I keep both carpet pythons and hoggies.

In general, carpet pythons are a slender python species, and depending on subspecies/locality can range in adult sizes anywhere from 5 feet to 10 feet, and 5-30lbs (with rare instances of longer or heavier individuals). They are fun, hardy, great size to handle, and usually quite tame as adults. Out of mine, I only have one biter, and he's still very young/little. They are also usually great eaters, but keep them on rats for life (starting at rat pinkies for hatchlings), as they are also notorious for being difficult to switch off mice. You don't want to have to feed a 10+lb snake mice.

Care can be as simple as generic python care of temps in the 80s with basking spots and feeding every 7-14 days to as complex as you want with designing gigantic zoo-style vivariums.

There is a huge focus on strictly breeding localities/subspecies, as there are really only a handful of morphs available, and really only 1 that is somewhat affordable.

Carpet pythons are pretty much my favorite snake to keep, and would be my #1 choice if I had to stick to a single species.

Western hognose snakes are small. Males top out at ~150 grams, females top out at 500-1000 grams and 3 feet long. As you can see, there is quite a difference in size between the sexes.

The best thing about hoggies is that they are pretty much universally safe to handle. I've never seen any hog bite in defense. They may hiss, "false strike" (pretend to strike with a closed mouth), or even play dead, but they won't bite . For the most part though they are calm, handleable, small, and CUTE.

These guys are hardy and live all over the US from Texas all the way up to Minnesota. They experience summer temps in the south over 100*F and winter temps up north WELL below 0*F (though they may not expose themselves directly to those extremes). Like most American colubrids they do well with a variety of temperatures, with some people keeping them at the high 70s and low 80s, while others have success providing hot spots of 88-94 degrees.

With the introduction of an incredible number of hognose morphs in recent years, interest in this species has skyrocketed.

Basically, both are great for pets, easy to care for, with unlimited breeding opportunities.