Pity pickups?

Ok so I'm new to BPs and all so I thought I'd ask. Now I was very much into bettas and had planned on breeding show quality ones (that breeding dream has now been replaced with BP breeding goals). Well oftentimes people (myself included) would see sad looking bettas at petstores on their last leg due to the store not treating them properly. Now it was generally advised that in order to fight the system where this is possible, you should not buy them, because you're giving that store their money to do it to more animals. I've seen threads on here about Petco/Petsmart pickups that were bought just because they were in bad shape. To me that seems like it's rewarding the store with a profit for their bad husbandry and lack of caring/knowledge. On the other hand if you don't buy the snake, it suffers. Seems like a catch 22. So how do you guys feel about these pity pickups from chain stores? I can totally understand taking in a snake from someone who is caring for it, or paying a super cheap price to take if off their hands.

Good topic!
I don't know what to think of it. I can hardly follow the rules..have been eyeballin a baby king snake at a pet store for a while. I've also had Petco bettas.
I'll have to think about it more, I guess they just have to change the whole scene of pet stores. More responsible care for their animals is crucial.

Well, the moment you buy that suffering ball python, they replace it. As much as it sucks, it's best not to encourage them to import more baby balls.

i think its unfair to categories all pet store as being uninform and overpriced. There are certainly alot of pet store that specialize in exotic pets and reptiles. A few like underground reptile and LLLreptile comes to mind. sadly we don't have any of that locally, just the plain chain pet store like petsmart and pet cetera

Prep your mad fingers!!

I've never been in Petco or Petsmart (the only two chain stores I know of around here) and seen an adult ball python, or adult anything else for that matter. They all look like crap, yes, but they're always babies. I'm by no means a ball python expert, but I've read a ton of stories on here about people who've rescued snakes of all breeds, sizes, and ages that have been in less-than-ideal all the way up to damn-near-dead condition and a lot of these snakes have been turned around, some in pretty short periods of time, after a little proper care.

My point is that even though pet store animals aren't usually in perfect condition, they aren't usually beyond help either. Does Petco off them when they get to a certain age? Send them back to where they came from? Or are they kept until they're sold? If they don't "dispose" of them at any point prior to a sale, then the snakes will be fine. If you don't buy it, someone else will. Will it be someone who's going to take excellent care of it? Maybe, maybe not. But that really goes for any pet regardless of where it comes from.

From what I've read, they're resilient little things and can last for quite awhile without proper care, and can fairly easily bounce back once mistakes have been corrected. I'd guess that most of the pets that are purchased from stores like these get to a new home, with people who give the animal proper and personalized attention, and they do just fine. It's sad that they live the way they do while they're waiting, but that "home" really is just temporary.

You can make yourself crazy worrying about things like this, best case scenario. Worst case, you end up on Hoarders :)

Better not to encourage bad practice. It's better to buy online from breeders and support those guys.

Also, the chain stores over charge hehe

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Originally Posted by threezero

i think its unfair to categories all pet store as being uninform and overpriced. There are certainly alot of pet store that specialize in exotic pets and reptiles. A few like underground reptile and LLLreptile comes to mind. sadly we don't have any of that locally, just the plain chain pet store like petsmart and pet cetera

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LLL and Underground may not be uniform/overpriced but they're not exactly the best examples of healthy animals either...

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Originally Posted by BrandiR

Prep your mad fingers!!

I've never been in Petco or Petsmart (the only two chain stores I know of around here) and seen an adult ball python, or adult anything else for that matter. They all look like crap, yes, but they're always babies. I'm by no means a ball python expert, but I've read a ton of stories on here about people who've rescued snakes of all breeds, sizes, and ages that have been in less-than-ideal all the way up to damn-near-dead condition and a lot of these snakes have been turned around, some in pretty short periods of time, after a little proper care.

My point is that even though pet store animals aren't usually in perfect condition, they aren't usually beyond help either. Does Petco off them when they get to a certain age? Send them back to where they came from? Or are they kept until they're sold? If they don't "dispose" of them at any point prior to a sale, then the snakes will be fine. If you don't buy it, someone else will. Will it be someone who's going to take excellent care of it? Maybe, maybe not. But that really goes for any pet regardless of where it comes from.

From what I've read, they're resilient little things and can last for quite awhile without proper care, and can fairly easily bounce back once mistakes have been corrected. I'd guess that most of the pets that are purchased from stores like these get to a new home, with people who give the animal proper and personalized attention, and they do just fine. It's sad that they live the way they do while they're waiting, but that "home" really is just temporary.

You can make yourself crazy worrying about things like this, best case scenario. Worst case, you end up on Hoarders :)

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I can actually provide a little input here because when I was looking around I got very close to the employees at my local petco.

Let me first start off by saying that every store is different, and this is because this responsibility falls into the hands of the hiring manager. You can either hire a reptile specialist and pay them more, or get a high school student and pay them minimum wage. (Of course, I feel as though petco needs to have this required of their animal care associates just like they do their fish experts, but well, that's another argument).

Luckily, the petco near me does thing right. I have met two out of the three people they hired to take care of their reptiles and both of them have experience. (One was an ex-breeder).

Now, I'm not sure if this is how every petco works, but this is what they told me. Once a reptile grows too big for it's enclosure in the store, they put it up for adoption at half price, (sometimes 75% off), at one of their adoption days. (At mine, they have a separate adoption day for small critters.) What they do if they don't get adopted, I don't know, but that is what I do know.

