Pet shops or local reptile breeders?

[Hugsplox]

If you buy anything from a place that is doing that thing poorly you are merely perpetuating a terrible cycle.

That said some pet shops can have nice snakes from reputable sources... Or even breed them themselves so you can't lump them all together. A local pet store to me has some great snakes. They are private owned and not the big box ones. I bought me Brooks Kingsnake from them and she is thriving wonderfully.

100% agree with this. Kind of like some of the big fish youtubers that go "rescue" all the beta fish from some of the big box stores. When you buy an animal from a petstore, especially the big ones, you're just telling their system that that animal sells and that they need more. As much as we'd all love to walk into these places and save these animals from what sometimes really is terrible care, we'd just end up going back to save the next one they get since the last one sold.

Now, like KMG said that doesn't go for EVERY pet store. The place I get my feeders from I'd 100% purchase animals from them. The difference is if I wanted to I could arrange to meet the breeder they get their animals from because they're all local. Of course I'm not going to be able to get some of the harder to find species that way, but if there's something in the shop that grabs my attention, I don't have any reservations about purchasing there.