Where do Petco stores get their reptiles?

Does anyone know? I know there are big pet vendors out there. For example, I know for a fact that one Petco around here buys from a place called FishMart. But that's about as much as I know... Would be interesting to know more about what kinds of places Petco buys its animals from, and what the conditions are like at such places, how their breeding programs work, etc.

I'm sure this also differs depending on the area of the country.

Don't know about Petco, but petsfart gets theirs from any of 3-4 distributers. Trying to recall their names: C.R.A.P. (Central Reptile & Amphibian...something?), Sandfire maybe? can't recall the other two.

Let's see if I can remember...I worked at Petco for 3 years. Red tails come from some place called California Zoological, we used to call them CalZoo...beardies and I think cresties and leos come from Sandfire Dragons...and the rest of the reptiles come from a place called Amazon something or other. The guy that runs it is a real piece of work, he was always sending me WC herps, and then when I would call him to ask about why they had mites ect. he would deny it. He once tried to tell me that Flying Geckos ALWAYS have mites no matter what. He also sent us a Red Foot tortoise that was COVERED in ticks, and when we took her to the vet, they turned out to be south american ticks. Now tell me how you get south american ticks on a captive bred animal? The vet reported him for that one, so he may have been shut down by now. I sure hope so.

That was just my store, though...it may be different for others.

well the petcos in the NW buy captive hatched pythons, so needless to say, theyre either sick or have something. boas are from central america. i dont know where any of the other reptiles come from.

well theres my 2 pieces.

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Originally Posted by Ophiuchus

Don't know about Petco, but petsfart gets theirs from any of 3-4 distributers. Trying to recall their names: C.R.A.P. (Central Reptile & Amphibian...something?), Sandfire maybe? can't recall the other two.

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I know at my store we get them from Sandfire Dragon, Lasco Inc and CRAP

Lasco! That was the other one for petsmart!

Do you guys know anything about these places? How they breed and if they get shipments of WC animals? Just curious really.

Well, I'd bet money most of the lizards we got from Lasco were WC imports...at least they sure looked like it.

99% of Petco's animals come from Bill Brant/Gourmet Rodent.
He is the worlds largest producer of c.b reptiles, buys/imports 30,000-50,000 c.h balls a year, and imports the basic pet store herps directly all for Petco. He has the contract, and as far as I know he supplies almost all of there reptiles, other than a few specialties. In the next year or 2 albino balls will be in Petco, that is already set in stone, upc code and everything already done, now just a little more production #'s.

He keeps a lot of his stuff private, but he is a HUGE supplier!!

If that's the case then I can't say much for his animals.

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If that's the case then I can't say much for his animals.

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If that's the case then he's probably the type that cares more about the dollar than the animal. Think about the amount of care that would have to go in to keeping track of that many animals. Imagine what just the bare minimum must be, then imagine what it would be like trying to keep them all in tip top shape. It's not humanly possible. No one would deal with animals in those quantities unless they're more interested in making a buck than producing quality animals. So in all honesty, I doubt he even cares what you have to say for his animals. Which is a damn shame.

I can't believe they're going to be carrying albinos now. I guess it makes sense that they would want to have something a little more exciting than normals available. I doubt they'll carry anything more exotic than that, though. I worked at Petsmart for 2 years then got the heck outta there, but it was long enough to know how they function.

I wonder what price point they expect to sell the albinos at. I can't see petco or petsmart selling a snake for more than $199.99.......

I know these for sure: Segrest Farms, Sandfire, Calzoo. I'm sure the others that people listed are correct as well.

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Originally Posted by jnjreptiles

In the next year or 2 albino balls will be in Petco, that is already set in stone, upc code and everything already done, now just a little more production #'s.

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That's interesting. I know PetSmart is already selling pastel ball pythons. Only a matter of time before pieds start being sold at the large chains...

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Originally Posted by elevatethis

I wonder what price point they expect to sell the albinos at. I can't see petco or petsmart selling a snake for more than $199.99.......

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Oh I sure as heck can, considering that they sell ALL their reptiles at prices at least double what they are worth. My 'favorites' are a Juvie BlueTongue Skink for $200 and a single Anole for $5 or $6. SIGH. They are ONLY interested in making the buck...

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Originally Posted by Argentra

Oh I sure as heck can, considering that they sell ALL their reptiles at prices at least double what they are worth. My 'favorites' are a Juvie BlueTongue Skink for $200 and a single Anole for $5 or $6. SIGH. They are ONLY interested in making the buck...

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I realize that they overprice the reptiles that they do have, but you've got to consider that generally speaking, people have a certain cap on what they'd spend on a pet regardless of what its actually worth.

While people may spend hundreds if not thousands on a dog, snakes aren't viewed by the type of people the shop at petsmart/petco as the type of animal to spend that kind of money on. I'd guess that 75% or more of the people going in there are spending money on their dogs.

I could be "out of the know," but I'm not convinced that the price or supply of albino ball pythons will be at the levels appropriate for mass retail in 1-2 years...to sell at petco/petsmart, we're talking hundreds to many thousands of individual animals....if anyone else has anything concrete to share contrary to that, be all means go ahead...

Petco right now has about 900 stores.

They buy from major importers and a few large breeders as has been mentioned but those importers and breeders also fill out their orders with animals from small time breeders.

I can't recall the name of the cricket company that owns the iguana farms in costa rica, but they import thousands of baby iguanas every year. The guy also has a partner who produces thousands of beardies and leopard geckos too. He used to own reptileforums.com, howard something or other.

It would only take about 400-500 albino female balls to produce 1800-2000 babies a year @ 5 babies per female. Very doable for some breeders.

If you can sell 2000 babies at 150.00 each, that's 30,000.00.

I'm sure someone out there is willing to do that.