That being said, I don't think refusing to buy live animals from chain stores is a solution to the problem, I just don't see it that way. But that's my view and I definitely see why people would refuse. (There are so many horror stories all over the internet.)

I'm just glad that I live near a store that's responsible.

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Originally Posted by anwhit

I can actually provide a little input here because when I was looking around I got very close to the employees at my local petco.

Let me first start off by saying that every store is different, and this is because this responsibility falls into the hands of the hiring manager. You can either hire a reptile specialist and pay them more, or get a high school student and pay them minimum wage. (Of course, I feel as though petco needs to have this required of their animal care associates just like they do their fish experts, but well, that's another argument).

Luckily, the petco near me does thing right. I have met two out of the three people they hired to take care of their reptiles and both of them have experience. (One was an ex-breeder).

Now, I'm not sure if this is how every petco works, but this is what they told me. Once a reptile grows too big for it's enclosure in the store, they put it up for adoption at half price, (sometimes 75% off), at one of their adoption days. (At mine, they have a separate adoption day for small critters.) What they do if they don't get adopted, I don't know, but that is what I do know.

That being said, I don't think refusing to buy live animals from chain stores is a solution to the problem, I just don't see it that way. But that's my view and I definitely see why people would refuse. (There are so many horror stories all over the internet.)

I'm just glad that I live near a store that's responsible.

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Thanks for the inside scoop! That's something I've been curious about because I go in there one week and there are 6 snakes in a tank, and a week later there is only one, or none. I've wondered if they really sell that many snakes, or if they're in the back, or....where the hell they went!

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Originally Posted by meowmeowkazoo

LLL and Underground may not be uniform/overpriced but they're not exactly the best examples of healthy animals either...

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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.

Isn't prehistoric pets the butcher guy?

butcher guy????? is there something i don't know?

I dont think that not buying the snakes from petco or petsmart will stop them from getting more. If they sell the animal they will get more. If it dies they will still get more. A big chain store like that will not stop selling just because one stores snake died or they had it for a long time. Smaller mom n pop stores is a different story. Not buying their one snake can and most likely will stop them from bringing in a new one for a while.

As for prehistoric pets i personally would never buy a bp from them. If you watch their egg cutting videos the guy will say the clutch is black pastel to lesser and he cuts them and a bee pops out and still says it is a black platinum. Im sure they have bp specialists there but the owner doesnt know what he is doing with bps. They seem unirganized with bps. I also watched a video from them a couple weeks ago and they pulled bp eggs from a snake then said the rollout eggs were infertile so started throwing them at each other. The eggs looked normal and im sure they were fertile.people hatch rollout eggs all the time. The guy is an idiot just talk to kevin at nerd he will tell you. He calls him the butcher from baghdad.

Theres my little rant

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Originally Posted by Jor23dan

I dont think that not buying the snakes from petco or petsmart will stop them from getting more. If they sell the animal they will get more.

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Actually, that's exactly what happened to the petkill where I used to live. Always had sickly animals, always lying about their animals getting veterinarian care. People stopped buying, traveled to the reputable reptile store instead and what do you know, no more reptile section in Petco.

thanks for that inside story. I don't really watch their bp stuff only their retic stuff cause frankly there are alot of other ppl doing better things with bp than prehistoric. How about LLL and underground? what the deal with them? like i said i only go off their video and to me they seems to not be in the same league as big chain store like petco and petsmart.

I respect NERD for everything they bought to the bp business but i have serious doubt about their hidden gene bps...

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Originally Posted by kdreptiles

Actually, that's exactly what happened to the petkill where I used to live. Always had sickly animals, always lying about their animals getting veterinarian care. People stopped buying, traveled to the reputable reptile store instead and what do you know, no more reptile section in Petco.

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Ive never heard of that. Not saying that what you said isnt true because I believe you just the first ive heard about it. The few petsmart and petcos around me have had many animals die or sit for a long time and they always get new ones in.

As for LLL and underground I am not sure I dont know much about them. I have also only watched a few retic vids from prehistoric and it seems like he knows what he is talking about it is just bps he has no clue. I am not to big on nerds hidden gene stuff simply because I cant afford any of it so I don't read into them as much so cant comment much on that either. The thing about nerd though is that he overprices a lot of the snakes in the store just because it has his name on it. I am about 15 min from nerd and ive gone in a few times and I would see a terrible example of a bee (you could barely even see that it had pastel in it it still looked like a spider) way more expensive than an outstanding looking bee.

does NERD have like a storefront setup or does he personally show you around the facility? if he shows you around thats is pretty cool. the overprice i'm sure they are obo? or else how would they move the crappier animals if they price it that high?

Yes it is a store called zoo creatures then upstairs is where all the breeding and magic goes down. You really cant stop and talk to him unless your buying a snake around $1500 or more from them. Your buying one less than that you get stuck with a young kid that works there. He does tours for $8 on Saturdays and they show you all around and you get to go upstairs and see but other than that you stay in the store part. Im sure if you could catch him and try and get the price lower he would but the kids that work in the store really cant take a lower price than labeled

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Originally Posted by meowmeowkazoo

...it's best not to encourage them to import more baby balls.

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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.

I have purchased several reptiles from Underground and they were outstanding. My BPs thrived, ate well from day 1, were great examples of the species they represented etc. I'd advise you to not speak negatively unless you have personal experience, that's simply not fair to the business. As far as the OP's original question...great question and one I grappled with just the other day. I walked into a chain pet store and saw a 6 month old bp with the girth of a small corn snake. It was grossly underweight and looked horrible. I'm still debating as to whether or not I should go get it.

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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.