Matthew

Hey, my name is Matthew and i'm a 21 y/o college student majoring in Vet Tech at CCBC. I'm a pretty laid back person that doesn't get upset about many things and like for life to run as smooth as possible. I don't like arguing - ever, and am extremely nonchalant which is often mistaken for me not caring about something. There's no point in getting upset about many things, especially if it will not change the situation just stress you out.
To look at me you wouldn't think that I love animals but I always have and have lots of them, now mainly pythons and boas. I graduated from Baltimore Polytechnic Institute (Poly) in 04'. One thing that is different about me is that I have been a vegetarian since I was 6 because I liked animals. Don't worry about eating meat around me though, I don't care.
I am also a wrestler, and currently wrestle independently. When leaving h.s. I was (and still am) one of the most accomplished Baltimore city wresters being All-American, a 3x state placer (2nd,3rd,3rd), 2x regional champ, and 2x city champ, with a high school career record of 104-9 and total career record of 278-37. I wouldn't be able to say this without my coaches at McKim and uncles that have always supported me, and most of all my mom who has been there from the start. I was not able to compete in the Ironman World championships in 2006 due to spraining my deltoid (shoulder) at practice. Well, it happened again in 2007... The week before Eastern Nationals I tour my PCL and sprained my knee. Against everyone's advice I still wrestled even though I could hardly walk. I lost by 1pt on a bullcrap stalling call from the ref from becoming 2x All-American. A guy I easily beat the month before at Regionals got 3rd so I was pretty pissed. I also played football, ran track, and weight lifted. I am very athletic and like to do many things.
I now have 2 jobs and am an ophioculturist on the side (a snake breeder). Everyone thinks i'm crazy for breeding snakes until I tell them that i've sold snakes for over $3K and pulled in a little more than $10k in just over one month between my 3 jobs, pretty good for my age. So when I tell you I paid $3K for a snake don't tell me what you could have spent that money on because the fact is 2 years from now that snake will be worth over $10K and whatever you would have bought will probably have depreciated... The most expensive snake ever sold was $175K (the first leucistic ball python) and many people make a full time career of this. But due to having 3 jobs, I hardly have any time to do anything other than work or even think about a social life.
I might be young but to date I have owned and worked with (as far as breeding):
Balls: pieds, spiders, yellow bellies, pinstripes, albinos, mojaves, pastels, caramels, genetic stripes, ghosts, clowns and ivories.
Bloods: reds, albino reds, blacks, borneos, borneos (marbles)
Boas: anerys, hypos, albinos, sunglows, and snows
Colubrids: corn snakes, black rat snakes, texas rat snakes, bubblegum rat snakes
Venomous: albino monocle cobras, and western diamondback rattlesnakes
One thing i'd like to tell people who read this an decide they'd like to breed snakes (or anything) is don't try this because you think you can get rich off of it, do it because it's what you love to do. I started breeding because it's a passion of mine and I love animals. I've invested thousands and thousands of dollars into it to make it as far as I have, much more than someone who just thinks they can get rich quick from breeding some animals. I have also invested years of reading, owning, and learning everything I could about snakes and animals in general.
I always have had a lot of animals. My interest in snakes started when I was 12 or so, I used to go to my mother's job and print pics of care sheets, and boa, ball, and blood morphs. I remember printing out pics of albino boas which at that time cost well over $1K and thinking, "I'll never be able to afford a snake that expensive." Boy was I wrong I've already bought over 10 snows, sunglows, and albinos.
I got my first ball "Pythasese" when I was 12 and my 2nd a couple of weeks later. At 13 my mom took all of my animals and I never forgave her... When I was 17 I started a new collection of many different kinds of animals (mostly reptiles). I decided to breed them to have my what was then a hobby pay for itself. I started buying mates for them. At that time I had leopard geckos, african fat tail geckos, ratsnakes, cornsnakes, horned frogs, african bullfrogs, a couple of boas and pythons. Eventually my mind frame turned to wanting to do what I loved and make money at the same time. There's not much more fulfilling than doing what you love for a living. Corns and leos weren't worth enough to make a considerable amount of money off of so I made a $7K snow boa project deal with a local breeder. Slowly my collection was traded/sold to acquire more and more boas which peaked at about 35.
At the time of my boa deal I decided not to go in the direction of balls because I had heard a lot about them not eating f/t and before a herp lover i'm an animal lover and never enjoy being the cause of an animal's death. I didn't want to feed live animals to my snakes. But in 06' I started ball python morph projects. Within a couple of months I had over 30 balls way faster than the time it took me to get 30 boas... I read every snake book I could find (most 2 or 3x) and learned all I could.
I also taught myself genetics which is important in what I do i.e. when you breed a hypomelanistic heterozygous for albinism to a double homozygous anerythristic albino (snow) out of a clutch of 32 offspring you'll theoretically produce: 8 double het snows (sell for $1,000 each), 8 hypos het snow ($2,500 each), 8 albinos het snow ($2,500 each) and 8 sunglows het snow ($8,000 each). That means that if you sell all of these babies at retail price you will make $112,000!! What I plan to do is sell my snakes at about 1/2 retail price this way I can sell all of them quickly. Someone would be crazy to buy a genetically identical snake from someone else. I figure $66K isn't bad for a side job. (Prices as of when I wrote this). I know about 10% of that made sense but that's what I do.
I'm not gay and will NEVER be so if you are, don't bother sending me any messages because I will not say anything nice back.
If you want to know anything else about me just ask. I don't like answering questions that i've already answered in my profile but I guess you won't know this if you don't read it... So if you're reading this because I said, "Have you read my profile??" Now you know why...
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