not living near bushland, our version of a herping adventure is to go to all the reptile stores around melbourne just to see whats around! unfortunately this weekend was not an overly happy trip. the standard of cages that these animals are being kept in is simply not good enough. at one particular store there was only 1 snake which had had a perfect shed - all the others had little pieces of shed all over the cage. this may have been due to the fact that half of them didnt have any water in their dried up bowls. at another store i had to tell one of the employees that her brissy had no water. they dont seem to know how to pick up a soiled piece of newspaper off the bottom of the cage either - for several weeks it seems. with a snake going to the toilet only a few times after eating and with the amount of turd in some of these cages it must have been WEEKS since the last clean out. if i had the money i would have come home with about 50 snakes this weekend. most of these snakes appear to be being power fed too - we saw a diamond having lunch and it looked like it still needed to go to the loo - i dont know about everyone else's regimes but i like my snakes to clean themselves out fully before their next meal, ESPECIALLY being a diamond.
i phoned the game and wildlife licencing unit today to ask how often they do routine checks on commercial licence holders....HMMPH. :x
i told her about the disgusting conditions of these cages and that they NEED to go out to these places and check whats going on to keep these pet stores on their toes. especially seeing as we only have like 15-20 reptile selling stores in melbourne its surely not that hard to even check these places once a year? i am waiting to hear a response from these people and will continue to bitch my god damn **** off to them until they do something about it. i would bloody do it myself if they would allow it.
i really cant stand the way some of these totally clueless people keep these animals. and the prices on them is competely insane too - but we wont go there...yet.
i can only hope the game and wildlife licensing unit will give a $h*t about them and do something about it.
i phoned the game and wildlife licencing unit today to ask how often they do routine checks on commercial licence holders....HMMPH. :x
i told her about the disgusting conditions of these cages and that they NEED to go out to these places and check whats going on to keep these pet stores on their toes. especially seeing as we only have like 15-20 reptile selling stores in melbourne its surely not that hard to even check these places once a year? i am waiting to hear a response from these people and will continue to bitch my god damn **** off to them until they do something about it. i would bloody do it myself if they would allow it.
i really cant stand the way some of these totally clueless people keep these animals. and the prices on them is competely insane too - but we wont go there...yet.
i can only hope the game and wildlife licensing unit will give a $h*t about them and do something about it.
The conditions in pet shops is often far from good. Maybe we should start a thread on GOOD reptile selling pet shops. I say GOOD because of the possible legal ramifications of posting the names of the many bad ones!! I'll start it off , errr, sorry, give me some time to think, I'mm sure there has to be a good one out there somewhere 
