That would be like asking someone which car/truck is the best on the market,they all have different variables to determine what makes one better than the other,same goes for experience of keeping herps.Lets say that one individual keeps nothing but colombian boas,whereas another individual keeps nothing but jungle carpets.They both would be experienced in the keeping,breeding,housing,feeding,etc of the one individual snake but probably wouldnt have a clue of what the requirements were for the other individual.Now if you take someone that has kept retics,anacondas,burms,etc (large snakes) but has never kept smaller species like b/ps,blood pythons,spotted pythons,etc then they are what i would consider very experienced in keeping the larger species but i wouldnt ask them say a ? about what to keep a blood python in as an adult.



As for the length of time one keeps an individual snake/snakes in their particular care,that would mean that they were experienced with those individual snakes but wouldnt constitute them to tell everyone that all snakes of that species are tame.Again it all boils down to the individual snake as well as the keeper.People have different ways of doing different things,some are right others are wrong but it still is i guess what you would call an experience.One thing i've learned in my time of keeping reptiles of all kinds from snakes to monitors is that no matter how much experience you think you gain from one certain individual animal there will always be something else that that same animal will eventually make you learn,sometimes the hard way other times the easy way but you will still learn from that one individual for as long as you keep it.



Now what i think would rank among the highest of experinece would be zoo keepers,herpetologists (licensed not self appointed)big breeders,small breeders (with at least 10 years experience under their belt either past or present)old timers who were around when importation was all there was,etc. now that to me would be enough experience to pass down to a many of a generation of young herpers as well as newbies alike.Even still the old timers are still learning the same as the newbies its just that they have been around longer so they could be considered highly experienced.Regards Bill McLeod

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