Petsmart?

I was recently in a pinch as my rat breeder was out of rats for my BP. Before everyone flips out and tells me I should feed frozen, he won't take frozen. I have tried several times. So, I go to petsmart, pay a ridiculous price after lying to them about what I am doing with the rat, then on my way out they say, "our rats have antibiotics that will kill a snake." I said ok and left. I have not fed the snake, two friends get rats from there all the time and they said they have never heard that and their snakes are fine. Just wondering if anyone knows if there is any truth to it.

I've never heard of that, but I'm not sure I'd risk it... Is it possible to return the rat and look for a small non-chain petstore in your area? They don't usually advertise selling live feeders so you have to either call or go in and ask, but most smaller pet stores typically sell live in my experience.

At my local pets mart you have to sign a paper saying you won't treat them inhumanly but they are marked and sold as feeders and they know why you got the rat. they were prob being rude cause the clerk had a rat as a pet or something. My 6 year old daughter wanted to keep a mouse feeder as a pet, so cute with his pink eyes. Then it crapped in her hand and I explained that's just what mice do, so she fed it to her snake! Dosent like mice anymore :P

I agree with DVirginiana. I would not risk feeding that rat to my snake.


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Well, I attempted to feed it to him but he wanted nothing to do with it. It was a bit on the bigger side and he would move away from it. I am going to return it and not buy one from there again.

Their response to you while you were leaving has everything to do with them knowing exactly the purpose of you buying that rat and the person who said that not being mature enough to handle it a different way.

Unless those specific employees are stupid enough to do something crazy on their own, PetSmart itself doesn't have any sort of policy to do anything to their pets that would cause your snake harm by feeding it to them. It's simply against their policy to sell their pet rats as feeders. Always has been...

Hi, I actually work at a Petsmart. If the rat was not sick and needed no treatment you are fine. We do not give our rats snake killing drugs. Also, I'd recommend trying to switch to frozen if possible but I know from experience that for some snakes it's not an option.

As an ex-Petcare Manager from Petsmart I can attest to what Mark says.

Unless the animal was sick, it is not going to be given any type of antibiotics, and in many cases small animals that are in the quarantine room are either adopted out, or end up succumbing to their illness and never make it back to the floor for sale to a customer.

And yes, again to what a previous poster mentioned about having to agree to sign a wavier saying you will take care of the animal, and its not going to be fed off. If (at least in my case) I knew the animal was going to be fed, I would not sell it to the customer and would point them in the direction of a local store who sold feeders for $3 as opposed to the $10 Petsmart sells them for.

Petsmart does have their 14 day return policy, so I would take full advantage of that.

Hope this helps.

Not many people here will give you any kind of hard time for feeding live, it's a pretty common practice. I think the store clerk was being a brat for one, and I have never heard of snake killing antibiotics for rats. Probably wouldn't have risked it, though.

I used to go to petco when I needed live feeders, since that company is much more accepting of the concept of rodents as food and the employees are less judgey at you for it. Also, Petsmart rats are stupid overprice and GIANT, which I think is because they're usually retired breeders.

Well where I live there are no other options except petsmart, and the breeder I normally go through, trust me I have looked. I understand they have their policy but my snake has to eat. If that means I have to fib to get him one, then too bad. I thank all of you for being honest with me, I will not be getting a rat from there, or any other supplies, ever again. It is completely uncalled for for the girl to try and scare a customer like that. It is almost comical, the last hail mary attempt to deter me from feeding a rat to my python.

I call bs

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Originally Posted by earthwormjim

Well where I live there are no other options except petsmart, and the breeder I normally go through, trust me I have looked. I understand they have their policy but my snake has to eat. If that means I have to fib to get him one, then too bad. I thank all of you for being honest with me, I will not be getting a rat from there, or any other supplies, ever again. It is completely uncalled for for the girl to try and scare a customer like that. It is almost comical, the last hail mary attempt to deter me from feeding a rat to my python.

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We got our python there when they put her up for adoption bc she was 'aggressive' and nearly starving to death bc she wouldn't take f/t. It drives me crazy that a store that goes out of its way to carry exotic animals is willing to just let them die rather than feed them what they need to to get them eating.

