodent stuff. Yeah man, 20 years in and I'm still having rodent issues. you know, it's it's an ongoing issue. It's for everybody. You can talk to Justin, you know, we talked to quite a few breeders locally that are struggling every year. Um, the heat wave comes in. We know it's coming in and yet it's still an issue. So, uh, I mean, we're in the process right now of putting a new building out there, fully temperature controlled everything. And, uh, we're going to do temperature control, air pressure control, everything. Just just, um, deck it out because I'm just tired of those these problems. So, you know, so um, this year I'm going to grow up and put in a fancy building [laughter] and actually do it. Yeah. And rodents is going to be a continuous problem for every new breeder until they find a reliable source or they master how to breed rodents.
That's like that is like one of the things that it's always going to be a thorn in your side. You'll never get rid of like the I got to stay on top of the rodents. It's easy to get lazy with rats. It's very very easy where you're like ah I'll do them tomorrow or oh you know I'll push them off a day because they are fine but it's that like you know oh that female birthed the litter and then the babies got trampled and they died you know they there's all these like little things with rats. Honestly, the best thing you can do is like I always say to people like I'm a rodent breeder that keeps snakes, you know, like I I'm in the I'm in the I try to stay on top of the rodents as best I can. And even then, I go through periods where I don't have enough I don't, you know, I don't have enough pups of this size with the rodents, man. especially when you get into like a bigger collection, timing production, knowing I have 60 clutches in the incubator and I know that in the next two months I'm going to need uh and what 60 uh 300 or so extra pups a week
>> or extra mouse hoppers a week to get all these started and then on to pups. However you decide to start your babies, being able to like time that and plan for that is, man, even the the guys who I think are like the top dogs struggle with. So, uh, rodents are a big big one. They're they're just, man, they're I don't think anyone's ever going to have it perfect,
>> but you can get as close to as little screw up screw-ups as possible.
Yeah. Yeah. So, back on Bob, so Bob's first thing that he had said was like not upgrading and all that. So, when it comes to established breeders, obviously we can tell when you like look at everybody else and it's like, man, I've fallen behind. How do you know when it's like, hey, you're not quite behind yet, but you really need to be buying stuff right now.
>> Yeah.
>> So, 202122 was our best sales years. And I was just like, man, I'm selling DG clowns for $10,000. It's pretty pretty slick. You can make DG clowns. So, I produced a ton of DG clowns. What I should have done that year is probably bred at least a DG clown to a DG aanthic or something like that, right? To expand the project. By the time we're selling DG clowns for $10,000 a piece.
>> 2023, I realized, man, I produced 200 DG clowns and not much else. So that's when I started expanding out my pairings a little bit, but I'm like, man, even if I expand out my pairings now, I'm way behind.
>> Yeah.
>> That's when I started shopping, right? So in 2023, 24, I was like, we made a ton of money. We but we are going to fall behind and within the year too. We're going to fall behind within the year because all of our pairings were geared towards making money which is fine. It's okay to do those money making projects if you know you can go out there and buy these specific animals but a lot of times you can't because these specific animals you want like if I wanted like let's say a hurricane redst stripe hypo clown head DG that will made but he's not going to sell it because that's the first one he's made.
>> Oh, I'll sell it.
>> Well, yeah. [laughter]
>> Right. So, I went over there and I was like, "That's a cool animal." I'm looking at some of the animals. That's going to be a lot. A lot of these times the animals you want are people's holdbacks. So, now you're going to have to either pay over retail or you really got to convince these guys to sell them, right? Or you got to produce them yourself, you know, but you didn't because you made the money making projects. So, a lot of times you got to got do that fine balance. And then I was lucky enough in 2023 and 24 to find these animals that were able to push me a little bit further into the projects and not let me fall too far behind. But then when you find those animals, you got to be prepared to pay for them, you know. Um, and that's just part of the deal. And um, you'll know when you falling behind. The the minute you know is when you go to a show or you go on Instagram and some kid you've never heard of just posted a u, you know, DG Puzzle had a Zanthic and you're like, "Bro, what you know?" Uh, or something like that where you're like, "I didn't even think about making heads for that yet." And someone's posting it in your own project, right? Okay, so my my project right now like like what project I like DJantic clowns, DJ Zanthic Pies, DJ Assanic Sunset, stuff like that. If I see someone post a DJanthic sunset tomorrow, I'll be like, what the bro? I just made triple heads last year, you know? Like, so like I just made heads,
>> but it it'll always happen. It'll always happen.
>> So that's when you're kind of like, okay, I need to kind of force myself to spend a little bit more money or force myself to make these weird pairings to make these animals to stay ahead because some of my pairings, man, will too. I know it. Some of our pairings are wild and the odds might be, you know, astronomically low, but that you you hit and you produce that animal that's going to push you three years ahead of the competition, stuff like that.
