Buying live from a pet store

[Jeo123]

So, recently, in order to break a 7 month feeding strike, I bought a gerbil from a pet store. After that went amazingly well, I've started looking into using gerbils in the future.

Now normally if I buy a mouse from a pet store, the associate asks what I'm feeding. But when I bought the gerbil, I got a lot of questions along the line of what make me like gerbils, do I have a tank set up for them(I told them yes, but left out the fact that there was also a snake in the tank), and other questions about how I'll be taking care of my new "pet."

I never directly lied and said I wasn't going to feed the gerbil, but out of curiousity, can pet stores refuse to sell to you if you're going to feed the animal to another animal? I'm talking Pet Smart/PetCo type stores. Looking around online, I know a lot of gerbil breeders are part of the American Gerbil Society and part of their terms of membership are that they'll make sure buyers aren't using the gerbils as feeders. I just wonder if big pet stores work the same way.

[tcutting]

they tend to. In fact the petco/petsmart by me doesnt sell live feeders. and most places that sell gerbils will start asking what is happening to them when you come in once a week.

[Slim]

Yes, they can. My local PETCO won't sell you anything if you state you are going to use it as a feeder. They claim it's company policy. I have no way to varify that or not.

My local regional chain pet store, Pet World, not only are happy to sell feeders, they raise them in the back.

Are you really sure you wan't to go down the gerbil road? BPs can be impossible to swtich back once they've been on gerbils.

[Cameron Lamb Exotics]

Yeah petco and petsmart wont sell them to you if they know they are for feeding. I had the same response when I had to find rabbits for my burmse pythons.

[Jeo123]

I fed her once so far just to break the hunger strike hoping that I can get her eating again. It's a week later and still no luck, so I picked up another and plan on using the bedding to sent the food. She didn't eat this week but I'm going to give it a while before I give her another gerbil. They're kind of a last resort move, I'm just looking togather as much information as possible ahead of time.

I'm also considering the possibility of breeding them myself if I still can't get her to eat. It seems like she refuses to go with rats, but I think she's dismissing mice as being too small. She had recently dropped down to 800g froom a peak of 950g. I've been trying with medium rats frozen and the largest mice available in the frozen section. I got her to eat a single live mouse a while back after she had been eating frozen rats all summer but stopped for two months since I suspected she wasn't going to eat this winter, but other than that and the recent gerbil she's been on f/t.

[Mike41793]

I recently switched to f/t but back when i fed live i always got them from my local pet shop. They raise their own feeders there. A room for rats and a room for mice. Anyways they were closed for renovations for about a month so i decided that was a bit too long to let my snake(this is when i only had my normal girl) go without eating. So i went to Petco and this girl tried to get me to fill out this whole companion animals form sheet thing as i was trying to explain the mice werent gunna be my comapnions lol. It randomnly asked for my name, address, phone, email etc just for two mice! Soooo i just had a little fun and made up all the info then left in a hurry while they started to look it over lol

[mikel81]

I once bought a crab from petsmart and they made me sign something that said I would not harm it or feed it to anything. I asked why and they said it was store policy and they do it to keep people from buying certain animals to use as feeders.

[Cameron Lamb Exotics]

lol maybe they thought you were going to eat it.

[ExotixTowing]

They sell snakes knowing full well you have to feed them..... Then they refuse to sell you FOOD !!!

Yet if they catch on your not doing what needs to be done to ensure the health of your snake you will get a visit from the OSPCA ....


Talk about a Double Standard !@!

[robinbanks]

I have bought from petco and told them straight up it was for my snake. No problem at all.
One time the guy went to get a rat out of the tank and one of them bit him. I said give me that bit you, I'll get rid of it for you and he did.
If a store PetCo or Pet Smart refused to sell me a rat. I would ask to speak to the manager, and if he refused, then I would ask for the number to the area director over the store.
I'm pretty sure it's not store policy to refuse selling a mouse or rat because your feeding it to a snake. Lets face it those stores are all about the... $$$