I think the number of ready breeder females a person would need to be way more than that.

If I'm not mistaken, a lot of breeders out there are lucky if they get 75% of their females to produce every year.

So make it 600 breeder sized homozygous albino females ready to go. I think that the number of 3+ year old albino females even in existence might be only 3-4x that, much less have those kind of numbers present in one person's operation.

I'm not saying that it will never happen, just 1-2 years like JnJ said, I'm skeptical about that...but who knows...maybe someone out there has been buying up females for 10 years and is poised and ready to go as soon as the market is ready for them....

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Originally Posted by wilomn

Petco right now has about 900 stores.


I can't recall the name of the cricket company that owns the iguana farms in costa rica, but they import thousands of baby iguanas every year. The guy also has a partner who produces thousands of beardies and leopard geckos too. He used to own reptileforums.com, howard something or other.

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I believe you are thinking of Flukers Farms.
They have the Iguana farms, and the beardies they sold used to come with a blue or green? dot on the base of the tail, as a way of marking the ones from that particular breeders production. I think he was "farming" them in Florida outside in large pens.

As far as price, they will be high priced on the albino balls, but they look at it as, if someone is going to pay $2k for a bird why not a "pretty" snake?

It's easy for Petco to "overprice" ball pythons. Anyone into herps knows not to go there for them. They would seek out a breeder. People that are not into herps don't know about breeders and/or how to contact them. Petco sells to the average person who, as we all know, generally is very uninformed about reptiles. I would buy a normal from Petco for $75 if I didn't know I could get a much healthier one for way cheaper.

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Originally Posted by elevatethis

I could be "out of the know," but I'm not convinced that the price or supply of albino ball pythons will be at the levels appropriate for mass retail in 1-2 years...to sell at petco/petsmart, we're talking hundreds to many thousands of individual animals....if anyone else has anything concrete to share contrary to that, be all means go ahead...

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I called one supplier to get some albino balls from him and he said his price had gone up, as he was down to 80 albino's. He produced around 400-600 albino balls last year. There are a few other big breeders in Florida sitting on 100 female albino's right now for Petco production. Its easier for them to sell a 100 lot of albino's all at once and get 1 check, and make 1 shipment and be done instead of selling 1 at a time to the public. Its also more cost effective to sell in large lots than to piece meal them out.

The good thing about it is it will bring a LOT more people into the hobby, and strengthen it even more.

I hope they do start selling albinos for outrageous prices. Maybe it will cause people to do some research in an effort to find a cheaper alternative. Then more people would discover breeders, a good thing for the reptile industry.

Hey, I fell into this BP.net site because of Petco. My girl friend and I would go to Petco and look at the rat snakes and BP's and corns. I fell in love with BP's because of petco and have to give them credit for spurring me to buy a BP.

I did not buy the BP from them on a whim, I did the research and bought from a local breeder at a show. But still, they were the straw that broke this camels back :P

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Originally Posted by panthercz

That's interesting. I know PetSmart is already selling pastel ball pythons. Only a matter of time before pieds start being sold at the large chains...

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PetSmart sells pastels? That's strange, the one where I live doesn't sell snakes of any kind. They told me it was against company policy.

I think its a store to store basis. I know that the Petsmart up the street from me doesn't carry snakes because the previous manager was terrified of them and would not allow the store to sell them. Now that they have a new manager, this one is allowing the store to sell snakes and they should be getting corn snakes in very soon. So who knows what other Petsmarts are doing.

I for one don't really like the big chain stores. I used a local petshop for many years before they closed down. That is where I first started getting into reptiles.

I don't really care for big pet store's but everyone make them out to be so horrible but its the customers that bear the responsibility to know what they are doing.

the head of any huge business cant possibly be at every single location and know how it is being run.

anyone can go to any petco or petsmart and get a bad animal or a good animal most stores have both some have none, but it is up to the consumer to be able to pick. the person who can't tell a healthy animal from a sick one shouldn't have an animal in the first place no matter where they buy it. grocery stores carry fresh produce and not every head of lettuce is 100% fresh or perfect some are bad some are bad but we don't bash every grocery store and go directly to the farmer. As far as prices go they are not that expensive I haven been able to find too many balls cheaper than petco with shipping included.

these store's are not great no doubt they have their problems but they are also a main source of gaining new people into our and other hobbies. the more people who own and love animals of all kinds make it that much harder for the people who want to see our animals made illegal to succeed. Imagine if there were no petco's or petsmart's how many of us here would probably never have gotten into snakes? I know I wouldn't be here and I am sure a lot of others wouldn't either so they do serve a great purpose and I would be sad if they went away because so would our hobby.

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Originally Posted by Timbuktu

I don't really care for big pet store's but everyone make them out to be so horrible but its the customers that bear the responsibility to know what they are doing.

the head of any huge business cant possibly be at every single location and know how it is being run.

anyone can go to any petco or petsmart and get a bad animal or a good animal most stores have both some have none, but it is up to the consumer to be able to pick. the person who can't tell a healthy animal from a sick one shouldn't have an animal in the first place no matter where they buy it. grocery stores carry fresh produce and not every head of lettuce is 100% fresh or perfect some are bad some are bad but we don't bash every grocery store and go directly to the farmer. As far as prices go they are not that expensive I haven been able to find too many balls cheaper than petco with shipping included.

these store's are not great no doubt they have their problems but they are also a main source of gaining new people into our and other hobbies. the more people who own and love animals of all kinds make it that much harder for the people who want to see our animals made illegal to succeed. Imagine if there were no petco's or petsmart's how many of us here would probably never have gotten into snakes? I know I wouldn't be here and I am sure a lot of others wouldn't either so they do serve a great purpose and I would be sad if they went away because so would our hobby.

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I think you make some very good points there.