pet store loyalty

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I'm pretty sure both petsmart and petco sell captive hatched, not captive bred. BIG difference. Look into it.

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...I'll double-check on my next workday (Tuesdays and Wednesdays are my "weekend" of sorts) but I felt sure the documentation I was given said the words "captive bred."

I'll still double-check though. Wouldn't be the first time they labeled things inaccurately.

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Your co-worker may fall in this category.

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She actually falls into the "if you buy a dog you are a horrible person" category, believing all dogs should be aquired through rescues. Which isn't too bad...my current dog is a rescue pup from a local no-kill shelter. However she does take a dim view on those of us who also would buy a dog...my next dog, for example, is going to be a present to myself and will be a purebred and show-quality animal, which I will not spay/neuter as that would disqualify me from competing. This of course makes me a horrible person. e.e

Likewise, I intend on breeding Ball Pythons down the road, purely to breed the snakes in morphs I want, and if I break even selling any superfluous animals I'll consider myself lucky. By her logic, I'm a terrible fellow, some kind of cruel animal hating prick or something.

Thank heavens she also dislikes snakes and reptiles in general and declared I'm some kind of freak for loving them. Ergo, no innocent herps will have to suffer under her blissful negligence.

I got my first snake form PetCo and sadly didnt know about this site untill a few days after. I had to repurchase alot of items and have learned alot since then and have since purchased a mom and pop pet store that knew as much as I do know and treat there animals much better. My female Red Tail Boa was handled daily and eating live like clockwork. Sadly they dont make pet store employees pass tests on the animals they help care for and assist people in the store on. Even when it comes to brands there are big differents. Like the Exo Terra UTH vs the Zilla one that gets 50 times hotter.

Since finding this site my snakes have not skipped a meal, continue to grow at a normal rate, show no signs of stress, shed properly and correctly with out my help. Sadly most dont find this site untill they have bought a snake at a petstore first.

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Originally Posted by iCandiBallPythons

Tell him to come here and read a care sheet, he just might learn a thing or two.

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yeah that is exactly what I did. I actually brought him to the computer and showed him the site, and told him how much it helped me.

On the subject of pet store employee ignorance, I heard a Petco employee once telling a prospective buyer that ferrets are vegetarians!

The sad truth is, 99.9% of petstore employees are ignorant of how to care for the majority of the animals they sell. Many are right out of high school, and these stores tell them little to nothing on proper care. Since almost all pet stores have a "sell,sell,sell" attitude, even those who run them don't know or care to know how to properly care for the animals. After all, if someone buys a pet, and heaven forbid KNOWS how to care for it, that animal will live for years, and how is the store supposed to make money that way??

But, if the store can sell them all kinds of expensive junk they don't need, and the animals still dies within a few months, the buyer will be back for another animal, as well as all the latest and most expensive stuff to "correct" the problems that killed the first, and so on and so on.

I made the mistake of buying a baby BP from a chain store. It was tiny and cute, and although it was being sold as a normal, pictures here lead me to believe it was actually a pastel. We got it home, and things seemed to be going well. Then I noticed it NEVER came out of the water bowl. And because I used that compressed coconut stuff, I never saw the mites in the water. It wasn't until they were so bad they got all over me when I picked it up that I knew something was wrong. Off to the same store I went, and came home with a little blue bottle of "mite killer" I sprayed the tank and the snake every three days, but the mites never went away completely. I was frustrated and upset, but didn't know what to do.

Then my husband and I had to leave for a week on a family emergency, and our animal sitter we told not to mess with the snakes for fear of something going wrong. When we got home, the poor thing was literally CRAWLING with mites, you couldn't even see the snake anymore. I sprayed and sprayed it and it's tank, but by the next morning it was gone. The mites had just eaten it alive. I was so upset, and felt so guilty. I went to the store and asked what the used for mites, and was shown the same stuff I had purchased. When I told them it didn't work, I was informed I had not used it right, because it killed the ones the store got in one treatment. I followed the directions on the bottle, so I am convinced they lied.

Of course, too little too late I found this place, and after a few weeks of study, I decided to try again. I got my first two from 8-ball, and have added six more since then. I've had no problems at all, I keep them in tubs so their habitat wasn't very expensive. I use Provent -a- Mite once a month as a safety measure, and all my babies are happy and healthy. I won't ever trust a chain petstore again.

