Pet Stores

[Liv the Librarian]

How are pet stores where you live?

Here in the US, the big name pet stores are typically awful, especially for reptiles. Half the time they're dying/already dead when you go to see look at the animals. They also are almost NEVER fed the appropriate diets or given the proper substrates. And the mites... my gods. Every PetCo I've ever been in has their poor snakes covered in mites.

[Crouton]

It's a mixed bag here. A few pet stores here have stopped selling dogs and cats in store, and instead are pointing their customers to pet adoption from rescues which is good. Some stores still do have the "puppies in the window" though which is depressing, since most people now know those types of animals come from puppy farms.

As for other animals that's a mixed bag. Where I live there are a lot of specialised reptile and fish stores, and they are sometimes better at keeping animals healthy. But even then you can find people working there with absolutely no clue.

[Liv the Librarian]

I don't have any reptile specialty stores near me, so I can't compare them. I do know that the shop I used to volunteer for (the one I got all of my reptiles from) came into new management when I got Oody and Till... and man was that woman dense. She kept her bearded dragons on sand (which, I understand that some people can do it without issue, especially when they feed in separate enclosures, but when you're the owner of an establishment, I don't feel like you should be promoting somethign that is widely known to cause health issues, like sand as a substrate) and would constantly order reptiles that she didn't even look up the proper care for. I once spent 3-4 hours removing ALL of the sand from EVERY bearded dragon enclosure and placing paper towel down, only to go in the next week to work and find that she had placed them all back on sand. She was really upset because she told me that her husband said they were keeping them on sand and if I didn't like it, I could quit. So guess what I did? I quit, right then and there. She was also giving her beardie babies WAX WORMS for a staple diet and only giving them lettuce for their greens... lettuce isn't even a green *sigh*. It was awful. When I got my iguana, he had killed all 3 of his siblings because she was keeping 4 iguanas in a 20 gallon enclosure...

And she actually takes better care of her reptiles than most big chain stores around here, which should tell you how bad the situation is.

Most stores don't sell puppies and kittens here either, but they still sell mice, rats, and ferrets. The ferrets make me especially sad because at Petco there's always a good 10 ferrets in a tiny octagonal enclosure.

[Crouton]

Yeah I get annoyed when I see beardies in sand in pet stores. Most of them keep them on newspaper or something but a few stupid stores still use sand. I've never given pringle a wax worm, they aren't even available in Australia. And since beardies are Australian lizards that sort of says something... they should be eating a diet that is native to this country.

I very rarely see ferrets in pet stores. I see rabbits and guinea pigs and rats and mice but never ferrets. I think that most stores here don't sell them, so I think Australian's who keep ferrets probably all get them from breeders.

The thing I usually have problems with in stores is how small the bird cages are, when compared with the size of the bird or the amount of birds in the cage. That really gets to me.

[Liv the Librarian]

Wax worms are a wonderful treat for all lizards. It's like cake though. Very high in fat and moisture, but almost no nutrients. I give my lizards waxies a few times a year. My beardies get roaches, crickets, greens, and various other fruits and vegetables. I do my best to give them what is healthiest for them (and occasional waxworms as treats, they go nuts for them).

I hate the way pet stores keep birds as well. That's the only thing the pet store I worked at did right; they had a huge bird terrarium (I think that's what you call them).

[Crouton]

I give P silkworms and mealworms for those rare treats.

Here we call them aviarys.