After 20 years of breeding pythons, Le Van Hien’s success is well known in HCM City and throughout the country.

Hien’s python farm, located at 17/6 Luy Van Bich street, Tan Phu District is the most well-known, and his experience has taught him how to treat some common python diseases, and sell products.

"I began raising the snakes in the 1980s. I collected pythons from farms and sold them to people who needed to earn money. Many people are afraid of them, but they are my pets," Hien said. Hien learned how to take care of the pythons from a vendor, and raised enough capital to build his own farm.

Originally snake products were mostly exported to China, however when the market changed, the price of a small python went from VND120,000 to only VND2,000.

Farmers were forced to release their reptiles into the forest. On top of these difficulties, Hien also found that, "pythons are easy to rear but also easily get diseases like mouth ulcers and runny noses. There was no medicine and each farmer tried their best, but most of the snakes died anyway."

Hien looked for medicine in 2000, when he lost more than 300 pythons to disease.

"At first, I treated them by injecting medicine directly through their skin, but it punctured too many holes. Then I pumped medicine through their mouths. My biggest python became the guinea-pig. Now I can rear many more because I have the proper medicine ."

Hien now owns more than 1,200 pythons, with 600 at their reproductive age. They can produce 10,000 to 15,000 small pythons a year. The biggest python weighs nearly 70kg and there are countless small ones.

Already famous for finding effective treatment for common diseases, Hien’s popularity rose as he found more markets for python skin products.

In the last three months of 2004, Hien earned more than US$350,000 from exporting snake skin to Italy.

"Some of my business partners came to visit my farm. They wanted to order my products and were not afraid of paying a deposit," he bragged.

Hien keeps a large room in his house for pythons to breed. He said this year he would begin building a 2,000sq.m farm in Binh Chanh District, where he could raise even more snakes and export more skin.

In the HCM City area, python breeding is recovering slowly, with a dozen large-scaled farms. The prices for small reptiles is back to its original peak of VND100,000 each and the price of exported skin runs from $6-15 per metre depended on its width.

According to some python farmers, if they can sell the skin for VND50,000 to VND80,000 per kg, they will earn a profit.

Difficulty comes in finding new markets. "Presently, we have to discover markets ourselves," Hien said. "I am ready to give medicine to other farmers, but I am also afraid that there is no market for them."

However, Hien decided to visit Italy this year to try to expand the market. "In the future, I will focus on the consumer, I will take responsibility for the output sources for our python farmers," Hien said confidently. — VNS

5yrs from now @Lala will be richest man in Africa.

Lalasticlala

LALA..... five years later...

snakes nd pythons are baes!..

Oh Lala! Where are you?
[img]https:///media/1-08-2018/_UJxH7.gif[/img]

my fear for these type of things is that they are wild animals and serious care must be taken not to end up in the belly of the Python. this is not a business for people like me to do. perhaps Lala will consider this business to push him to his millions