What are pet stores telling people?

So I'm bring this up because last night I was buying some live feeders for a few picky animals and I overheard two guys talking about the snakes they had.


They were looking at an albino kingsnake and one of the guys said he was albino due to needing a different type of uv light.......and I thought.....ha, whats this guy smoking over there. I went over and introduced myself and we talked snakes for awhile. Both of these guys owned ball pythons and used the expensive uv bulbs, no hides, and were also forcing feeding their pythons once a month to eat a little "suppliment" pill that had calcium and other stuff in it. These guys were told to do this by the "snake expert" at petco..........

Now I set them straight after letting them know they could feed the animals more than once a month. One of the guys told me he was on his forth ball python because the others had died and petco was just replacing them. This made me so sick and frankly kind of ticked off. It's not the first time I'd heard something this bad coming from that store.

Is there something that can be done about this? I even went over to the store and talked to someone about it and they didn't seem to care, manager wasn't there, etc. I know they give caresheets and even those caresheets have how to keep them wrote right on them. I'm going back later to talk with the manager about it.

It is really sad and unfortunately I don't know what you can do. It would be worth while to get a lot of "research" about proper care that's documented, print it off, get a statement from this guy that has had now four snakes replaced because of improper instructions, and send it to the district manager or someone higher up than just store employees (including the local manager). Not sure how much good it would do other than possibly get the employee/store manager into some trouble.

Unfortunately with stores like this and even your mom/pop stores, there is no like education/experience requirements for a lot of positions so joe blow off the street can get a job doing anything.

Those people are freaking retards!! I had lot of expierences going to petco, and wanting to just dummy punch everyone of them. I went there looking for a thermostat one time, and they brought me to the thermometers!! Also they have cresties at the one by me, and the cage gets over 90 degrees sometimes while im in there!! There so doumb, I want to buy every animal whenever I go in there just cuz i wanna save em all. How do they even have a lisence to sell them if they can't maintain them? PEtco/petsmart is a joke plain and simple...

My 2 cents but I doubt there are ANY retile experts at Petco. Sorry if I offened anyone. I find ALOT of people are givin' wrong information. Later!!!:rolleyes:

A lot of animals in these pet stores are not cared for properly because the owners/employees/etc are not educated about the care of the animals or they just don't care. If you see that they are in serious health decline you can contact the health department or check with your state's wildlife agency.

I only mention this because I know of a pet store that had broken glass in enclosures with animals, no heats on animals that required heat, and also had certain types of animals that were not to be displayed/sold in the state. Not sure what happened in this particular case, but if it upsets you bad enough to where you want to take action, there are places that can be notified.

This is the exact reason why i do not ever buy anything from these places. i cannot justify supporting there business or there practices. i do go in to look almost every time i pass by them though.

granted i did see a pet smart with a beautiful "un sex'd" 2' BP. i asked to see it and sexed it on the spot it was a female. they wanted $180 for her. i didn't buy her but they did write "female" with that oil pencil on the glass after i was like nice female :P

Its really simple. There is no regulation on reptile sales like there is dogs. This basically comes down to standard of care. A dog has a standard of care for a pet store to sell. The humane society take care of this. But to sell reptiles due to the large variety of them. It is rather apauling to think that this is how our society treats these animals. But they are considered pest to most people.

My impression is that these chain stores follow a corporate policy on care and feeding that some bean counter somewhere established to make expenses (and profits) uniform in all their stores.. If you speak to the Manager you will likely be told that "Sorry, but my hands are tied."

its kind of sad there is no regulation on care standards for reptile sale. is there anything we as reptile lovers can do?

petitions are usually useless. so our options are limited im betting.

I'm really close to telling the manager I will do a free training class on reptiles for employees and maybe once every couple of months for the buyers.

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Originally Posted by southb

I'm really close to telling the manager I will do a free training class on reptiles for employees and maybe once every couple of months for the buyers.

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Hey, why not. If you are willing to volunteer your time to help educate people then that is great.

We can only do so much to try and get the chain pet stores to change their ways.

its kind of a double edged sword. Most people don't exactly want standard of care because it would set a standard of enclosure size. This could be a problem because everyone seems to have a difference of opinion on enclosure size. If you are talking a zoo size enclosure for a ball owning and breeding snakes would be unpractical or impossible for anyone who didn't have a building to do so. Some people say that you can put a snake in a tub and some people believe a hatchling ball python needs to be in a 55 gallon aquarium. And thats just ball pythons. Now you have boas, which have several different sub species all requiring slightly different care. This could go on and on and on. just for snakes. then you get into lizards. It much easier to say what a dog needs due to the fact all dogs need food water and shots. Same with cats.

Thats right on the money, but the main thing is a ball python thats eating shouldn't need any extra calcium. I've never heard anyone say that bal pythons needed uv light until then either lol.

