Can pet stores treat corn snakes like this?! Help me save them!

About a week ago I went to my local pet shop and I got a killer deal on two Exo Terra's "Reptile Den Terrarium Tunnel System " for 10 bucks each (like 70%+ off their sticker price.) :crazy02:


But anyways... I walked back to their live reptile section in the back and I noticed they had about a 20 gallon display case. And inside that case was two little hamster cages. And inside of EACH hamster cage was about 7 (SEVEN) corns! I couldn’t believe it. Why would they cage so many hatchling corns inside of a single cage?? Not to mention they looked HORRIBLY skinny. It looked like they were born a month ago.

I asked the lady how old they are and she said they got them from a local breeder at the start of the summer. (About the same time I got mine!) And mine is easily 5x as big as theirs!

I feel so sorry for these little guys! Their home is so horrible. They have half an inch of bark as substrate. I saw no heating at all. They are cramped in a little cage of 5 inches by 14 inches with 6 other corns. They have no hides at all, just a water dish and a decorative tree in the middle. There was a note ontop of each cage with the date and “white one ate” or “white one refused” Zero mention of regurges (which I know they would of done a lot in those conditions.)

So I checked out my two hides and I told the lady that the snakes shouldn’t be caged together and they need more hiding spots so they feel protected etc etc etc.

She said “well we’ve had them since the start of the summer and we haven’t had any problems.”

Just by the looks of the guys I know they have.

I went back to the pet store today to see if they had any more killer deals on hides and I walked back to the Corns, still sitting their in their hamster cages.

I was so mad I took a couple pictures of them. Two pictures, same hamster cage. I believe I counted 5 heads all clumped up in the corner probably trying to stay warm.


Can they do this to the corns? How cruel!!





Also I looked at the Ball Python cage and now they have TWO in the same cage. One of them was sitting in the corner froze and the other one was flopping around with his first half of his body in the air sniffing the air like he was trying to find a warm spot. I bent down and noticed their was a bulb INSIDE of the cage. Then I guess the Ball Python found it also and continued to try to get as close as possible (see picture.) Absouluty no hides in the cage either, just half an inch of bark.



What can I do to save these corns!

I do not know if you have the money or not.

With here having them for so long maybe you could make her a wholesale deal on several and them sell them through the paper. If that works you could rescue more.

Hope it works out.
Richard

I don't have the money or else I would do it. I have the space to setup several more vivs....

So sad!

The corns dont look horribly bad; not good for them yes but not horrible by petstore standards. I went into a Petco once and there in a cage there was more corns then there was substrate. There's really not much you can do, they dont look like theyre being abused or neglected, they arnt sickly or dying, they just arnt being provided the optimum care we would like them to see. Keep on encouraging what they need to the store but you cant expect too much out of a place needing a profit.

If you buy them, the store will get more and keep them in the same conditions.

The best thing you can do to save those corns is to stop patronizing that store and encourage all your friends to do the same. Seriously, even if you were to buy all of them (plus the equipment needed to provide proper setups for them) you are just contributing to the problem. The store would just take your money and continue to put corns in the same conditions.

BeckyG said:

The best thing you can do to save those corns is to stop patronizing that store and encourage all your friends to do the same. Seriously, even if you were to buy all of them (plus the equipment needed to provide proper setups for them) you are just contributing to the problem. The store would just take your money and continue to put corns in the same conditions.

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Agreed.

Actually most petstores do not have separate cages for all of their corns. They usually have newborns and they are usually in the same cage. I think (which could be wrong) that If you have a few corns 2-4 in a big enough cage and they are young and they are fed separately then it would be okay for a short period of time to house them together. But you said they were in there sense summer and thats too long.

As someone mentioned earlier, by buying all the cornsnakes and equip. to house them, it's still contributing to the petstore and they won't know any better than to do the same thing again?

Maybe you can try printing out care sheets and dropping them off with an employee to give to a manager. Or give them to a manager yourself. Maybe you can bring your corn in for a visit and show them that this is how big, strong, etc. a corn should be at such and such an age.

The best we can really do is educate and stop buying from particularly bad shops till they turn their act around.

Green Bean said:

As someone mentioned earlier, by buying all the cornsnakes and equip. to house them, it's still contributing to the petstore and they won't know any better than to do the same thing again?