Yeah. I I mean, I I agree with most all of it you said it like knowing when you need to start buying again. That's it's such a tricky one because again, you don't know. I think there's something to be said about just buying and knowing when to buy the right animal right there because there is a difference between being like I'm just trying to get in as much puzzle stuff as I can or I'm trying to get the right puzzle mail and those become very tricky and it that knowing when to buy depends on like I don't want to say your status because it's not that's not the right word but like where you are with your collection how far advanced your collection is it's becoming increasingly difficult for me to find a a male that I want. You know, they're out there for sure. They're expensive and a lot of the times like for certain projects that I'm working on, I have to make that male. Uh but with that said, there is no like like you said, like you just know when you're like you can just feel it when you're like I'm slipping behind like I need to step things up. I need to you know get out there and maybe like try a new project. try and be a bit creative, you know, like I think that's something that a lot of people do is they don't try new stuff, you know? I I like try new stuff to a fault where I'm like I try so much like dumb things, but I'm like in hindsight I look back, I'm like, why did I do that? But it's at the time I'm always like that might be cool. Let's make it. Um it's it's such a hard one to know when when to buy. I mean,
>> isn't that part of the experience uh of like a good breeder? Like the experience is like knowing when, right?
Knowing I want this animal at this price. This is where I'm a buyer at, you know, like
>> because because uh if you're just buying, you're going out and just buy or you go to Tinley, oh, it's available, so I'm buying it. But a really good experience seasoned breeder will be like, "All right, cool. This project is ultra hot right now." Right? If I was to buy DG puzzles two years ago versus waiting an extra six months when more are produced you I can get it at a different price you know knowing and again a lot of knowing right so I know that Chad Hoker has x amount of clutches or Wills has x amount of clutches I know in 6 months this price point is going to be different because I know these guys going to produce more but when only there's only three produced only three available the price point is going to be way different when there's 30 available maybe that's the price point you you you go in on you know? So the the timing is important Again, if you just want to be the first to buy every first mutation, that's great. That's good on you if you have the money. But if you want to be efficient with your resources and you're like, "Okay, cool. This is how much money I have to spend. Uh maybe I'll give this project an extra 6 months." Again, 6 months on a male, you can you can catch up pretty quick,
>> for sure. But at the same time, there's like to play devil's advocate there, sometimes buying it at that top top dollar is the right play. Like your DJs Anthic Clown. Yeah.
>> Had you have waited six months, you wouldn't have had all the babies that you had this year.
>> For sure.
>> Right. And so there's like there is that like and that goes back to knowing when you're ready for the mail and when you're not ready for the male. You knew, okay, I have all this DG clown stuff. I'm ready for this DJanthic clown. I'm okay dropping that money on him right now to have an adult male ready to breed today. You know, I that that knowing like knowing how to like walk that line is is a skill that comes with time.
Yeah. and getting a male that's 500 grams and pay, let's say if you told me right now I I want to buy a DJ anticlown male. Let's say it's $10,000. I know it's not, but let's use a simple number. Yeah. Yeah. [laughter] Let's say an DJ anticlown clown male is $10,000. Or you can have a proven breeder DG anticlown male right now for $12,000.
>> Yeah.
>> You take you take this one for 12 grand. Some breeders won't. They're like, "Okay, that's 6 months." And when it's not I think the internet's gotten us so so uh oh you can get this male breeding in six months. You really can't. You can and then he's gonna die, you know, or you can and then he's breeding two females and he's done. He's shut down, right? So a lot of times I'll explain to young new breeders is like let's just pretend this male has 20 locks in him for this year cuz he's the first year.
He has 20 locks in them. So you breed them to however many girls you get 20 locks. The seasoned breeder male here is going to get 32 locks in them, you know, and that's how many you can get out of them or something like that. So you spend an extra two grand on the season breed because he's a year older. You get 32 locks instead. 32 locks. Each female requires roughly three to four locks and you get an extra three to four clutches. Yeah. You know, boom, you made that money back. So sometimes depending on how far your collection's along, how many breeder females you have, maybe you spend that extra two or five grand, whatever, to get a male ready to breed right now. Yeah,
>> for some people it'll it'll determine too like do you need the DJ's antic clown or do you need a DJ's anticcl knowing knowing when to be like okay I I don't truly need that mail but I really want in this project I'll buy a male like that to to get me in. It still gets you into that project pretty like you're at a pretty significant level.
>> with shed testing it doesn't doesn't really matter that much. is just at with set shed testing. Let's say you get DGA the cat clown versus DJ the clown. That's just losing half a gene.
>> You're losing one copy of a and you're saving yourself 20 grand or something.
