Petsmart experience

So, on Black Friday, I bought a believed-to-be male normal ball python I named Cave. He is underweight, sweet as can be. But he is underweight. Their ball pythons there are stressed and underweight. I bought him, and they said to feed him FUZZIES. Hatchlings should be eating hoppers, he needed hoppers, not fuzzies. He was 80-90 grams when I got him. He was my first ball python. I have 3 others that I got at repticon and craigslist. They are all healthy! The 2 other hatchlings are rounder than Cave. Petsmart, why?

Essentially, it's because they are a business. Their whole point is to make as much money as possible, even at the expense of the animals. The most likely scenario in my opinion is that Petsmart buys bulk rodents and other supplies, and then just uses that to take care of all their animals, instead of individually caring for each animal. It sucks, but unfortunately there's not a whole lot we can do.

Every Petsmart is different! I work for one in Canada and my location goes out of our way for each individual pet. I use my days off sometimes to take little guys to the vet. I have taken everything from budgies with broken legs to bearded dragons with slight head tilts. Anything out of the ordinary should be monitored in isolation for 24 hrs and then taken to the vet (unless of course it's a obvious problem such as a broken leg or a rat with a bleeding bum). Most of the time it is nothing serious and our animals recover quite quickly. Even hamsters with wet tail (diarrhea, very common to relocation stress or any sort of stress) always see a vet within the first 24 hours!

Personally I too have had horrible experiences at some Petsmarts being misinformed or whatever the case. Don't give up on them though some of us do the best we can!

It wasn't until we became owners of a Bearded Dragon and learned how to care for them that we noticed a difference. I took my 17 year old to our local pecto to look at some VIV supplies. We stopped to peek at their Beardies and she broke down in tears and won't go in Petco anymore. They had two baby Beardies who were thin and very dehydrated. Their enclosure needed to be cleaned too. We did get ours from a local pet store because we didn't know any better. So far Gizmo is thriving and we are in love with him/her. I hope your Python is doing better. Knowing what i do now, Our next pet will come from a breeder.

I don't do PetSmart but I do shop Petco a lot. I don't get animals from there but all my supplies and stuff for my furry critters comes from there. The petco here has very knowledgeable people when it comes to reptiles. One of them breeds ball pythons and has everything from beardies to ball pythons, colubrids, and constrictors. Very Very knowledgeable people here but I can only speak for this one.

That being said, I can't answer your feeding questions as the ones here are pretty healthy! lol. Does Petsmart feed live or F/T? I know they have pretty good F/T product (though i get mine at petco) That being said, I am not a mouse fan. I got off those a long time ago with ball pythons. I do rats only. A hatchling ball does well usually with rat pinkies, sometimes even pups. If you haven't swapped to rats you should. Much more nutritious. Way more so for your older snakes when you get get into bigger rats.


- Justin