Maybe you can try printing out care sheets and dropping them off with an employee to give to a manager. Or give them to a manager yourself. Maybe you can bring your corn in for a visit and show them that this is how big, strong, etc. a corn should be at such and such an age.

The best we can really do is educate and stop buying from particularly bad shops till they turn their act around.

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Agree 100% with this. If education fails to work, then you could always contact a reporter. Provide the reporter with caresheets and describe the conditions inside the store and they, being the pit-bulls that they are, will often harass and badger the store owner with enough bad publicity that the owner is forced to make better arrangements.

The pet store up the street from school (who I rarely, rarely buy from) houses their snakes in a similar manner. I am pretty sure most of them are dehydrated severely, because their skin folds on itself and isn't taught against them. Some also have pieces of retained shed. They are a disgusting institution, and a lot of students at our school work there and think they know all about caring for animals because of it.

One boy I had two years ago, and he was in my room for a test this year and said "You should let me hold your snake." I said "No, he just ate yesterday." And he said "So? That doesn't mean anything. If you don't hold them every day they get mean and bite!" Yeah, right. He also told me when I get my marine tank going he'll "give me a deal" on liverock.

Thanks, but I think not. Liverock is the life of your marine system, and all that store deals is death.

This is the same store once sold my sisters friend an ornate box turtle in a "Critter Keeper" as a Christmas present for my sister. Told her that the turtle would be fine in the keeper with a water dish, lettuce for food, and no heat/light. My sister called me all excited and I did some research and said we had no chance at caring for this animal- so I had to pay $40 to place the animal in rescue with Mid-Atlantic Reptile Rescue (MARS-Rescue). I did it because I wanted the animal to find a home with someone who could care for it, but that store was INCREDIBLY irresponsible in selling that animal to someone with those care instructions! Jesus!

The point is that pet stores are foul, disgusting dens of filth (at least around here they are) and the only way we can beat them is to not purchase from them. I go out of my way to make my purchases at PETsMART, because as bad as some of the PM's around here are- that store is a thousand times worse. You vote with your dollars, and sometimes the best thing you can do is simply to remove your vote and encourage others to do the same.

I honestly don't think it's a bad thing to house newborns together..As long as they're all eating properly and not hungry..They always curl up together and don't look that unhappy. I work at Petco, and when they feed the snakes they at least keep the ones in the back that didn't eat until they do eat..
But I dunno, a lot of people do think it's wrong..

The problem comes in stressing them out by forced contact. Snakes are not naturally social creatures (with the exception of a few species that hibernate in numbers) and so to force them into a situation where they are surrounded by dozens of their fellows simply increases their stress levels. It can even cause them to go OFF their food, and in hatchlings every factor, no matter how small, can mean the difference between life and death. I realize that for many stores it is the nature of business, and that they have few other housing options, but it does concern me that they are portraying an image of snake-keeping to the public that is not in the best interest of the snakes. The general public as no concept of "Do as I say, not as I do."

I guess i'm lucky in that our local petshop(not the petco in our town, never looked at thier snakes) keeps all thier babies in deli cups, not that it's a perfect setup since there's really no cool or warm side for the kids to go to, but atleast they TRY to keep em all seperate and are able to feed em seperatly without problems

I agree that those corns don't look that bad in terms of health. They don't look very skinny, and if they're a little small, what can you expect from the maintenance diets that retailers use for their snakes? This isn't limited to pet stores either. I've bought six-month old (or older) corns from some of the most reputable corn breeders, and they were no larger than the ones you photographed, and sometimes thinner. These retailers aren't interested in bulking up snakes to be breeder-ready. Most want to keep them alive and reasonably healthy, and unload them asap.

If your pet store practiced perfect husbandry for every species they carry, I doubt that they would be able to offer you cheap terrarium accessories, and all of the other inexpensive dry goods that keep you (and others) coming through the door. :shrugs:

Roy Munson said:

If your pet store practiced perfect husbandry for every species they carry, I doubt that they would be able to offer you cheap terrarium accessories, and all of the other inexpensive dry goods that keep you (and others) coming through the door.

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This is true. The only real solution is for them not to sell animals at all. They lose money on it anyway, and sale and breeding of animals ought to be left to breeders who have a vested interest in the species being bred. I, for one, am not against that line of thought, though I know it will never happen.

