My wife and I have burms and retics. I would say that the choice is primarily a like and want issue for you as an individual, but I can offer some experince based opinion from my point of view.

We have three burms. Burms seem to us to be really aggressive in their cage, but once out are fine. They have a huge feeding response as do retics. Kept in the right conditions, burms will be fine.

My wife begged for retics for a while, and I was iffy about them because at the time I had little experience with snakes. I had heard about the reputation they had as being aggressive and so on. I finally caved in and found a pair of female tigers at a good price that we went and picked up. They are truly a dream to have. The prior owner had done a very good job with them and we were very pleased. They are my two favorites out of the big snakes. We then purchased a male sunfire from a breeder and have had to do a lot of work to try and calm him down, but he is still sketchy at times. He needs a lot more work.

As hatchlings, most snakes are going to be defensive. You just have to work to build a bond of trust with them. It takes a lot of commitment to have something that represents one of the most powerful creatures to roam the earth. Our caging is not tubs or racks. Currently they are still juveniles and are in glass caging until we can build some custom cages for them to live in. I don't like the idea of racks and such. I believe an animal should be allowed to see it's surroundings if it wishes to do so when not in it's hidebox. That's like taking sight away from a person. I also think that has something to do with the aggression seen in some of the animals we have purchased. If you were stuck in a rack system or tub for a year and only handled around feeding time, wouldn't you be pissed off too? (i.e. a larger facility)

Either way you go, I think either species is a good choice. I hope this helped some.
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1.0 100% het albino columbian
0.1 pastel columbian
0.1 hypo columbian
0.1 guyana
0.1 surinam
0.2 jcp
1.0 irian jaya
1.1.1 normal balls
1.0 granite al burm
0.1 granite het al burm
0.1 albino burm
1.0 sunfire retic
0.2 tiger retics

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