I did a bit of searching to help you out and found some statistics about fatalities by horses. Below are the links.
www.vs.gov.bc.ca/stats/quarter/q1_2_98/index.html?SMSESSION=NO
The link above is for the Province of British Columbia, Canada, but should still be valuable. Also on the same page are the number of deaths caused by snakes. However, BC doesn't have alot of native venomous snakes.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_horse_accidents
www.nsc.org/lrs/statinfo/odds.htm
The above gives odds of dying by various means, both by year and by lifetime. Kind of interesting so thought to include it here.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snakebite_(bite)
Another good document about numbers of snake bites and number of deaths. MOst are for venomous snakes and since Ball Pyhons do not fall into the catagory of having bites that are harmful to humans venom wise (or for all intents and purposes, are non-venomous), this should show they are not are not a risk to young children.
Bring good photos of your cage setup, the room, the locks etc. Also details about what you do on a daily basis to ensure children do not get access to the snakes unsupervised. All safety precautions you take, first aid kits and of course, what to do should the worse thing was to happen. Information about the snakes themselves, such as maximum/average adult size, etc, will help your case as well. Being as well prepared as possible for your hearing, will better show you know exactly what you are doing. Seeing if 'specialist' in herptology can help justify your claim that ball pythons pose little to no risk to your children's safety, will also help.
I think concentrating more on showing your snakes are not a risk may work better than proving horses are just as dangerous or more dangerous. However knowning the frequency of horse related injuries and deaths can deffinitely help to show being around horses poses no less risk than being around snakes. At least with snakes, especially ball pythons, if spooked, they are much much less likely to cause majoy bodily harm (an adult ball python bite is not likely to kill even a small child, providing care is provided asap. Since no constrictor snake i have heard of ever constricts in self defense, a spooked ball python is more likely to bite or flee (or just coil into a cute little ball). A panicked horse is very much capable of trampling a small child, throwing them off their back or kicking and biting and giving their size in comparison to even an adult human, not to mention weight and shear power, they will do more damage than even a demented ball python would. At worse a ball python may bite off a finger, or damage one enough to cause it to be amputated.
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PHLdyPayne