Good luck finding a place that sells what you need!

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Originally Posted by DVirginiana

It drives me crazy that a store that goes out of its way to carry exotic animals is willing to just let them die rather than feed them what they need to to get them eating.

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How many people come on this site every year because their snake won't eat and the reason they won't eat is completely unrelated to the food it's being offered (live, frozen/thawed, pre-killed, whatever)? It's not like live food is the automatic cure-all, and I know with 100% certainty that no one wants to see an animal die while in their care - especially those who are in the business of selling them.

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Originally Posted by Eric Alan

How many people come on this site every year because their snake won't eat and the reason they won't eat is completely unrelated to the food it's being offered (live, frozen/thawed, pre-killed, whatever)? It's not like live food is the automatic cure-all, and I know with 100% certainty that no one wants to see an animal die while in their care - especially those who are in the business of selling them.

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I'm aware that feeding live isn't a 100% cure-all. Never said it was. If the husbandry isn't correct the snake still may not eat.

I know they don't always provide correct habitats for the animals at pet stores, and that may very well be the reason the animals aren't thriving, however there is no actual policy against providing correct temps and humidity; from what I can gather, there's no policy against providing hides or a dozen other things that can be the reason a snake isn't thriving in their care.
There is a policy against feeding live regardless of the situation though, and I think that is ridiculous.

Supporting what you're saying though; last week I was in my LPS and they had a pastel, a pied, and a pinstripe in together. Pied looked like it was about to keel over. An employee who knows I keep snakes was saying they wished they could feed live so the non-eaters would eat, and I had a hard time not telling them that they might eat if they weren't forced to basically sit on their cagemates the whole time. So no, feeding live isn't the solution all the time (or even most of the time) but it can be a solution some of the time so shouldn't be off the table completely IMO.

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Originally Posted by DVirginiana

I'm aware that feeding live isn't a 100% cure-all. Never said it was.

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Yeah - I know you didn't. I honestly wasn't trying to call you out personally at all. :)

I've just seen too many times similar threads like this that end up going the way of "if they'd only feed live, there'd have no problems with feeding ever" without any thought of the other factors at play. Personally, I wish the best to anyone who's trying to get a BP to eat that's on display for 12 hours a day in a retail environment meant for selling. Live or not, I can't imagine it being an easy task.

You are 100% correct Eric. It is extremely hard especially when corporate doesn't even supply us with basic essentials. Although since I've been there I've never had a snake die under my care. I'm a full time college student now so idk how things are currently going. Unfortunately many of my coworkers don't care about the animals like I do.

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Originally Posted by MarkL1561

You are 100% correct Eric. It is extremely hard especially when corporate doesn't even supply us with basic essentials. Although since I've been there I've never had a snake die under my care. I'm a full time college student now so idk how things are currently going. Unfortunately many of my coworkers don't care about the animals like I do.

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Thanks, Mark. Sounds like you have a good head for this. Without going too far down the rabbit hole, what would be one thing (taking feeding live off the table) you'd wish coorporate would provide you with that would help others out that may not have your experience?

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Originally Posted by MarkL1561

You are 100% correct Eric. It is extremely hard especially when corporate doesn't even supply us with basic essentials. Although since I've been there I've never had a snake die under my care. I'm a full time college student now so idk how things are currently going. Unfortunately many of my coworkers don't care about the animals like I do.

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This is all too true. I had the best petcare department in my district of 13 stores. But I had the best because of my own doing, I would store-use the hell out of any supplies I needed to make sure that not only the reptiles were up to par, but as were the birds, small animals, and fish. I was even buying supplies from Petco (repashy mainly) to make sure I had no issues with my reptiles.

Unfortunately those in corporate deemed it unnecessary for me to spend that much. That was over two years ago, and from what I hear, they have failed every inspection since I left.

Yep, I've had the same issues. The company really doesn't care about the animals at all. It really bothers me but its the only pet store/employer around me. It'll be nice to finally get my degree and get out of retail.

