Petsmart: are they going overboard?

I went to my local Petsmart this evening and was not pleased to see THREE BPs in one very small inclosure... Is this normal? I'm not a pro with snakes at all, let alone with BPs in general. I'm really new to this stuff but isn't that a little over board?? The tank looked to be about a 5-10 gallon terrarium...

Do Petsmart employees have guidelines they are required to follow such as only ___ amount of ____ aged snakes in one inclosure of a certain size? I honestly feel bad for these snakes :( http://images.tapatalk-cdn.com/15/09...09a32891a5.jpg


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Typical petsmart

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To be very honest with you this is fine. It is only temporary to begin with as we all assume they will be bought and rehomed. These are babies and will be fine living together until they fine the right home. They look healthy and the cage seems clean, I doubt they are in any danger.

It's the retail industry standard. It's not their intention for them to be housed in there for any length of time. Retail display enclosures are not reflective of proper husbandry or meant to serve as examples of such.

I looked in at the normal BP at the Petsmart by my house, thought "Oh look, he's hanging outside his hide while shedding. Hope it goes alright.", and I don't know what possessed me to, but I looked inside the hide. Another normal bp was curled up inside the hide.

I felt so bad that the shedding BP couldn't have some privacy. :(

I got my BP from Petsmart. More like RESCUED him. They had 3 in a super small enclosure... No humidity or temp control. Water bowl was bone dry. They said he had just shed and you could tell it was a baaaad shed. The store associate wouldn't even pick him up even though he showed no hostility so I picked him up myself and put him in the carry-home box. As soon as I put him in his new enclosure when we got home, he streeeeetched out for over an hour before going into his hide. He is literally 200% longer than the tiny cage they had him in. AND HE HAD BEEN THERE SINCE MARCH--- I got him in August!

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Originally Posted by D3lacr0ix

I got my BP from Petsmart. More like RESCUED him.

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Unfortunately if you paid for him they just took the profit to purchase another one to put in his place.

The only way to get pet stores to improve their husbandry is to not purchase animals from them until they do.

Keep in mind that Petsmart, and Petco often employ younger folks, many of whom are complete animal lovers that may or may not know the proper care of certain reptiles but certainly do care about the animals.

You often see a person here on this board that is genuinely meaning to do well by their new pet, but has not received all of the proper information. Once they get "straightened out" well meaning keepers quickly adopt the new care procedures and improve the welfare of their animals.

The same holds true for the big pet stores a lot of the time. You'll see kids come in to get a job, not always kids, but people who love dogs and cats that quickly find out they are now caring for snakes, fish, rabbits and have no idea how to do it.

It's not so much that the employees don't care, but the fact that the training, that mostly part time employees get from the upper management isn't that good.

Let's face it, dedicated reptile keepers are very picky about care, and even pet stores specializing in reptiles often wouldn't meet our standards.

Those snakes look healthy, and even though the practice of more than one animal in a cage is frowned upon, as Eric stated, it is very temporary and typical retail practice.

Love these posts.......................... :rofl::rofl::rofl::rofl:
Remember two things:
#1 Retail
#2 Overhead $$$

Yep, that better than I have seen in a lot of stores. Pet stores are what they are, and probably served as a gateway to get many of us started. The only time I have seen where overcrowding was truly an issue was one instance where a store had small boas and bps in the same 20 long, and so many that they would have covered the entire floor of the tank if they hadn't been mostly piled in one corner. I knew the owner, so I said something to her. Found out that they had a shipment come in late and it didn't get unpacked until the end of the day, and a new guy just dumped them all in there. I ended up giving her a hand getting them all sorted out.

From my experience, the norm for Petsmart is two per cage at most. But as everyone says, its only intended as a temporary enclosure.

I was at ny local petsmart today...and having 2 or 3 in a tank isnt my biggest concern here...its the kack of food. There was one that was sooo sooo skinny. If i had the available tank space i would have taken that poor thing home...it was waaaay beyo d skinny barely skin stretched over bones and tell someone there and all theu say is feeding day is Tuesday. ...i jave heard tje same story time after time

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Quote:

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Originally Posted by D3lacr0ix

I got my BP from Petsmart. More like RESCUED him. They had 3 in a super small enclosure... No humidity or temp control. Water bowl was bone dry. They said he had just shed and you could tell it was a baaaad shed. The store associate wouldn't even pick him up even though he showed no hostility so I picked him up myself and put him in the carry-home box. As soon as I put him in his new enclosure when we got home, he streeeeetched out for over an hour before going into his hide. He is literally 200% longer than the tiny cage they had him in. AND HE HAD BEEN THERE SINCE MARCH--- I got him in August!

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Thank you for rescuing that BP.
I know many others disagree on principle, but you made a difference for that animal.
Negative publicity can counteract the profit they made. Also, my understanding with many pet sales is that the profits are in the equipment, not the animals sold. Therefore, I would suggest that more good is done by getting the unfortunate animal a better home, but REFUSING to buy any pet supplies there, and letting corporate know why. It is easy to buy the necessary equipment and f/t rodents over the internet. Try networking for any necessary live rodents.

All this said, I have nothing against PetSmart, or the other chains. The outlets in our nearest small city have hosted many dog adoption days for our local shelter. I'm grateful those dogs had a better chance there. (Our local village seems to be mostly drug addicts and drunks - very poor adoption prospects.)

Boards like this can push retail pet stores to do better with the reptiles.

I bought my Hog Island at Pets Unlimited (in my area competition for Petsmart, maybe a step up, not sure sometimes though). She hadn't been there long and the guy that I was dealing with seemed to know and care about the reptiles. I was in a few weeks ago and they had another Hog Island, just going into shed. I stopped in a few more times since then and watched the snakes horrendous shed - pieces of dry skin all over the place. I offered to take it home to help with completing the shed but that didn't fly! The last time that I was in, last week, almost all of their snakes were gone and an employee there told me that the snake was overly aggressive, striking at everything, etc. If they had made a deal, I know that I could have turned that snake into a manageable, lovely pet, it just takes time and patience. The good news for me and others in my corner of the world is that there is a Reptile Expo here at the end of October - can't wait and I just happen to have an available enclosure just waiting. Hopefully I'll make some good contacts and meet breeders, etc so I won't be tempted by the big box stores.

It could just be in my state, but from what I've seen in all the petstore I've been to here, Petsmart has TINY cages. They are dirtier than Petco, as well. And while both house a lot of animals in small cages, Petsmart takes it a step further. I went to a Petsmart in the city the other day and was pretty sad after the experience. In about a 10 gallon tank there was a dozen baby beardies and a bowl full of colorful kibble. One was trying to munch on the fake plants in the cage because there were no real plants to eat. Pretty sad :(

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First off, PetSmart is a joke. I once took a job at PetSmart because I felt bad for all the reptiles and THOUGHT if I could get a job there, I would be able to help. WRONG. I was not allowed to do proper husbandry to the animals because I was told "lack of supplies". I literally went and bought fresh produce for the beardies myself because they refused to feed it to them. I also had to go buy my own crickets...that they have READILY AVAILABLE because I was told that they would only feed them the dry beardie food until adopted because the cost was too high to feed them what is truly needed. their BP's were so skinny, again, I made sure they ate. My co-workers were afraid to "Overstep" management. Me? Nope. Fire me. whateve. which is what happened after 4 weeks of me basically rescuing their animals. A joke. When I left, I adopted 2 beardies and one BP. Which was the best I could do and an entire paycheck. Soooo so sad :(