Cost of breeding?

[greychins]

I am surprised to hear that some of you come close to breaking even or can even turn a profit. How do you sell so many chins? Is it to other breeders or the pet market? I can't imagine the demand is that high. I know the pet market is bigger now than it ever has been, but still seems fairly small compared to the number of breeders and chins produced.

We're far from turning a profit on chins... the only thing that keeps us from being thousands in the hole is that we sell supplies... but as for selling so many chins -- last year we adopted out 45 chinchillas and some other odd pets (4 of those 45 were brought back and were adopted out again, one twice, so really 50 chin adoptions in 2011). That's not counting babies that we sold... probably around 7-10 babies, on top of all of the adoptions. I really think it has to do with the area people are located in. Some places have chins galore and it's hard to give them away. Here, we're minutes away from Illinois and less than 2 hours away from both Michigan and Wisconsin. We've had people come from all of those states (and IN of course) to get rescues, and we even had someone drive 6 hours from Cincinnati, OH to drop off their chinchilla at our rescue. I think it helps us that we're so close to several states, because it's a wider range of people that come here. And as for selling babies, we hold some back for show, but the ones we don't... I probably have 7-10 people on my list currently waiting for a specific color baby chin. People get added to the list on a pretty regular basis - have a baby and end up selling the baby, someone else asks to be added to the list. If I could keep up with the demand, that would be something. Must just be a hot-spot for chins or something. I suppose that's good, cause if it wasn't, I would have rescues coming out my ears.

 

[VolunteerChin22]

I have probably one large vet bill a year (couple hundred) and I had to buy a new a/c unit this year. but other than that I have people waiting for kits now and almost all of my kits born this year are sold. I spend about $30 a month on supplies. Same situation with Spoof for the most part. I sell to other breeders and pet homes.

 

[ChinchillasByDesign]

We have been breeding for almost 5 years now. We have never "made a profit" but if we were to stop purchasing other animals and start using our own then we would at least break even. This year we hope to not purchase many animals, but, instead will do some trading with other breeders. As of now, we have more calls for chins than we can fill. So, crossing our fingers we will come much closer to our goal.