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Originally Posted by MarkL1561

The company really doesn't care about the animals at all.

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Aaaand, I was wrong. So much for trying to have a productive discussion about what these places could do better instead of going down the same old pet retail bashing rabbit hole...

It's midnight, I don't feel like writing pages and pages of information. I'm just saying the point of retail is to make money. To do this they keep the stores on tight budgets that give the pet care managers nothing left to work with. In our store we don't have working temp/humidity strips and sick animals are never taken to the vet. Also we were out of night bulbs for our reptiles and were told that we couldn't get any so I had to buy them myself.

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Originally Posted by MarkL1561

Yep, I've had the same issues. The company really doesn't care about the animals at all. It really bothers me but its the only pet store/employer around me. It'll be nice to finally get my degree and get out of retail.

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I disagree. I have seen my local petsmart dish out many hundreds of dollars in vet bills to try to save a bearded dragon with yellow fungus.

Even from a cold, calculating, retail point of view, losing product and reputation is a lose-lose situation.

I'm sure it depends on the store. I'm not saying they're horrible, just not up to par with privately owned shops is all. There's no passion in large chains.

I wonder if it come down less from corporate and more from regional or store management? Say, if corporate is coming down on the person running things on budget for stuff like, I dunno, losses or some such, and the manager(s) decides to make it up by slashing other areas, including budget for extra care costs. Out of curiosity, for anyone working at these stores, have you tried going over the heads of your immediate bosses to see what would happen? If you did, was the reply still from a regional manager or were you able to get in contact with a corporate rep and air your grievances?

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Originally Posted by MarkL1561

It's midnight, I don't feel like writing pages and pages of information. I'm just saying the point of retail is to make money. To do this they keep the stores on tight budgets that give the pet care managers nothing left to work with. In our store we don't have working temp/humidity strips and sick animals are never taken to the vet. Also we were out of night bulbs for our reptiles and were told that we couldn't get any so I had to buy them myself.

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:O :( :mad: This is ridiculous....... I understand that not all places are alike, but that any are like this is still a travesty and makes me sad and angry...

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Originally Posted by JPR

I disagree. I have seen my local petsmart dish out many hundreds of dollars in vet bills to try to save a bearded dragon with yellow fungus.

Even from a cold, calculating, retail point of view, losing product and reputation is a lose-lose situation.

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If it's a Lose lose they will chose the bottom line over the animal, your not dealing with a person with compassion,it's a company and the very few outstanding people they employ that are sharing a differant view here unfortunately are the exception and not the majority.

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Originally Posted by MarkL1561

I'm sure it depends on the store. I'm not saying they're horrible, just not up to par with privately owned shops is all. There's no passion in large chains.

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Privately owned has zero to do with it. Petco is privately owned. PetSmart started as privately owned and is going through a sale right now to become privately owned again. There are plenty of smaller mom & pop shops that have their share of problems too.

When you get down to the root cause, this has almost nothing to do with the name above their front door and everything to do with the people working inside the building. Quit trying to blame "the man" when you, and others, have shown that "a man" with passion can make all the difference in the world. It's not like employees need to break policy to take good care of the animals in their store - they just need to care enough to be good at their job. Is that asking too much?

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Originally Posted by Joe balls

If it's a Lose lose they will chose the bottom line over the animal, your not dealing with a person with compassion,it's a company and the very few outstanding people they employ that are sharing a differant view here unfortunately are the exception and not the majority.

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Did you even read the rest of that post? Bottom line = spending hundreds of dollars on one animal that can be sold for 70 dollars is not cost effective. And yet...

Actually, when I think about it, I would say the vast majority of people wouldn't pay hundreds of dollars for a beardie. Even if it's their own pet.

I think the biggest thing they could do to improve the animals' care is just taking the time to make sure the employees know how to care for them. When we adopted my BP, I could tell the woman doing the adopting really cared and wanted her to go to a good home (she still asks about her whenever we go in there) but several things she said made it clear she didn't know a lot about snakes. Apparently she keeps fish though, and I've actually seen her basically tell someone 'no' when they wanted to buy a fish and put it in the wrong sort of environment. I think someone like that would take care of snakes/lizards/frogs well too if they had the knowledge to do so.

