Specializing a collection

So at this point in my reptile career, I have about 10 different species I work with. Ball pythons, sand boas, and colubrids mostly. Now I want to know, how do you guys pick just one species to work with? I want to keep pretty much all snakes and find my self struggling to just pick an animal I'm most passionate about and expand with quality animals. Any insight from seasoned keepers?

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Originally Posted by Ridinandreptiles

So at this point in my reptile career, I have about 10 different species I work with. Ball pythons, sand boas, and colubrids mostly. Now I want to know, how do you guys pick just one species to work with? I want to keep pretty much all snakes and find my self struggling to just pick an animal I'm most passionate about and expand with quality animals. Any insight from seasoned keepers?

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There's no rule that says you have to specialize in anything. Maintain whatever tickles your fancy and keep the passion alive.

no rule, but the most practical approach would be to choose herps with the same husbandry requirements. it's easier to maintain the ideal ambient temp and humidity in one single herp room rather than a multitude of different enclosures that are sitting next to each other.

i want a lot of different boids, heck a lot of different snakes period. but i only have ball pythons at the moment. i do not feel that makes me a specialist. rather, i view it has having a limited collection....

i know only two fellow herpers who intentionally keep their collection to only one particular species (one keeps retics, the other burms). the common thing about them is they are not (yet) interested in other snakes. i think the general personality of herpers is liking all sorts of interesting animals, and diversity of species in collections is the norm. i don't know about you guys, but where i am, the more advanced and experienced a herper is, the more animals he has.

No help here, I wouldn't even consider just keeping one type/species of reptile. The closest I come to specializing is the fact in sheer numbers, I have way more ball pythons than anything else, but that's just because they take up so little room when housed properly.

If you have the space, and money, and time to care for a bunch of different snakes just do it :) if I had more money and space I'd have a freaking reptile zoo with snakes all over the place but sadly I don't have enough space nor funds for them all haha. They are all so addicting so I'd probably have like 12 boas over here 20 ball pythons over there some hoggies in this corner some corns in another it would be a mad house haha. But if I hit the lottery one day and buy a facility like Brian's at BHB I'd have a super diverse collection like his. So you don't have to specialize at all if you don't want too :)


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No reason to specialize, in fact, most large breeders I know are now expanding out from BPs to other species.

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Originally Posted by J.P.

no rule, but the most practical approach would be to choose herps with the same husbandry requirements. it's easier to maintain the ideal ambient temp and humidity in one single herp room rather than a multitude of different enclosures that are sitting next to each other.

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This is a great point. I keep my boas and balls in a spare bedroom, and the colubrids can be kept a little cooler and dryer so they're in my daughter's bedroom (she likes them there).

I can't give any reasons why you should specialize though. I like each species for what it is - the BP's because they're just chill and cute, the bigger boas because they're tolerant of being handled, the Tarahumara because she has more attitude than any of my other 10 snakes put together, my king snakes and milk snake are beautiful and also very good to handle, the garters... just because they're so quick, curious, and into everything...