>> You can be in certain situations it can. Yeah.
>> Like DG uh DG um G-Stripe clown was what 35,000.
>> Yeah. And you get that year
>> I bought a DGSripe hat clown that year for six.
>> Exactly.
>> And I I made I made my first visuals this year with them. I made two triples and Yeah. Yeah, I mean like it's just knowing knowing when to pull the trigger on that animal and when to wait, you know, or when to buy it into the project, but not at the the level that you like you don't have to go full jump in with both feet. You can still get that mail that's really good for your collection without going crazy. Sometimes going crazy is the is the right call. I'm very glad that when I bought a DG hypo clown, I bought the triple and not a DG clown head hypo. very very happy I did that. Uh so for at the time that made the most sense, but it's going to be situational for a lot of people.
That's the that's risk assessment. That's a risk risk assessment we're talking about. like, okay, do you drop 30,000 versus the 6,000 for a hat, you know, and again, if you have female, if all your females are triple head, probably should get the triple visual, you know, because if you're never going to produce, you know, but if you have if you already have double visual or single visual, female, double head, the other, maybe you can get a you can get away with a double visual, male, hat, the other.
Every time you add a hat, you're increasing your odds by 50%.
50%.
>> Which goes a long way when you're shooting for long odds. one in 64s. You add that one like instead of a triple hat to triple hat, you're DG double hat to triple hat. That those odds like people don't really think about it, but like that cuts your odds by 50%. Every time you do that and sometimes you have to go back and do that
>> assessment on your females and say like, "All right, what's my projected odds?" odds are going to be like as you expand them out over a bunch of clutches, they are pretty consistent. But you can have one clutch where you crush it, one clutch where you get smoked. That happens. But you can, if you're looking at your male, you can kind of go out into your collection and go, "All right, these are the females I plan to breed it on. What are my odds like with a double visual hat versus a triple visual or a single visual double hat versus a triple visual?" And a lot of the times, at least for me, sometimes it's obviously sometimes it's budget. Like it's just like I I have to get the double, not the triple cuz just budget associated. But a lot of the times for at least for me, it makes the most sense to buy the triple visual.
It makes the most sense odds wise, return-wise, uh like, you know, all things considered, as long as the animals are healthy and all all that sort of thing. If it's if it's three animals, you got a DG double head, DJ Assantic head, and a DJantic clown. In a lot of situations, it does make a lot of sense to buy the triple one. It eliminates shed testing completely. So, you have to think if you're buying a DG double hat, if you're testing for two genes on every single baby you hatch, it can add up pretty quickly.
That's $600, $500, $600 a clutch.
It can add up very Yeah. very quickly. Uh, and if you're doing 10 glutches, you know, you're talking $6,000
very quickly to find out that half of them are, you know, whereas if you had the DG Aanthic clown, now you're only testing. Now you're 300 a clutch instead of 600 a clutch for testing. And if you had the triple, there's no shed testing. You know, exactly. So, and your odds are, you know, it increases your odds by 50 50% each time, which is a, you know, it's the difference between working with a super and working with a non-s super. Yeah.
Right.
It's it's big. Yeah.
So, coming a little bit away from like the male and going a little bit broader. So, since this uh episode is focused on like the mistakes that established breeders make, let's say that there's an established breeder that it's gotten too far. And I've talked to like I've just gone around I've talked to people where people feel like that they have completely let the like market bypass them and that their entire collection is outdated and in order for them to have even a shot at doing anything they essentially need to retool everything. How often do you feel like that happens and or do you think that they actually retool or do you feel like that once the established readers hit that point they're like you know what I'm stuck?
Um it I mean I hope people don't just throw in the towel that easy because there is ways around it. I was feeling that way probably four years ago, right around co uh people started making like really crazy stuff and I was sorting starting to kind of feel like huh if I don't make a change now something it's it's not going to work like there's I have to make a change and I did that through internal production and basically saying like I'm keeping everything like and I there there are other things like having too much pastel. I I was plagued with pastel for for a long long time. Uh the new guys in the industry, you guys don't have any idea how easy you have it to just not get an animal with pastel. Back in the day, everything had pastel. And there was no choice. If you wanted clown, it was a pastel clown. If you want a puzzle, it was pastel puzzle.
And that like >> like follows you for like a decade or more, you know? It's it's it's hard to get rid of it. Um I'm not saying get rid of all your pastels. It's not what I'm saying. But
>> that's what he's saying. [laughter]
>> I said, "No, I promise I'm not." Uh, but knowing when to retool, I knew I had to retool and and just I have to bring in a really good male. I have to like take a couple years to make new hats, make new projects. Instead of shooting for visuals year-over-year, I have you have to kind of learn when it is that you need to, all right, this year is going to be like a a a building block year. the following year can be a produce visual like a um produce like end result.
How how long does it take to retool you think?
>> Two years.
>> Two years. Yeah. So if you're far behind, right? You're like, "Oh, I'm so far behind." But we're talking about an established breeder here, right? So let's say an established breeder has some clown pides or they have some DG clowns, they have some hypo sunsets, whatever. Even if a hypo sunset right now, you can fall behind. What if you just bred that hypo sunset to your DG clown or hypo sunset to your uh clown pi? Now you have quad heads. Two years later you go next the following year you go buy a male uh single gene triple head or whatever. All of a sudden you're producing quad visuals again.
>> You're trying to
>> or trying to right but you're in in the process you're going to make double visuals for the others triple visuals. It's not you can get caught up in this project this this industry pretty fast especially as an established breeder because you already have a fleet of an established breeder females
>> right and a lot of people will say like well I have to make money every year and like yes I agree with you for sure but even if you look at like like very large corporations right like if you look at the S&P 500 lots of those companies have years of like R&D or years of big investment and then three or four years later that investment pays off and a lot of times they're investing in their own company. They're investing in a new product or a new so and that is the same essentially the same thing we're doing. I'm just instead of selling right now instead of selling that animal to yourself. You're your best customer.
Exactly.
>> And and it's like you might have a wash year. Maybe you calculate it out where you're like, "Okay, by the end of the year I'm break even as a business. I all my bills are paid. I'm making a few extra thousand, you know, a few clutches here and there." And even when you're doing those hats, like if you're doing uh let's say you ran that uh DG clown to that Sunset Hypo, whatever, you don't you can still sell a few animals and hold back the the majority and still still be okay, you know. Um so I I feel like even when you do fall behind, if you throw in the towel, may again, it's fine. If you did, uh if you didn't like this, honestly, sometimes a lot of these people that quit, they give themselves any excuse to quit, too, right? If you really want to stay in it, you definitely could. A lot of times you're just like, I'm so done with this crap. I'm tired of cleaning snake crap and I've been doing this for my weekend 52 weeks a year for the last, you know, yeah, I want that weekend back. I'm tired of going to shows and podcasts and, you know, and making Instagram reels and and doing all that. So maybe give yourself any excuse to quit cuz I felt like I've fallen behind same years, you know, and I was just like, "All right, cool. I'm going to go and make some hats." Triple hat DG is sunsets, bro. That's not going to be what pushes me forward. But I [snorts] felt like it was a fun project. So, we made heads for it, you know. Um, and who knows, that project could be huge, but it only takes up five, six slots in my baby rack. So, and all of a sudden, now you have three, four, five different projects that might propel you ahead of the rest of the competition in two years. Two years all it takes for you to catch back up, man.
Yeah.
All right. So, right now we are at 25 minutes. So, you guys have any
>> thoughts? Closing remarks
>> on mistakes established breeders make?
Yeah. when they stop uh taking care of their customers, man. I think that's one of the biggest thing.
>> Yeah. Let's get back and then we'll end it.
>> Yeah. So, a lot of times I want to do this like a two minutes. Um established breeders sometimes get like, "Okay, I've done this long enough. I have a good enough reputation and they screw up a deal with a customer and this customer could just be a brand new guy. You're think it's a brand new guy. It's probably no big deal." They make one post, all of a sudden 100 people see this post. It gets shared. You you handled it in a really crappy way, which I've seen very big established breeders do.
>> Oh, yeah. they, you know, they make a mistake that's easily fixable. Okay, I'll give them a refund. Sometimes a refund is all it takes. I've done it before. I've shipped the wrong snake to the customer. All these other mistakes, you know, I misex an animal or I shipped them the wrong one that wasn't had and they, you know, things like that. And the lace debacle was probably one of my worst one where I've sold some lace that weren't lace. So, I go back and replace them with white lace or I replace them with a DG clown, whatever. New project. Yeah.
>> Um, and it's just again that is part of making a good breeder and taking care of your customers. Oh yeah. Taking care of your customers is the number one
>> like one of the most important things in this business, right? If you're if you're quick to burn somebody, it's it's going to come back and it's going to come back and bite you in the ass for sure. Huge thanks to Bob and Will for all of the information that they shared during this week's [music] video. And if you are going to be around the Atlanta, Georgia area during January 31st or February 1st, you should definitely head to the Gas South Convention Center and check out the Southeast Reptile Expo. It is one of the best reptile shows in the entire world and we can't wait. We are going to be vending so you can come check out all of our animals. Bob and Will are going to be there so you can talk to us in person and it is going to be a blast. Anyways, my name is Steven with Leviathan and if you're not subscribed to the channel, definitely hit that button down below. Well, we will see you next week.
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