PETCO does what to ball pythons?!

sorry im just asking their bps here are really skinny

I'm guessing that it solely depends on who's in charge of taking care of the animals. Some folks don't know how to do it and their "corporate" policies are not the best - this is a guess, of course, but I've seen some :( bps in a Petco near my job. It's hard to just leave them there.

I stopped into a local pet store a few weeks ago because I saw that is was a sponsor of a local herp show, and I wanted to check it out. Very simple operation, one person was basically working every single day with no other employee's, and had several mammals, birds, and herps to care for. They had a couple of baby normals in one aquarium, and an adolescent (hopefully considering its size) in another. Sand for bedding in one, bark in another. The larger one was a very pretty normal, but her water was dirty with sand bedding and shed skin, and there weren't any hides. A closer look showed a pretty bad case of mites. I bought a frozen mouse since I'd not seen them for sale elsewhere, and then told the lady running the place that the conditions for the ball pythons was bad to the point of neglectful, and offered to take the larger one home and house it properly. She had kind of a hangdog look, and agreed with me, but said she hadn't had time to clean the cages right. I told her that if she couldn't keep the animals in minimally acceptable housing that she shouldn't have them period, and repeated my offer to simply take the snake, which she said she couldn't do, the owner would get mad. I felt kinda sorry for her, but more so for the animals at the store. I'd never keep more snakes than I could keep in optimal conditions. Its not really that hard to buy some sterlite tubs and heat tape. My two normal girls came from a pretty good herp shop, and my two morphs are both coming from Super Serpents, who is local to me. I hate to see the poor things suffer.

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Originally Posted by pythonlover 17

sorry im just asking their bps here are really skinny

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So you basically hypothocized that they purposefully starve their BP's? Your original post made it seem like you knew this for a fact.

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Originally Posted by rabernet

So you basically hypothocized that they purposefully starve their BP's? Your original post made it seem like you knew this for a fact.

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I had seen the original post also (somewhere on this site )that the person that started this thread had seen.The original poster made the statement that he or she had a friend that was employed at a Petco store. The employee of the store stated that the management of the one individual store told the employees not to feed the ball pythons at all. There was no more than this said.The person that started this thread made the assumption that the store was starving them to cause people to buy them out of sympathy which of course would be nonsensical. I assumed that the poster meant that the store was trying to save money because bp's can go so long without eating. I too could have made a wrong assumption. Maybe the store was instructing a new employee whose responsibilities included feeding animals not to just toss mice into the pile of ball pythons kept in a tank together.All that I really know for sure is after reading all this bad stuff in different threads (all on this site) about Petco I went to my local Petco see for myself and the ball pythons and leopard geckos were very much underweight. The leopard geckos did have food. It looked to me that the conditions that both the bp's and the leos were kept would be too stressful to the animals.I described the conditions earlier in this thread.

the one near me keeps leos in dripping conditions and starves their pets

pet stores are here to make money. they couldnt care less about the health of the animals in the store and especially when they become your problem. there are employees who know their stuff and care about the animals' health but most likely they are hired to sell not care for the animals. as long as the animal lives long enough to sell it then the company is happy. a dead ball python or leopard gecko is just a write off and really nothing more. i work in a pet store as well and this is how it is no matter how good you think the company or actual store is.

I work at a petsmart and our "corporate" feeding policies suck! We are feeding BP's fuzzies, when they should be eating at least hoppers. I have complained to my boss about this, but she is a dumb ass when it comes to reptiles, but 5 of the 7 people we have working over there have reptiles so we take good care of them, the best we can, given the corporate rules and space. We change their water twice a day and feed the geckos and beardies etc, every other day, but we feed the skinnier ones more and alone. And we feed the babies everyday. We feed our snakes every 4 or 5 days, and if they don't eat one day, we try the next, then give them a couple days off. If we're not busy or if their is a couple of us working when we change water we handle the animals for a few minutes each. But i know at least at the store i work at, we take care of our animals the best we can with what we have.

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Originally Posted by pythonlover 17

sorry im just asking their bps here are really skinny

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hahaha! LMAO!

I am british and have never heard of PETCO, but feeding snakes less often especially young snake will make them grow slower a be more appealing to a consumer who only wants a small snake, this makes sense if you want to off load a boa to someone without experience, but it wouldn't really make a difference to balls. Also anyone who buys an animal without doing the proper reading or talking to people with experience first deserves what they get. (Although the snake doesn't)