Morphs at a Pet Store (Petsmart)

Thank you all for reminding me how incredibly spoiled I am. ;)

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Originally Posted by satomi325

If you tell them that you want a live feeder rodent, they will deny your purchase.

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You know I could kind of understand it when I was asked by a six year old why they couldn't live off little flakes from a can like a fish, but this is just stupid. Apparently it's ok to starve a snake (sustained cruelty) instead of feeding a mouse (freaking cycle of life!).

I've seen threads where some people have picked up morphs at local chains. I've never came across them myself but I would think they would cost more the $50 considering the retail markup if I found one that cheap I'd have to pick it up.

Petco's typically have one store per district/area that is a "reptile store." That store is usually the only one that is able to special order specific morphs, although they cannot dictate whether it will be male or female, or the quality. At my local Petco, this is the approximate regular pricing when no sales are occurring:

Normal: $89.99 -- these occasionally go on sale from 40% to 50% off
Pastel: $149.99
Spider: $199.99
Pinstripe: $299.99 -- these often go on sale after six months, because they don't seem to sell very well at the store near me

I believe after a morph has been there for over 6 months and is not selling, they will reduce he price by 25%, although I've heard of stores bringing them down 50% or more. I think that depends on the specific manager.

I have found their morphs to be fairly poor, either in health or in pattern/color quality, compared to many online: browned out pastels, spiders with significant wobble (though most of the employees don't even know what wobble looks like) and tons of spots, and really dark pinstripes with significantly broken back stripes. Once again, that's just what I've noticed at my Petco. The one clean Pastel I've stumbled upon at Petco apparently had underlying health issues, so yeah.

I've seen pastels spider and pinstripe ball pythons at petco

The local Petland here frequently has Pastels and Spiders. Occasionally they will have Pinstripes and Albinos and other 1 gene morphs.

NYC chain pet stores don't sell any large constrictors ..

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Originally Posted by satomi325

It's because those are 'fancy' *cough* mice that are intended for pet purposes. But we all know they all come from feeder lines and the same distributor.

If you tell them that you want a live feeder rodent, they will deny your purchase.

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Actually the manager at my local big box pet store will call if they get in a rodent that doesn't "play well with others"; occasionally one will run around killing the other rodents. While they don't make good pets, the snakes seem to like them just fine. ;)

The Petco near us has spiders and pastels. I seem to remember that the prices for them were steep, considering what you would pay for a quality animal online. Nothing remarkable about their patterns.

Markheim and Pets Plus are both pet shops near us that are locally owned, and both of them are into breeding BPs. They have quality morphs.. Fred Kick's website has a humungous amount of beautiful morphs for sale.

I have seen albinos, spiders and bumblebees at petco, usually for twice what you can get from a breeder and almost always skinny little things. An albino male was 800.