Current BP's. Where are they shipped from?

Everyone talks about how all the BP's are shipped from overseas. Does anyone know if any pet chains now order from breeders in the USA? Just curious, because I constantly hear about being careful of mites, ticks, bacteria and fungal infections. But all of the people I know with BP's have never had any problems since day one. I'm just curious to see if anyone knows actually where they come from.

Thanks,
Mike

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Originally Posted by mr86mister

Everyone talks about how all the BP's are shipped from overseas. Does anyone know if any pet chains now order from breeders in the USA? Just curious, because I constantly hear about being careful of mites, ticks, bacteria and fungal infections. But all of the people I know with BP's have never had any problems since day one. I'm just curious to see if anyone knows actually where they come from.

Thanks,
Mike

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Well majority of the big chain pet stores (petco,petsmart and such) buy wild caught or farm raised babies.Thats where the mites and such come from ;)

Lol. Well i do understand where the mites come from. I'm just curious to know if we still ship them as much from Africa currently as we did say 20 years ago or are, as you said Joepythons, we receiving them from North American BP farms?

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Originally Posted by mr86mister

Lol. Well i do understand where the mites come from. I'm just curious to know if we still ship them as much from Africa currently as we did say 20 years ago or are, as you said Joepythons, we receiving them from North American BP farms?

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They do still ship alot of ball pythons here from Africa every year :P

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Originally Posted by mr86mister

Lol. Well i do understand where the mites come from. I'm just curious to know if we still ship them as much from Africa currently as we did say 20 years ago or are, as you said Joepythons, we receiving them from North American BP farms?

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I would say that we bring in a helluva lot more balls today than we did years ago. They are still being brought in from Africa. There are no North American BP farms.

petsmart down by my way isnt allowed to carry snakes and right now all of the birds they have are in quarantine for the bird flu the petco i work for we have a private breeder for all of our snakes so i know they are not wild caught. and as for the birds we are the only petstore in the area that can sell them right now all the other petstores have to wait till april maybe may

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Originally Posted by Monty

petsmart down by my way isnt allowed to carry snakes and right now all of the birds they have are in quarantine for the bird flu the petco i work for we have a private breeder for all of our snakes so i know they are not wild caught. and as for the birds we are the only petstore in the area that can sell them right now all the other petstores have to wait till april maybe may

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All the Petco's are captive hatched (imported from Africa) from the same large supplier.

So these distributor's breed their own now. Instead of collecting pregnant females and sending the babies to us? Or a bit of both. I'm only asking because the baby BP being sold at least locally have usually been in really good health. Is this because the distributor's have more "love" for the snakes and give them better husbandry? Sorry for all the questions I'm just curious.

Uusally gravid females are brought overseas,as well as baby balls and they lay their eggs (Captive Hatched babies).

Like rabernet said, all ball pythons for petco and petsmart are captive hatched. Which does not mean captive bred. Eggs are collected from the wild and hatched out in large quantities, babies are sorted then sold in mass to the pet stores.

Some Petsmarts however are starting to carry pastel ball pythons, which would be captive bred.

Actually Petco used to get their babies from Gourmet Rodent not sure if they still do or not. Mites are native to the US not Africa - ticks come in on adult imports - mites are acquired after arrival. Captive hatched babies are usually as parasite free as cbb - dehydration and stress is their major issue.

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Originally Posted by joepythons

Well majority of the big chain pet stores (petco,petsmart and such) buy wild caught or farm raised babies.Thats where the mites and such come from ;)

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Eh, not exactly....some ticks yes, mites not so much...."snake mites" aren't indigenous to western Africa, where imported ball pythons come from. They usually become infested after they are mixed with shipments from other parts of the world like southeast asia after they've arrived in the US.

i know personal off hand that the snakes in my store are at least captive bred and hatched is because the guy that does it for us comes in the store at least once a week to see if we need anymore our other snakes like the corns come from another guy thats local

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Originally Posted by Monty

i know personal off hand that the snakes in my store are at least captive bred and hatched is because the guy that does it for us comes in the store at least once a week to see if we need anymore our other snakes like the corns come from another guy thats local

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5 will get you 10 that he is NOT breeding everything he sells you, especially ball pythons.

You can get them in 100 lots for 6 bucks a piece.

Also, your babies that are captive hatched in Africa can come in with HUGE parasite loads from drinking contaminated water.

They are not housed individually, but in large groups and all it takes is one infected small but not born this year snake in the same cage to poop in the water they all share and you have all kinds of lovely bugs in your new babies.

I've seen it happen.

Also, when they come into the USA they are frequently mixed with various sized even if only for hydration and again parasites are exchanged.

Then there's the mite issue. Just because it isn't crawling with them in the store does NOT mean it wasn't at the facility where it was held prior to the store getting it. Those baby ball pythons can look good for several months before they are shipped from a USA facility to the store that ultimately sells them to the public.

Just be careful and ALWAYS get a fecal done.

I also found out that. Petco does not sex the snakes and they have mixed. I guess thats a good thing.

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Originally Posted by mr86mister

I also found out that. Petco does not sex the snakes and they have mixed. I guess thats a good thing.

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Its a good bet that the majority of Petco ball pythons are male...

every ball python we get from him is mite free eating pink rats and is well established we only get 3 bps in at a time since ive been the reptile specialist i hate over crowding and dont see a point yea some of the snakes he gives us could very well be CH but he'll never tell his true secrets had mite problems once from him but after that we havent had any mites