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Originally Posted by southb

Thats right on the money, but the main thing is a ball python thats eating shouldn't need any extra calcium. I've never heard anyone say that bal pythons needed uv light until then either lol.

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well that's because we are informed :P

1) Calcium nutrients comes from the bone they digest.

2) Nocturnal animals do not need any UV light. Only light they need is ambient day light so they have a day night cycle.

I use to work at PetsMart a few years ago as a manager and before that an employee for a few years so in total about 5 years. To be honest with you, there is no, ZERO, education on the animals. I mostly focused on the speciality dept. (fish, reptiles, etc.) and there were so many idiots that worked there. They had no clue about anything yet the store would hire them anyways :mad: I had to correct many mistakes but unfornuately it was after the animals death. I asked a lady at petsmart just a few weeks about about their baby bp's. She has no clue where they came from, if they were vet checked, if they had eaten :confused: I can only imagine what she said to the people that bought those poor babies :( They need to start educating these people with some type of class. It's the animals that truly suffer.

This is the reason as soon as I'm old enough I am going to get a job at petco. To educate people on reptiles...... the RIGHT way.

typical large chain pet stores, they care nothing about the profit off the animal. they sell most of the time unhealthy animals that are ridiculously overpriced. i try not to look at the snake section when i go in petsmart because i feel like i have to do something to help the poor little guy.

I completely understand where you are coming from. Unfortunately wrong information is given out by pet store employees all of the time. Most pet stores don't require any testing of knowledge before sending thier employees out on the floor. The only thing we can really hope is that the person purchasing the animal does a bit of research before they purchase. My fiance and I have become friends with our local pet store employees and sometimes help them out with questions they have. It has helped both my fiance and I as well as the pet store. Sometimes we have to do a bit of research on the questions we don't know the answers to. Once we have an answer we share the information with the pet store. It's great. ;)

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Originally Posted by southb

I'm really close to telling the manager I will do a free training class on reptiles for employees and maybe once every couple of months for the buyers.

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If they would allow you to do that that would be fantastic. I would love to do that at my local petco.

Petsmart and Petco HAVE to follow the corporate care sheets. They can't go outside the company "way". I dropped off quite a few BP.net caresheets at my Petsmart that many of the employees loved, but they said that they "disappeared" one day. I'm sure Management tossed them.

However, they do give my number out to people with questions about ball pythons and geckos. They even ask me to sex the ball pythons every time I'm in there. The employees KNOW at this particular location that the information is less than ideal, but their hands are tied. That doesn't stop them from asking me questions anyway (and paging me when I'm in the store shopping if they happen to have a customer interested in a ball python at the same time, or tracking me down and dragging the customer to me to answer all their questions! LOL).

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Originally Posted by rabernet

Petsmart and Petco HAVE to follow the corporate care sheets. They can't go outside the company "way". I dropped off quite a few BP.net caresheets at my Petsmart that many of the employees loved, but they said that they "disappeared" one day. I'm sure Management tossed them.

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Rabernet is right. They have to stick to a standard that all stores can be held accountable to. Some employees, and even good samaritan customers might give out misinformation and poor care advice when they are just trying to help. (Not implying anyone from here does this, but there are people out there who think they are helping when they aren't)

I decided to go over the BP care sheet from one of the major chain stores. I've always heard how bad they were, but never looked for myself. I wanted to write what the caresheet said, then make my comments, but halfway through I realized it's copyrighted, and I shouldn't reproduce it here, even just for analysis. So anyway, I went through it and you know what?

I was quite surprised actually. Most of the information was what I would consider good husbandry advice. The stuff I disagreed with mostly was stuff that is debatable, stuff that is open to personal preference and opinion. There are a lot of husbandry issues, I'll venture to say MOST husbandry issues, that are open to opinion and debate. No set in stone right or wrong answers. There were only one or two things on the caresheet that I completely disagreed with and couldn't see there being any other option.

I believe that if someone followed the caresheet to the letter they could raise plenty of happy, healthy BPs. Maybe a few things could be better, but the animals would be doing fine. So why doesn't this happen? I have a few ideas:

1. The customers take the advice of misinformed employees/friends/self-appointed "experts" instead of the caresheet, and the advice causes improper husbandry practices.

2. The animals in chain stores are sick and poorly cared for. Even if the customer follows the caresheet to the letter the BP is so sick and dehydrated it won't eat, and people don't go to the vet, they just go back to the store for a new BP.

3. People just don't care. They know what the caresheet says, but get lazy or bored of the animal, and neglect it

Take a look at a certain Pet Company caresheet and you might be surprised. Sure there are some issues, but compare how much is good to how much is debatable or wrong. It's easy to pick apart a few bad things and forget about all the good. A large majority is good advice. It's not the caresheet causing poor BPs to be neglected and die.