Hypancistrus said:

This is true. The only real solution is for them not to sell animals at all. They lose money on it anyway, and sale and breeding of animals ought to be left to breeders who have a vested interest in the species being bred. I, for one, am not against that line of thought, though I know it will never happen.

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I'm not against that line of thought either, but I agree that it will never happen. And despite the fact that they may actually lose money on the live animal sales alone, the mini-zoo aspect is another big customer draw for them. And they sure don't lose any money on the supplies that people buy along with the live animals.

Some people in England were saying the other day (in some other thread) that the stores there are very good about caring for the animals and the whole industry is well regulated. I wish the US were more like that. If we expect pet stores to do the right thing on their own, we'll be disappointed in many cases. But if the long arm of the law is involved, they'll have to clean up their act (or stop selling).

Unfortunately, I don't think it's an easy issue to solve, at any level. I mean, people are importing exotic animals into this country, animals that may be carrying horrible infectious diseases.

I try to understand the pet stores' point of view, too--I know it's hard for them to keep up with all those different species and give every animal optimum care. But I worry--I went on Petco's website, and they were talking about all the learning their employees have to do about the care of the animals, and they mentioned regular in-store vet visits, etc. Yet I'd seen a corn in there that had 4 minnows in its water bowl (and 2 of them were dead). I can totally see where you might see a shed or poop in there that hasn't been dealt with yet that day, but putting minnows in the water bowl seems like such a basic and rudimentary issue...I don't know how that happens. Is the company lying about how careful it is? Is it just that one store manager who isn't on the ball and hasn't been called out on it yet? Am I overthinking this? (Yep.)

I've been keeping quiet about my jobs at major chain petstores for a while, since we sign a contract forbidding to discuss store policy, but since I no longer work for one of these chains, I believe I can share my experiences. I will not name the chain, or the area it is in, just in case. However, I can tell you now that I work for PetSmart, and they are wonderful.

When I first started working at this chain, I was hoping that it wouldn't be as bad as people make them out to be. It was my dream to be able to work with animals, and I was excited. I was first trained as a cashier, but proved to be horrible at it and put in Small Animals instead. I had no training at all except being told what to do by an employee my age that had worked there only a month or so longer than me. They gave me keys to animal enclosures and allowed me to handle any creature without knowing my experience level with them.

At first I just thought they trusted me and thought I could handle the responsibility. Afterwards I saw that it was common for employees to be thrown out there with minimal training, especially on reptiles. If I didn't have my previous knowledge from keeping and learning about animal care on my own, I believe I would have been quite horrible at it since my "training" was complete crap.

I actually bragged here about how smart my coworkers were until one of them told a customer to feed her baby corn crickets. When I complained about this to other employees, only a small number of them thought it was incorrect!

There is a regional manager that comes and inspects all the animals and their habitats, but they only came though once the whole time I worked there, and the managers would just have us clean everything and get it perfect, and then after they left everyone slacked again.

I tried my best to care for the animals while I was there, but there are some things you just can't help when your manager is forcing you to keep 30 mice in one 2x4 foot cage, 6 red-tailed boas in one 3x3 foot cage, and tell you to make animal care seem "easy" to customers. We never sold any of the larger reptiles, including a savanna monitor.

It didn't help that none of the managers could sex an animal unless it was painfully obvious, like a male rat. I can't remember all the times we ended up with babies from people mixing up the genders. Not to mention animals often get put in the sick room and are forgotten about. In one case, a treefrog had died after declining rapidly back there, and his body was left there for a WEEK before anyone notices, and yet people had been signing off on his chart daily.

Though I do admit, the animals were fed properly, in seperate containers. Their temps and humidity were checked often, and adjusted. Also, animals having a difficult shed were placed in the back and rubbed with mineral oil until they got through it. Snakes with prolapsed vents and RIs were cared for as well.

I really loved working there for a while until I realized that only a small percentage of the employees really cared about the animals, and with a store of about 30 employees, that 5 caring people weren't enough when everyone else slacked. Not to mention there were only 3 people who were reptile-knowledgable, one of them being me. We couldn't be there every day, and it just made me sad.

