Pity pickups?

the solution is straightforward and easy: Dont buy anything that lives from any shop that doesnt have excellent husbandry for every species they have.

Its a lesson i learned when i had an aquarium. There, you just cannot go directly to a breeder or order online, because living tropical fish are harder to transport than reptiles, and only worth a fraction. So the way to do it is: You look at different aquarium shops, and check their whole display for quality of husbandry. one single fish that is sick or dead anywhere in the collection can make the difference. if you regularly check all the displays in several stores, you get a feeling of who has the husbandry right, and then ONLY buy from these.


for reptiles, just do the same. If husbandry isnt excellent for ALL reptiles, amphibians and spiders, dont buy anything. When you spot a sick turtle or some dead gecko or empty water bowls or a lack of UV light for those species that need it, just dont buy anything. Its the best you can do, shaming a shop that has bad husbandry online and in reviews is also a good idea.

Where i live they also have an excellent reptile sanctuary. The only route to taking in rescues that i consider would be via the reptile sanctuary. They get reptiles in really bad shape all the time, but the reptile sanctuary is led by a university professor veterinarian specialized on reptiles and has 3 or 4 volunteer vets. They only give away animals that have recovered and that are free of infections and parasites, and they only give to people that prove with photo documentation that they have their enclosure and setup right. Taking an animal from this sanctuary also requires an adequate donation to the sanctuary, for that you get life-long support and options to return the animal to the sanctuary.

Thats how rescues make sense. Buying animals from bad guys does not help and cannot help, it only makes things worse.

Apart from that, there often are cases of private people rescuing animals from private people, here you can do a lot of good. Like, for example, a reptile keeper gets a chronic disease that will require long stays in hospitals and therefore must get rid of his collection. This would be a case where help really makes sense. Or when someone with a giant snake is forced to move to a different state, but the snake cannot be moved across state lines.

But when private people charge money for animals in bad shape and make you pay to rescue them, thats again something that cannot be supported.

just my 2 cents, if you want to rescue animals AND support the hobby as a whole, you got to be smart and not let emotions take over. Otherways you give people that dont care about the animals and only care about money a way to walk over you and to trick you into financially supporting them, when you shouldnt.

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Originally Posted by swansonbb

I believe most of the animals they sell are captive bred. The worst husbandry and highest prices I see are usually at Mom & Pop stores.

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That may be true of SOME stores, but the ones here are almost certainly buying bags of imported babies. They are extremely thin with lots of stuck shed. Very dehydrated and not in good shape.

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Originally Posted by threezero

really? i have never been to their store i'm just going off their youtube channel. From what i can see LLL's video show pretty good care of their animal considering the amount of animal they deal with. Underground reptiles too, i don't really like the jackass style of video making but it seems like their venomous section is well taken care and the outdoor enclosure for the tegu and iguana is alot more than what most people could provide.

How about prehistoric pet? they seems to be pretty big in the retic game and i love watching them work with them big girls.

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Take a look at the Fauna classifieds for some nice horror stories about both of those vendors. If you ever see them at expos, take a look at their stock.

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Originally Posted by Kurtilein

the solution is straightforward and easy: Dont buy anything that lives from any shop that doesnt have excellent husbandry for every species they have.

Its a lesson i learned when i had an aquarium. There, you just cannot go directly to a breeder or order online, because living tropical fish are harder to transport than reptiles, and only worth a fraction. So the way to do it is: You look at different aquarium shops, and check their whole display for quality of husbandry. one single fish that is sick or dead anywhere in the collection can make the difference. if you regularly check all the displays in several stores, you get a feeling of who has the husbandry right, and then ONLY buy from these.


for reptiles, just do the same. If husbandry isnt excellent for ALL reptiles, amphibians and spiders, dont buy anything. When you spot a sick turtle or some dead gecko or empty water bowls or a lack of UV light for those species that need it, just dont buy anything. Its the best you can do, shaming a shop that has bad husbandry online and in reviews is also a good idea.

Where i live they also have an excellent reptile sanctuary. The only route to taking in rescues that i consider would be via the reptile sanctuary. They get reptiles in really bad shape all the time, but the reptile sanctuary is led by a university professor veterinarian specialized on reptiles and has 3 or 4 volunteer vets. They only give away animals that have recovered and that are free of infections and parasites, and they only give to people that prove with photo documentation that they have their enclosure and setup right. Taking an animal from this sanctuary also requires an adequate donation to the sanctuary, for that you get life-long support and options to return the animal to the sanctuary.

Thats how rescues make sense. Buying animals from bad guys does not help and cannot help, it only makes things worse.

Apart from that, there often are cases of private people rescuing animals from private people, here you can do a lot of good. Like, for example, a reptile keeper gets a chronic disease that will require long stays in hospitals and therefore must get rid of his collection. This would be a case where help really makes sense. Or when someone with a giant snake is forced to move to a different state, but the snake cannot be moved across state lines.

But when private people charge money for animals in bad shape and make you pay to rescue them, thats again something that cannot be supported.

just my 2 cents, if you want to rescue animals AND support the hobby as a whole, you got to be smart and not let emotions take over. Otherways you give people that dont care about the animals and only care about money a way to walk over you and to trick you into financially supporting them, when you shouldnt.

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This summarizes my opinion on it pretty well. The start of this thread wasn't about if or how well ball pythons can bounce back from poor treatment, but about paying money for animals that are not being properly cared for in order to help them, "the pity purchase". I used to be on a betta forum and when I heard their opinion of don't buy those sad about to die bettas, because you'll be paying more money than they're worth and helping the company to restock them, I no longer purchased any from stores like that.

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Originally Posted by meowmeowkazoo

Take a look at the Fauna classifieds for some nice horror stories about both of those vendors. If you ever see them at expos, take a look at their stock.

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I'd venture to say that just about every vendor is trashed on fauna. All I'm saying is don't judge or spread negative word about vendors you have not dealt with personally. Underground's animals in their shop are in fine shape and, as I said earlier, my animals are thriving.

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Originally Posted by DMills

I'd venture to say that just about every vendor is trashed on fauna. All I'm saying is don't judge or spread negative word about vendors you have not dealt with personally. Underground's animals in their shop are in fine shape and, as I said earlier, my animals are thriving.

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I prefer to take a stance of better safe than sorry. I don't want to risk getting a sick animal, regardless of how many good transactions they have had. And not every vendor has been trashed on Fauna. There are plenty of good breeders who have no negative feedback.

I find it best to just stay out of stores like that to avoid temptation. If you really want to rescue a ball python, get one from a legitimate rescue organization.

I volunteer for my local herp society adoption program and we have ball pythons available all the time. We have monthly meetings that we bring all of the available adoption animals to, we have a policy of giving each animal three chances to be adopted before we euthanize them. We rarely have to euthanize an animal, but it's been pretty close many times. Believe me, there are plenty of places that you can rescue or adopt an animal where you DON'T have to pay full price at a pet store, you just have to look for them a little harder. It actually irritates me when I hear people bragging about 'rescuing' a snake from a pet store. If you got it from a pet store, it's not a rescue, its a purchase.