poll-what kind of keeper are YOU?

i dont think i'd count as a hobbyist...i'm just a regualr pet owner.

Like Big Gunns, I consider myself a clown,:D, On the herp note though I have produced thousands of babies..Corns and rat snakes, kings and milks, several in the pituophis family, a few ball pythons,:P, carpets,rosy boas upteen boa constrictors and the 1st in the country to captive produce boa constrictor nebulosa, one of if not the first with other locales of B.C and I hold the record for the largest clutch of Borneo python eggs at 44 eggs..I may have been the first to produce P curtus although another says they are but theres no date..No biggie,, I'm just a clown who loves his snakes and meets with success at what i'm doing...:D

Hmm I said intermediate hobbyist because I'm not sure I would ever consider myself a professional. I've got nine bps, tried my hand at breeding this year, this next season I should have four clutches.

Novice, I have read a heck of alot about herps in the past year or so but at the moment I have little to no experiance with them.

I am a novice hobbyist, trying to see if I can get my first normal for a start. Then buy other bp to get my favorite :) bumblebee

I consider myself an advanced hobbyist, not because I am a professional. Because I have been keeping all types of "critters" alive & healthy for most of my life & in 6 days I will be 55. I am an intellectual reader, meaning I get as much info on anything I keep as I can. I currently own 22 snakes, 10 tarantulas, 8 lizards, 7 dogs, 3 tortoises, 3 parakeets, 2 chinchillas, 1 wolf spider, & 1 hedgehog. I still have tons of info to learn about all my charges. I hope to breed my boas & king snakes in a few years.
2.3.0 - Red Tail Boas
1.2.0 - Cal-King Snakes
2.2.0 - Corn Snakes
1.1.0 - Rosy Boas
0.0.1 - Green Tree Python
0.1.0 - Red Blood Python
1.0.0 - Coastal Carpet Python
0.0.1 - Rainbow boa
1.0.0 - Pueblan Milk Snake,
0.1.0 - Piebald Ball Python - coming home in a month
0.0.1 - Great western Rat Snake
0.0.1 - Checkered Garter Snake

intermediate hobbyist

I've only been doing this for about 3 years. I own everything in my sig, but this is my first year producing babies. I don't know what would make me call myself advanced. I don't know. i guess things i don't know are...

I havn't really delt with many sicknesses, sometimes I suspect a possible RI so I take action against it early... never had a snake come down with it tho. never had to make a vet trip, so I basically know nothing in this area and hope I don't have to learn about this area lol. guess i should educate myself in this area just incase.

I can't pick out yellowbellys for crap. guess I should look into that. I blame my color blindness (yes yes i know I should still be able to tell lol)

I really don't have a network of people I talk to that are in this hobby, guess I never got into the social part of the hobby. I just talk on the forum.

I am currently learning to deal with fresh born out of the egg hatchlings, so i should have that hurdle under my belt soon. 2 of the babies i will keep and raise into breeders.

even if I did know all that, i still don't know what would make me feel comfortable saying im an advanced hobbyist. things i do have under my belt tho...

my knowledge is pretty vast of the animals I own. I know their requirements, im pretty comfortable saying I can read their body language pretty well.

I've raised 2 months old snakes into breeders, produced ball pythons, few more months im going to try carpet pythons.

I understand genetics very well, im sure there still some things I need to learn, but I don't think anyone knows it all. I don't need a calc but, I still use one sometimes due to lazyness lol.

I don't need a stupid dial or read out to tell me what the humidity is in a cage, between just looking at a cage and feelign the air, you can tell.

I also have gotten pretty good at building cages and racks (if that counts for anything lol).

those last things are stuff that I didn't know when I first got in this hobby.

Defiantly novice but moving into professional fast not to make a lot of money but to hopefully make enough to support the hobby. And to experience of breeding morph's

Leaning towards novice professional. We are just getting to the point where we are building an "inventory" to start attending the local show to sell some of the animals we've produced or have as extra breeders. I'm really looking forward to the next few years. Hoping we can grow enough to create a self sustaining hobby and maybe into a small business.

Novice hobbyist....for now. At the moment I have two snakes and a leo.

Although, in the past I've had dozens of anoles, a Texas collared lizard, a rough green snake and a common garter, but none of those went exceptionally well. The three new guys are also the first reptiles I've taken care of without dad's help. So yeah, novice.