As far as improvement in conditions go? I think petsmart specifically needs a bigger reptile display. The entire thing is pretty much a 4 foot wide by 6 foot tall display, with the snakes and chameleons on the top squeezed into tiny enclosures that are only a little bigger than a 5 gallon tank, usually with 2 or 3 animals sandwiched in. It's an endcap display converted to a caging system. It's not like they couldn't do bigger, the small mammal and bird sections are both more than twice the size of the live reptile section even though the total numbers of animals in each section is about the same. It isn't a huge change, and a store could use a large singular reptile display to a stunning advantage.

Imagine an elaborate reptile enclosure the size of the bird endcap, which is just a single cage? Some pretty tropical setup with some brightly colored chameleon or python would grab my attention without a doubt. Heck, even if you took one the size of the double small animal ends, a desert setup for beardies on top and a tropical setup for the water dragons on bottom? More room for the reptiles that could use it, and a stunning display to draw in attention and sales, win-win.

As far as husbandry errors go, it's really on the people on the floor to want to correct them. Me dad used to say "You can't teach want-to", and I think it applies in this situation.

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Originally Posted by Daigga

As far as improvement in conditions go? I think petsmart specifically needs a bigger reptile display. The entire thing is pretty much a 4 foot wide by 6 foot tall display, with the snakes and chameleons on the top squeezed into tiny enclosures that are only a little bigger than a 5 gallon tank, usually with 2 or 3 animals sandwiched in. It's an endcap display converted to a caging system. It's not like they couldn't do bigger, the small mammal and bird sections are both more than twice the size of the live reptile section even though the total numbers of animals in each section is about the same. It isn't a huge change, and a store could use a large singular reptile display to a stunning advantage.

Imagine an elaborate reptile enclosure the size of the bird endcap, which is just a single cage? Some pretty tropical setup with some brightly colored chameleon or python would grab my attention without a doubt. Heck, even if you took one the size of the double small animal ends, a desert setup for beardies on top and a tropical setup for the water dragons on bottom? More room for the reptiles that could use it, and a stunning display to draw in attention and sales, win-win.

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Does making a reptile setup larger and more elaborate make it easier or more difficult for a hobbyist to care for it properly and efficiently? Now, transfer that thought to the retail store environment where time is your biggest expense. In order to make a larger display, you would also have to remove space from another area - would the lost sales there be made up for as well? In a cost/benefit analysis, would this be a productive use of funds for a company?

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Originally Posted by Eric Alan

Does making a reptile setup larger and more elaborate make it easier or more difficult for a hobbyist to care for it properly and efficiently? Now, transfer that thought to the retail store environment where time is your biggest expense. In order to make a larger display, you would also have to remove space from another area - would the lost sales there be made up for as well? In a cost/benefit analysis, would this be a productive use of funds for a company?

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I'm just throwing out some ideas, and the thing that struck me first was seeing two or three ball pythons in an enclosure I wouldn't keep a single snake in. As I'm sure everyone here knows, husbandry errors sometimes require wallet-clenching responses. My two cents is also that reptiles, which eliminate with less frequency than birds or small mammals, are easier to clean and care for and a larger habitat doesn't make much difference in the time it takes to care for them. A glass tank with substrate is a glass tank with substrate no matter how you look at it.

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Originally Posted by Daigga

I'm just throwing out some ideas, and the thing that struck me first was seeing two or three ball pythons in an enclosure I wouldn't keep a single snake in. As I'm sure everyone here knows, husbandry errors sometimes require wallet-clenching responses. My two cents is also that reptiles, which eliminate with less frequency than birds or small mammals, are easier to clean and care for and a larger habitat doesn't make much difference in the time it takes to care for them. A glass tank with substrate is a glass tank with substrate no matter how you look at it.

