Just a comment on Leadership - If the DM lets you pick feats & skills for experts, then ignoring them would be a waste of significant potential. Make Handle Animal one of their available skills, take Skill Focus for each, pick a race with a +2 wis, bonus and make them venerable, for a +4 or +5 attribute bonus depending on if they have elite array. With max ranks, and a masterwork tool, this comes out to a +13 or +14 bonus - on a 10, this will let them rear an 8-9 HD animal.
These include: A Giant Crocodile (CR 4), Rhinoceros (CR 4), Giant Octopus (CR 8!!), Dire Boar (CR 4), Dire Lion (CR 5), Dire Wolverine (CR 4). And all that's just in the SRD - the setting-specific books probably have even more goodies.
With each Expert having at least one of these critters, and the potential to buff every single one of them, you ignore them to your significant loss.
Of course, this kind of abuse is ridiculous unless everyone is doing it, but hey, you optimize with what your given. Sorry if this post was a bit off-topic, just felt I had to say this.