Post pics of your pet snakes!

[Mrnicolai]

I only have one corn snake, its a snow corn.

[Pavel]

This is Masquerade, my pueblan milksnake.


And this is Igor, an eastern Garter snake. I don't actually own him anymore -- gave him to my sis.

[Tindomul1of9]

Those are cool. I went to the White Plains NY Reptile Expo yesterday. THey had thousands of snakes of all sizes, colors and types. I know nothing about snakes so I was pretty surprised that some of them even cost $1000!!!!!!
Masquerade is a beautiful snake! I saw many similarly patterned snakes yesterday. Very nice!

[kwiky]

i have a bumblebee morph royal (ball) python that cost me £7000 (GBP)
look here: this one is just under £13000, i have no idea what that would be in dollars though
http://www.crystalpalacereptiles.com...prod=bumb-m001

[Jezza]

well a normal corn snake can cost as low as AU$25 I don't know why you wold pay that much for a snake when you can get cheaper ones that look just as good when the expensive ones are simply rarer or a special type, i mean why bother wasting you money?

[Pavel]

I must confess to being rather stunned myself Kwiky. If I'm remembering the approximate exchange rate correctly, 7000 pounds is about $10,500 US. I love my critters but there aren't any I want THAT badly. LOL [Not to mention I don't have that kind of money ... that is a goodly portion of a new car.]

Jezza, I can't speak for Kwiky, but I do know that breeders will often pay very high sums for unusual or very fine examples of certain color morphs. [I also grow orchids and some of the 'prime' plants go for exorbitant amounts of money.] In the case of breeders, they look at it as an investment as they plan on making money off of the offspring.

[kwiky]

spot on pavel, it seems you can speak for me afterall
thats the exact reason, its a very fine specimen with great genetics, as a breeder it will in the future make me that money back and then some
i really couldnt understand anyone paying anywhere near that for a pet snake though, in that case its best to pick a nice healthy one for normal money rather than looking for fancy colours and genetics,

[Jezza]

well i would prefer to do some selective breeding myself and produce some fine specimen snakes for sale at a higher price than usual, but i would start with a relatively cheap snake which has good lines and colours.

[kwiky]

selective breeding by colour/markings is a great way to start out and can be extremely rewarding for any hobbiest,
but as i make a living from breeding large amonuts of both normal specimens and also rarer genetic strains then i have the need to 'buy in' fresh bloodlines and certain genetic charecteristics, if i want to breed albinos then i will obviously need at least one specimen that is at least het for albinism but even then (if bred with a normal snake)only a small percentage of the offspring will actually be albino (around 25%) while 50% will be Heterozygous and carry the gene for albinism and the other 25% will be normal snakes both in looks and genetics,
that is the reason i occasional spend huge sums of money on the 'perfect' snake, the 'bumblebee' royal python i paid £7000 for would have taken years to produce due the the extremely complicated genetics they posses, it was simply alot easier to buy one in and use it to develope my own stock,

[Jezza]

yeah i get it
so other than that is snake breeding very expensive?