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I completely hear what you're going for. Personally, I would love to see these kinds of displays more often. The reality, though, is that the current set-ups in the store aren't meant to serve as long-term homes for the animals in them, which is what a larger display would imply. I don't think anyone working there would recommend keeping the animals at home in set-ups exactly like the ones you see in the store (size, etc). Their purpose is to serve as temporary housing and put the animals inside of them on full display, which they do quite well of when the people taking care of them do their part.

Personally; I think these big chains should go back selling fish, rodents, and supplies. They don't teach their employees, about the animals they're supposed to care for. I also think, they stand to loose a lot less money!

I have only ever spoke to one employee, that new what she was talking about; when I was looking for something for my gfs conure. I don't go into the reptile section; when I need to be In one of these stores.

[QUOTE=slithering_BP;2320458]Personally; I think these big chains should go back selling fish, rodents, and supplies. They don't teach their employees, about the animals they're supposed to care for. I also think, they stand to loose a lot less money!
If a animal is sold at a lost stock won't be replenished as they slow the flow of that particular animal to judge demand in an area. The caged stays empty longer before it's filled automatically or at managers request. In my area they also have a very large parakeet display huge round tower with perches and every thing toy mirror ect. the birds like. That display is empty 99% of the time and when I saw a bird it it it was a sick parrot in QT. it's always been that way sence I've visited that store the first time.
when it comes to reptiles they don't even get the horrible care described in there Care Sheet! they get the temp and humidity for what ever animal was in the cage before it and that's even if they have light heat and humidity controls.that works at all! over crowding animals in one cage and stressing to the point of starvation. Even live reptiles thrown in the TRASH! because the minimum wage staff who could not care less, didn't check the net bag. By the way the rep bags are net and see threw and he still didn't see it.
they are counting the minutes till they are off so they can leave.we have all seen it first hand (as in with my own eyes) and there is nothing to debate.
Off on a rant using posters questions for your own verbal vomit. Go sing in the shower if you wanna hear yourself blow steam!

Just so everyone knows, I have determined that the rat was too big. I am going to wait a week and not handle him at all and try a smaller rat and see how that goes. Fortunately I have found another well reviewed breeder. He was striking it but then would move away, the first rat I fed him was half the size and he took it with no problems. I euthanized the rat with vinegar and baking soda to see if he would take it but no luck so I disposed of it. I would tell everyone not to buy from petsmart. I feel bad as it was a waste of an animal as well as fifteen bucks, a beginner mistake on my end. Both breeders I now have own ball pythons and are very informed on them. They also only charge three bucks for a rat. Definitely something I would recommend to any beginners is securing reliable food source before buying a snake, sometimes getting appropriate food can be a pain.

[QUOTE=Joe balls;2320563]

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Originally Posted by slithering_BP

Personally; I think these big chains should go back selling fish, rodents, and supplies. They don't teach their employees, about the animals they're supposed to care for. I also think, they stand to loose a lot less money!
If a animal is sold at a lost stock won't be replenished as they slow the flow of that particular animal to judge demand in an area. The caged stays empty longer before it's filled automatically or at managers request. In my area they also have a very large parakeet display huge round tower with perches and every thing toy mirror ect. the birds like. That display is empty 99% of the time and when I saw a bird it it it was a sick parrot in QT. it's always been that way sence I've visited that store the first time.
when it comes to reptiles they don't even get the horrible care described in there Care Sheet! they get the temp and humidity for what ever animal was in the cage before it and that's even if they have light heat and humidity controls.that works at all! over crowding animals in one cage and stressing to the point of starvation. Even live reptiles thrown in the TRASH! because the minimum wage staff who could not care less, didn't check the net bag. By the way the rep bags are net and see threw and he still didn't see it.
they are counting the minutes till they are off so they can leave.we have all seen it first hand (as in with my own eyes) and there is nothing to debate.
Off on a rant using posters questions for your own verbal vomit. Go sing in the shower if you wanna hear yourself blow steam!

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Im not defending them at All, but I hope you feel better now that you got that out of your system!:taz:

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Originally Posted by Joe balls

Go sing in the shower if you wanna hear yourself blow steam!

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What did I just read?
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