Gale

Ah, I'm lucky to have a really great pet store near me! They have lots of different reptiles and are knowledgeable about them to boot. It's a locally-owned pet store, though, not a big chain.

I know the Petco/Petsmarts by will have it posted on the name card of the animal if it is captive bred. That is their excuse to charge more i guess. And do you guys have any idea how much UV BP get in rat burrows in Africa? LOL must be tons O_o

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Originally Posted by kc261

I'm pretty sure both petsmart and petco sell captive hatched, not captive bred. BIG difference. Look into it.

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You are correct, Petsmart and Petco sell Captive Hatched (aka farmed) babies. From the same supplier in fact.

I will say that the Petsmart that I go to, the staff does care about giving out good information. If I'm in the store shopping, and someone asks about the ball pythons, they page me to come and answer questions. They even had me come in one day to talk to the folks in the small animal department about them, and what best to offer new keepers (I suggest that they sell a 10 gallon to start with, a UTH and at the very least a rheostat and I show them the hides that I think they should suggest - no half log hides, but the caves or coconut hides). They give most ball python customers my name and phone number (with my permission) if they have any questions after the sale. And they always, always ask me to sex them for them, or show me one that's not eating that they have in the back to ask for advice on the best way to get it eating (and yes, I suggest that they offer live and keep the animal warm with belly heat in a small enclosure). However, their rate of non-feeders is almost non-existent, because they do try my techniques (they'll take the snakes out of the display the night before feeding, let them chill in the back in a small enclosure with a snug hide, the present a warmed up f/t feeder the next morning after they've had a chance to settle into a smaller, more private "dining area").

So, I do appreciate the staff at the store that I go to. I wouldn't buy an animal there (price), but I still enjoy talking snakes and bringing in pictures of some of my kiddos for them to see.

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Originally Posted by unspecified42

Ah, I'm lucky to have a really great pet store near me! They have lots of different reptiles and are knowledgeable about them to boot. It's a locally-owned pet store, though, not a big chain.

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I'm lucky enough to have one of those too, and it's were I've gotten all my BPs from so far, and they've been nothing but helpful with my Spider, who was a terrible feeder. They kept him for almost a month and got him eating again, and they still ask me how he's doing 9 months later :)

Robin, it is great that the petsmart near you is so well managed. Unfortunately, many aren't. This is IMHO one of the evils of big chains, whether it is pet stores or anything else. They get a good name off of some that are well managed, and of course tons of advertising and name recognition, and then even the horrible locations are able to stay in business. Badly managed independent stores go out of business, but big chains allow even badly managed stores to stay open.

I have a couple snakes that solely eat asfr's and the place i was getting them from stopped carrying them suddenly and before i could find a new source i was in a bad place. So i picked up gerbils at a local pet store, (which they took just as quick as the asfr's just cost me more) and the guy at the store started asking me a bunch of questions about why don't i just let him get me some rats (like i haven't tried that one :rolleyes: not to mention buy rats somewhere else that doesn't sell gerbils for the rest of my snakes) and he GUARANTEED ME that if i just kept smacking the ball python in the face with the rat it would eventually eat it. He told me it might seem cruel but i wouldn't be hurting the snake to beat it in the face with a LIVE rat!!! and then even went as far as to tell me that he may just get really angry and strike it a few times but if i smacked him in the face enough and got the snake mad enough he would just eat it!!!!! Then he told me if that didn't work just kill the rat and shove it down the snakes throat. I told him that i'd prefer to just pay the extra money on gerbils and let them eat on their own untill i found more asfr's. THEN that led to an in depth conversation of me telling him what an asfr was and him telling me i was wrong and there was no such thing as a soft fur rat. i haven't even been back to that pet store since then (just started stocking up on frozen asfr's so i'm never in that position again!!) but i'll never go back there solely based on the pure ignorance of his statements. And i thought i was doing better NOT going to petsmart or petco. I really feel bad for the people that go in there that don't have a clue and take this guys advice and go home and beat there snake to death with live rats and then wonder why it starved to death! So just because i pet store tells you something definately doesn't mean it's true!!!