The Reptile Mecca

The National Reptile Breeder's Expo was a couple of weeks ago in Daytona, Fl. This is the largest reptile show in the world, it typically sells out the majority of the hotels in Daytona. Not bad considering that just 30 years ago herpeticulture was still in it's infancy. While I did not attend, I do take a special interest in the aftermath of the show. I feel that this show can help gauge the health of the reptile industry and hobby. Some years are great, some years are terrible, and some years are mixed between breeders or even species. I keep in contact with a few of the larger breeders that attend and the reptile forums and message boards are normally packed with posts about the event. Knowing how well breeders did in sales and seeing the type of purchases made can give a good snapshot of how the show went and where the hobby is moving. These things are incredibly important in the reptile trade. One year a snake morph could go for $3,500 and the next year some people are selling them for less than $1,000. How is a new breeder supposed to read a market that can change so quick and buyers who can be so fickle?

The best way to try and predict the future is by looking at what everyone is buying now. A few years ago people were snatching up albino boas and hypomelanistic het albino boas. When breed together these two morphs will produce a designer morph known as a Sunglow boa. So no surprise when about two to three years, it takes about three years for female boas to reach sexual maturity, after this big increase in albino and hypo het albino sales we see tons of Sunglows for sale. This flood of Sunglows and their albino, hypo, and hypo het albino siblings drove down the price for all three morphs. This year's sales are not quite as clear. There are a few newer morphs on the market Blood boas, Caramel albinos, and Squaretails being a few that really excite me. But the big sellers seem to be the Co-Dominant mixes. Without going into genetics Co-Dom morphs will produce two appearances one that shows some of the new trait and some of the normal color and pattern, called hets, and one that shows nothing but the new trait, a homo or super. The spectacular nature of the super forms and the ability to see the trait in first generation offspring make these high dollar and high demand morphs. Mix these with Recessive traits like albino, anerythristic, or even other Co-Dom morphs and you have a snake that is very desirable. While this leaves a lot of possibilities for mixing new morph combinations it does little to shed any light on the future market. The strong sales of this year's shows and the newer Recessive morphs are good clues that the market will stay healthy but beyond this I am at a loss. I will have to look to other markets to see how to handle this unclear future but for now all I can think is diversity. Instead of branching out into some other species I will need to focus on building a strong diverse collection of boas. This should allow me to better adapt to any trends that might pop up in the future and at the very least give me an excuse to get more snakes.