We even had a manager what refused to go in the reptile section of the store and would scream and scream if you tried to show her a sick snake. We also had an employee that didn't like animals AT ALL and was scared of birds, rodents, and reptiles.

An animal's importance was ranked by it's price. Our hand-fed parrots were doted on and spoiled, while our mice were left in overcrowded, dirty conditions and often water bottles and food bowls ran empty several times a day. Sick or injured mice were left in the back to die or were fed to the larger snakes (!!!), never once did a mouse see a vet or recieve medicine while I worked there. Mice that were born in the store were usually fed to snakes or thrown away.

Mice enclosures were left unlocked most of the time because no one cared about theft or escapes. Mice ran wild around the store and often were killed accidently or caught with nasty, infected wounds from being wild for months. These mice were often kept in the back until they died of their infections. Managers knew about these practices and allowed them because they were "only $2 mice". Most of the mice also had tumors or horrible spine deformities.

I could go on, but it really getting hard to think about it all. There was also a grey ratsnake that escaped constantly, and when I had quit, he was loose again.

I feel like crap for thinking I was a part of this store, and not knowing any better or knowing what to do about it. I just had to quit when I came home crying because something died horribly or I just felt crushed by all the things I saw. And now I feel like all I can do is warn other people, since trying to get to the company wouldn't do much since I have been gone for months and left on bad terms (left to a competitor and stopped going to work prior to my 2 weeks being up.)

I know not all stores in this chain are bad, just as not all PetSmarts are excellent, but goddamn if that one store didn't impact how I thought about all of the chain. One bad store can change your mind about all of them.

Wow, very nice post. Sorry you had to go through all of that, and I'm glad you quit.

Candachan said:

We even had a manager what refused to go in the reptile section of the store and would scream and scream if you tried to show her a sick snake.

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That is just sad. If you are just an employee and are scared of animlas in the store you shouldn't work at one, let alone a manager.

Candachan said:

One bad store can change your mind about all of them.

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Soo true and I think a lot of people say petstores are all bad when only some are. When I think of it I know I have been biased toward petstores.

Ohh and I have a question. Do any petsmarts have snakes. Every one I have been to has reptiles but no snakes. Just Wondering.

Petsmarts do not carry snakes. To my knowlege they never have. I worked at one back in the late 90's and was a frequent customer even before then, and never once saw a snake. I believe it has to do with their policy to not sell live feeder animals.

That being said, some people on here have been reporting that local PM's have begun carrying limited numbers of snakes. I can say that my local petsmart now carries "Iced Mice" of varying sizes, but still no snakes. Perhaps they are changing their minds??? :shrugs:

Dave123 said:

Ohh and I have a question. Do any petsmarts have snakes. Every one I have been to has reptiles but no snakes. Just Wondering.

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Very few select stores are "experimenting" with snakes, and word is that they aren't selling very well. Only 1 of the many stores in my city are selling them. I'm glad that they are testing them first instead of stuffing them in every store like the other chain does, especially the larger species. The snakes they are experimenting with are corns and kings.

Personally, I'm glad my store doesn't have them. Snakes make great pets, and maybe it's just me, but I'd go to a breeder. Especially if you plan to breed them. But for pets, stores are good if you know what to look for, I'd just prefer a specialty store.

Hypancistrus said:

I believe it has to do with their policy to not sell live feeder animals. I can say that my local petsmart now carries "Iced Mice" of varying sizes, but still no snakes. Perhaps they are changing their minds??? :shrugs:

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Yes, we sell frozen mice as well, but they are expensive ($10 for 6 pinkies!). They are T-Rex Arctic brand, I believe. Even the stores that sell snakes still refuse to sell and animal for the purpose of being a feeder except feeder goldfish and crickets. You have no idea how many people try to buy our mice or rats for that, as if the higher price tag wasn't an indicator!

Candachan said:

Personally, I'm glad my store doesn't have them. Snakes make great pets, and maybe it's just me, but I'd go to a breeder. Especially if you plan to breed them. But for pets, stores are good if you know what to look for, I'd just prefer a specialty store.

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Agreed.
This year will be my first year to breed corns and I need to think about how I'm going to sell them. I was going to ask petstores but I think I will put sign's in petstores instead of selling them to the stores and put an advertisement in the paper.