Prehistoric Pets should be avoided

What I think is really horrible about this, is that when the pet store is displaying their animals like this, they're mis-educating their customers (particularly those with little experience in keeping herps) that it's OK to take them home and provide them the very same accomodations. New snake owners might take their pets home and think that it's perfectly fine for their animals to have flakey shedding, or shed that's stuck to their new lizard's toes is acceptable. After all, that's how they were at the pet store.

And you can't expect the store clerk to say to the customer, "Now, you do realize that you should treat the animals better than we do. In fact, we treat them rather poorly, but that's understandable since we have so many! You should never see your snake shedding as poorly as ours shed, and you shouldn't let weeks worth of feces pile up in the tanks like we do. Now, enjoy your new pet."

That's not going to happen, and unless the pet owner puts him or herself in the animal's uh... shoes, then they might not treat the animals any better than they were treated at the store. That's a shame, and stores like this propogate such atrocities.

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Originally Posted by IamKaervek

And you can't expect the store clerk to say to the customer, "Now, you do realize that you should treat the animals better than we do. In fact, we treat them rather poorly, but that's understandable since we have so many! You should never see your snake shedding as poorly as ours shed, and you shouldn't let weeks worth of feces pile up in the tanks like we do. Now, enjoy your new pet."

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Actually a local breeder i went to recently to buy a cage told me that i should not keep my animals like a breeder would. While his werent in bad condition, he told me what i should do to the cage to make it more optimal for my boa. I was actually quite impressed by this. His snake room didnt stink, I saw no feces in the 20 or so enclosures that he showed me.

I firmly believe in getting what you pay for, If i had walked into the shop as RW described it I wouldnt have bought a thing. Im glad RW posted this, maybe PP will get wind of this and change their practices.

Bryan

Breeding dozens of herps, or hundreds as the case may be, is completely different than having one or two displayed in your living room. Of course there are going to be major differences in housing, but this doesn't necessarily equate to poor husbandry or health hazards.

Congratulations on your new pet.

I have to say the worst pet store I had ever been in was in Oswego. The guy didn't believe in UTH and had all twenty or so of his snakes in with heat rocks! The temp in the place was really cool and the poor things were all curled up around these rocks, it was terrible. A few of the larger ones already had noticeable signs of belly burning. I mentioned it to him and he told me to either buy one or leave...let's just say I left with a few choice words (damn my temper!!!). The place was called Al's Pets and Al can have them all.

~Jim

Sorry to drag up such an old thread, but Rick and I have started making a trip each weekend to different "big" reptile stores in SoCal (next weekend is LLLReptile! cool!).

Anywho, we went to PP last weekend.

It's a "double" store in a strip mall; since part of their business is reptile edutainment for children (there were 3 different areas for large group parties), the store kind of has a funky layout. I'll agree it seemed they had full stock, but I would guess it flucuates quite a bit - and if you don't have stock to sell in a store front, kinda no point to be open.

In about the 8 stores we've been to so far, there has been only one that didn't multiple same species snakes in one cage (one store had baby balls and bci's in deli cups), but they didn't look particularly dirty.

PP is also where I asked for, saw and held the piedbald ball. I'm guessing the employee make a judgement call on the shopper, not too unlike when you ask for a test drive at a dealership. If you look like someone who might buy one and has the money for it, you're more apt to try for the sale. That or I have an honest face. =)

I don't think we'd buy an animal there (seemed overpriced), but we enjoyed the trip anyway.

Oh, we did talk with one employee about their big snakes (Rick fell in love with a huge high yellow albino burmese - noooo, too big honey!). Burtha, their 20' burmese looked like she was having a bad shed (skin still stuck on her back), so I asked. He said it's been difficult lately to keep the humidity up because other employees keep the store front doors open, but the impression I got is that they were aware conditions were not optimal at the moment and they were going to take care of their big kids.

Have any of you been there. I have been there numerous times. I use to live not too far away. The conditions are not horrible but they seemed more worried about collecting the "fee" to see the zoo. Yes there are fees to gain access to the animals (at least the last time I went which was only a couple of months ago). Most of the enclosures were not really clean but I am not going to say it should be clean like a hobbyist pet store or one of us keeps ours. I think it could use some cleaning and updating but its full of animals and wont ever remain spotless. Would I buy an animal from them, most likely but not without a harsh look at the animal in question. I am sure there "$$$ collection" is much better maintained.

The front areas look a whole lot better then the back rooms. There is an updated feedback thread about them somewhere as of 2013-2014.

I think that ALL cages should be clean ALWAYS. It doesnt matter if you have 100 animals or 1. You should only have the number of animals you can properly care for. Not sometimes. Always. Doesnt matter if its a breeder, a petstore or whoever.

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Originally Posted by OctagonGecko729

The front areas look a whole lot better then the back rooms. There is an updated feedback thread about them somewhere as of 2013-2014.

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http://ball-pythons.net/forums/showt...o-disappointed I was not a fan

Been there twice horrible care definitely a F grade place