*smh* pet store BP

[CeeLee]

I was at a pet store today and they had 2 BPs. The set up was awful and they had them both in the same cage. 1 looked good and healthy but one was way underweight and his skin was dry and kind of wrinkled He reminds me of my Rush when I first got him. I would have got the snake today if I had the money for him and a set up. When I can afford it, I want to go back and get him. Or do you think it's a bad move buying a snake in bad shape from a pet store? I'm worried because I'm still a newb and I was lucky Rush was a good eater after he shed, but I worry this one won't be a good eater or something.
He tugged at my heartstrings though

[Simple Man]

Buying snakes from pet stores like that just makes room for the next animal to be shipped in and sold off to someone. As bad as it seems, you're better off not shopping at stores that don't keep animals properly.

Regards,

B

[Alexandra V]

I know exactly how you feel, I see that stuff a lot at pet shops around here.

Now, if you were to save and go back to get the snake, it could either help or harm the situation.

Harm: you could get a snake that is very ill, so expensive vet bills, or you could be just opening up a spot for them to bring in another snake and not keep it properly.

The way you could make it help though is if you maybe try to talk to the person in charge at the store, let them know that they aren't doing things right and that anybody who knows about keeping reptiles can clearly see that. See how they react, and go back later to see if they made any improvements, and if they did, buy the snake. If they didn't, you could maybe try contacting authorities about it (what I'm planning on doing for a reptile zoo this summer).

[ballpythonluvr]

Buying a snake from the pet store when it is poorly kept is never really a good idea. I bought my very first bp from a pet store and man was I ever sorry I did that. The snake had mites and would not eat for me at all. I learned my lesson the hard way.

[TheWinWizard]

Skip that one and go to a local expo and get a nice one.

[purplemuffin]

Pet stores get their animals very cheap for 'wholesale' prices, that means they can buy in bulk cheaply and still get a big profit when you buy them for normal price even if they've had the animal for a while. If you buy a ball python for 40 dollars from that petstore, they probably could have got it in a shipment of 5 dollars for each python. They clearly are trying to spend as little as possible to keep the animal healthy, so they won't lose their profit by taking care of the animal. Purchasing the poor thing will only tell the big bosses that people will still buy their animals whether or not they take care of them properly, and they will be encouraged to buy more ball pythons. That one snake you buy could let them buy 10 more, and every other purchase made out of pity or ignorance continues to feed the greedy store which now has no reason to take care of their animals. They still make money, the snake still gets sold!

As sad as it is, saving the one little baby can in fact doom many others to suffer the same sad fate, and the more people try to save, the more the store will bring in.. Even if you yell at the salesman or even the manager at the store as you buy the snake, at the end of the month all that they see is a sold animal and a pile of cash! Unfortunately, in the business world, especially with large companies.. Money is really one of the big things that speaks to stores..

Your best bet to save him is to alert the store he is unhealthy, say you are disgusted by the care they are giving him and saying that you will not shop there anymore--and then actually stop shopping there! Try to talk to the higherups and complain to them, talk to the boss's bosses. By alerting them you might help change the mind of an ignorant worker who doesn't know better, and help open their eyes a little. Usually they only know as much they are told by their boss/the manual, which is often very simple and wrong. The people who DO know will start to see that they just aren't fooling anyone anymore, and that they are going to have trouble selling this snake--which is costing them money by just existing in their store--if it doesn't get healthy. With enough time and the right people stores can change how they care for reptiles, or better yet, just stop selling them since they can't make a big enough profit. That is good because it means they can't torture another ball python!


And of course, buying the snake yourself means you have a possibly sick snake. It will cost you vet bills just to see how sick it is, it will cost you vet bills to fix the problem, and who knows if the damage can even be reversed. You could end up with a short lived pet that costs you a ton of money... Which would be very very sad. Of course you would give him a good happy home, but it would be a struggle.

My ball python, Maru, was an ignorant mistake in the beginning of our experience with reptiles, we ended up buying from a petshop. Tics, RI, scars, you name it, it was on our snake. Maru didn't eat for us for 6 months! That was our first snake. Terrifying!! We were sure we had purchased a dying animal. Somehow Maru managed to get better, but I still think about all those snakes in that store, I was so ignorant at the time and I know many others were ignorant as well. They had literally piles of snakes in the cages, all sharing their diseases with each other. The store should have been stopped, but I wanted to save a little baby.. Instead, I probably helped pay for them to get another batch of sick babies to add to their pile.. Pretty sickening. I hope someone else was smart enough to stand up to them, and just maybe they were stopped..

[DellaF]

I see that in just about every pet store I visit around here. Poor babies piled up together. It 's hard to walk away but we can't save em all.