Current BP's. Where are they shipped from?

Everyone talks about how all the BP's are shipped from overseas. Does anyone know if any pet chains now order from breeders in the USA? Just curious, because I constantly hear about being careful of mites, ticks, bacteria and fungal infections. But all of the people I know with BP's have never had any problems since day one. I'm just curious to see if anyone knows actually where they come from.

Thanks,
Mike

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Originally Posted by mr86mister

Everyone talks about how all the BP's are shipped from overseas. Does anyone know if any pet chains now order from breeders in the USA? Just curious, because I constantly hear about being careful of mites, ticks, bacteria and fungal infections. But all of the people I know with BP's have never had any problems since day one. I'm just curious to see if anyone knows actually where they come from.

Thanks,
Mike

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Well majority of the big chain pet stores (petco,petsmart and such) buy wild caught or farm raised babies.Thats where the mites and such come from ;)

Lol. Well i do understand where the mites come from. I'm just curious to know if we still ship them as much from Africa currently as we did say 20 years ago or are, as you said Joepythons, we receiving them from North American BP farms?

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Originally Posted by mr86mister

Lol. Well i do understand where the mites come from. I'm just curious to know if we still ship them as much from Africa currently as we did say 20 years ago or are, as you said Joepythons, we receiving them from North American BP farms?

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They do still ship alot of ball pythons here from Africa every year :P

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Originally Posted by mr86mister

Lol. Well i do understand where the mites come from. I'm just curious to know if we still ship them as much from Africa currently as we did say 20 years ago or are, as you said Joepythons, we receiving them from North American BP farms?

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I would say that we bring in a helluva lot more balls today than we did years ago. They are still being brought in from Africa. There are no North American BP farms.

petsmart down by my way isnt allowed to carry snakes and right now all of the birds they have are in quarantine for the bird flu the petco i work for we have a private breeder for all of our snakes so i know they are not wild caught. and as for the birds we are the only petstore in the area that can sell them right now all the other petstores have to wait till april maybe may

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Originally Posted by Monty

petsmart down by my way isnt allowed to carry snakes and right now all of the birds they have are in quarantine for the bird flu the petco i work for we have a private breeder for all of our snakes so i know they are not wild caught. and as for the birds we are the only petstore in the area that can sell them right now all the other petstores have to wait till april maybe may

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All the Petco's are captive hatched (imported from Africa) from the same large supplier.

So these distributor's breed their own now. Instead of collecting pregnant females and sending the babies to us? Or a bit of both. I'm only asking because the baby BP being sold at least locally have usually been in really good health. Is this because the distributor's have more "love" for the snakes and give them better husbandry? Sorry for all the questions I'm just curious.

Uusally gravid females are brought overseas,as well as baby balls and they lay their eggs (Captive Hatched babies).

Like rabernet said, all ball pythons for petco and petsmart are captive hatched. Which does not mean captive bred. Eggs are collected from the wild and hatched out in large quantities, babies are sorted then sold in mass to the pet stores.

Some Petsmarts however are starting to carry pastel ball pythons, which would be captive bred.