US Designer Snake Industry Sees Growing Demand
Like 2 Dislike 0 Published on 5 Nov 2016
Many American designer snake breeders have opted to stay in the business as they expect a growing demand from abroad for the reptiles to revitalize this once highly lucrative industry.
Designer snakes are bred and interbred in captivity to create new colors and patterns, not for temperament or size or any quality other than beauty. They can be worth thousands of dollars a piece, and different breeds are often nicknamed Pastels, Bumblebees, Spiders and Piebalds.
Considered a pioneer of the designer snake industry, Kevin McCurley has run New England Reptile Distribution - or NERD for short - for more than 20 years. The breeding base now houses around 6,000 snakes in a 1300-square-meter building in New Hampshire.
From eggs to hatchlings, shy adolescents to amorous adults, McCurley watches over his collection of pythons, looking for genetic traits that would set one apart from the rest. In the breeder's world of pythons, the weirder the better.
"It literally is living art. The animal, its skin is the canvas. This is a reticulated python. Reticulated pythons look very very different than this and this looks like something completely unnatural," said McCurley.
The snake breeder has witnessed a surge in the value of designer snakes.
"And so initially people were like 'Oh ball pythons, that's like a very cheap, very common animal that anybody would see in the pet store'. So we took a snake that was worth, you know, you go into a pet store and buy it for 40 dollars. And suddenly I was making snakes first maybe 1,200 dollars, then it was 5,000, then it was 7,500, then it was 12,000 , then it went to 20,000," he said.
Once highly lucrative, the designer snake industry peaked around 2010, before more breeders saturated the market, and before state laws became more restrictive.
The good news for NERD, though, is that it's seeing growing demand from abroad, from as far away as Saudi Arabia, Indonesia, Japan, and China.
"Chinese are very interested right now in ball pythons. Their laws have changed, so they've relaxed on being able to attain ball pythons. The Asian customers are very discerning and very exact in what they want, what they think is beautiful," McCurley added.
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