catch 22 topic - Page 2

jncoclub · 07-28-03, 12:49 PM

I went to one of the shops in town and they were selling a leo for $200 which also included a 10 gallon tank! Rip off!! When I mentioned my concern they said that people buy them that way all the time. Who here has bought a plain ordinary leo (including a $10 10 gal tank) for $200???

Jeff_Favelle · 07-28-03, 08:20 PM

Quote:

I went to one of the shops in town and they were selling a leo for $200 which also included a 10 gallon tank! Rip off!! When I mentioned my concern they said that people buy them that way all the time.

Errr.......what exactly was your "concern"?

Good for them I say! I wish reptiles cost a LOT more money. This would eliminate impulse-buys, gift-buys, and a LOT of rescues! If green iguanas were $500, I GUARANTEE you that there would be about 99% LESS abandoned/rescued/euthanized lizards.

Jeff Hathaway · 07-29-03, 07:23 AM

Some good points raised...

Some pet shops & staff are excellent, and some breeders are downright frightening. However, the odds are that breeders are more knowledgeable and better able to provide proper care advice. That won't change unless pet shops start paying people enough that they could actually consider it a career move to work there, which is unlikely to happen.

Pet shops sell animals that are WC or of unknown origin in many cases. Most breeders don't.

To answer the original question, I think it is worse for a pet shop to sell something they don't know about, since they SHOULD know better, than it is for a beginner to buy something there- the word beginner says it all, and so they could be excused. Not sure what the point of such a comparision would be, though.

Hopefully, breeders don't sell non-feeding animals and 'runts' to pet shops. We sell most of our offspring to pet shops, and they are all well started (4 feedings, minimum) before they go out the door. I would never sell something that was not feeding or was a 'runt' except in exceptional circumstances to someone who I was quite confident about and with complete disclosure!

Have fun,

Jeff Hathaway
Sciensational Sssnakes!!

spyderman · 07-29-03, 07:33 AM

Ok. BAD deallings with a "PET SHOP" I went into our closest reptile speciallist (15 miles away

) yesterday & Didn't like what I saw or smelt. For starters, 2 snakes were labelled WRONGLY & There were 3 huge smelly lumps of ...Uuummm...welll...You can guess, in one tank. I fell in love with an Albino King snake in there, but couldn't stay in there long enough to look to much. There is a lot of Herperz in my area, but not a specialist shop close... I'm sure I can do better than this guy.

Emily-Fisher · 07-29-03, 07:48 AM

But guys... I was having a conversation about this with my friend who owns a petstore. He has been working in petstores for over 30 years and he told me that before internet was made, there were around 33% less herp deaths in the store because as quickly as the animals came to the store, they would also find homes. Now because of online breeders, many people don't bother buying animals from petstores and so the animals are stuck in the store for months and many of them end up dying since most petstores can't take special care of each and every pet. Because of this, several petstores have been ordering less animals but most of them aren't. So as more and more people buy animals from breeders, more and more animals die. A wild caught animal might actually be better off in captivity (away from predators) and make an equally good pet as do captive bred animals. Sure, captive bred animals might save you money on vet bills etc., but an owner that actually cares about their pet won't mind paying extra on the vet bills. I am having a bit of trouble explaining what I mean so I might as well just put this in a nutshell. We shouldn't encourage people who just want herps as pets to buy from breeders. If they are just starting off in the herping world, their first couple of herps should be from petstores and then if they want to get into breeding and more seriouse things, THEN they should buy from breeders but otherwise buying from petstores is actually saving those animals. Unless we can get every single person in the world to buy from a breeder, which we can't do, then we should have the begginers buy from petstores because no matter what we say to the petstores, they won't stop ordering large shipments of animals. Just my opinion, I hope that you all understand what I am trying to say.