Snakebusters have to care for a vast number of reptiles used on weekends for the Melbourne mobile reptile parties, Melbourne kids parties, corporate parties Melbourne, children's parties in Melbourne and reptile education.

And then on weekdays the reptiles work hard doing corporate incursions, Melbourne school displays, school incursions in Victoria and Melbourne wildlife incursion education.

Raymond Hoser and Snakebusters have verifiably been at the leading edge of reptile care, breeding and research for decades.

In the 1970’s, Raymond Hoser was the first person anywhere to commence routine keeping of snakes of all kinds in plastic tubs with minimal furnishings.

The main argument then and now is biosecurity and the push to use these tubs was fear of mite and protozoan infections, ease of separating snakes and the ease of monitoring specimens.

At the time, many “rivals” in the reptile game, commenced a vicious campaign alleging Raymond Hoser was engaging in animal cruelty by keeping reptiles in plastic tubs.

Many of these people are the same ones seen postingon the internet false claims that devenomizing snakes is also cruel.

The strange thing is that 30 years on, all major reptile keepers and breeders keep their reptiles in large plastic tubs, just like those first pioneered by Raymond Hoser in the 1970’s.

Raymond Hoser was the first to catch, keep and breed Ant-hill Pythons Rawlingspython perthensis, way back in the 1980’s.

The history of the events at the time is significant as it has relevance in the post 2000 period.

Hoser published definitive papers showing that Ant-hill Pythons were a totally different animal to Children’s Pythons Antaresia childreni, and sibling taxa, Stimson’s Pythons Antaresia saxacola and Spotted Pythons Antaresia maculosus, and yet a noisy group of people spread misinformation to the effect that Hoser didn’t have a clue about reptiles and his ideas were fanciful.

This misinformation continued in definitive books by Hal Cogger and others, but eventually the truth came out and other herpetologists confirmed Hoser was right about the taxonomy of these small red pythons.

Ditto for the breeding methods he used for those snakes,since copied successfully for all other kinds of python on earth.

Of course in the period 1998-2009, Raymond Hoser has scientifically described and named numerous taxa, with business rivals and others with axes to grind widely posting that Hoser’s papers are factually wrong and lack merit.

However of note is that for almost all taxa described first by Hoser, DNA evidence has come in and of course all confirmed Hoser’s findings as totally correct.

The best known of course is the shifting of Reticulated Pythons from the genus Python, to the Hoser genus Broghammerus.

So now Raymond Hoser has naming rights on the world’s longest snake!

No other herpetologist anywhere can match that!

In terms of keeping reptiles and caring for them, Snakebusters continue to lead in all areas, be they quarantine, caring for aged reptiles and more.

In the post 2000 period, the most significant innovation by far has been the surgical devnomizing of snakes.  This has revolutionised the keeping, and breeding of these species, due largely to reversing the old style of “hands off” keeping to “hands on”, meaning that health issues are identified and dealt with faster and before they get out of hand.

The end point, a far lower mortality of captive venomous snakes.

The amazing thing is that Snakebusters competitors, who lack the expertise to devenomize snakes, make false claims against them, knowing that from an animal welfare point of view, the devenomized snakes have it all over their captive venomous counterparts who are bashed with metal sticks daily.

When Raymond Hoser/Snakebusters applied for the trademark “Australia’s best reptiles” Hoser was able to prove that his reptile husbandry and information was the best in Australia.  For that reason, the trademark was granted.

The significance is that whether you are keeping reptiles in Australia, handling reptiles in Victoria, doing a snake handling course in Melbourne or merely want to know about reptiles, with Snakebusters you are guaranteed to get the best information in Australia.  That’s been agreed by the government.

Any other keepers of reptiles, sources of keeping information and the like, can at best, be only “second best”.

Often people who want to keep reptiles in Melbourne, Victoria, get their first reptile hands on at a kids party in Melbourne. Reptile parties with Snakebusters are the only hands on parties for kids or adults in Melbourne with wildlife.

Australia’s best Reptiles is a registered trademark for a wide range of activities relating to reptiles including: