Do you shop at PETCO?

Oh, yes ... there is a world of difference between a reputable breeder, and a mill. That is what I was trying to say in my earlier post, sorry if I wasn't clear. A mill breeds only for the money. They have a lot of animals, and breed them every time they can. They can literally breed them to death. Most of these animals live their whole lives in a tiny cage, never know love or kindness. They breed animals who are not healthy, and never should be bred. They sell animals who have genetic defects and illnesses. They are irresponsible, and don't care where they animals end up - in a bad home, at the city pound, in the landfill. Doesn't matter to them ... they've made their money.

There are also good breeders. It sounds like the breeder your friend bought from is one of those. Good breeders care what happens to their animals and breed only healthy animals. Good breeders won't sell to a petstore, because they ARE good breeders. They care about where their babies go, and want to pick good homes for them. Pet stores will sell any animal to the first person that walks in the door with the money, no questions asked. Good breeders can't stand to see that happen to their babies, so they sell them themselves.

By purchasing animals from small, good, reputable breeders, we are allowing those breeders to continue producing a small number of healthy animals. By purchasing animals from a pet store, we are putting money into the pockets of mills, thereby allowing mills to continue. They only way to stop puppy and bird mills is to stop buying from them.

I don't think that all of Petco's birds come from mills. I wasn't a manager so I didn't know exactly where the birds were purchased from. But I remember when we got Digger, an African Grey parrot. When we got him he was not only very healthy but also very friendly, which I don't think you get friendly birds from a mill, or at least straight out of a mill. He was also handfed, which I don't really think they do at mills. We had to handfeed him several times a day. I remember we all go so attatched to him when we finally sold him a few of the employees cried because we all missed him.

I am shocked to hear this, the Petco I have shopped at , they are so caring toward the animals. even the cashiers. it is petco where I saw Charlie, anyway I guess any of the stores may have uncaring people there...I will go read the story now. LOL I should have before posting, oh well

its great that there are groups like Peta out there, to protect the animals, as long as that is their cause and not to make a name for themselves, in the news.

Well today I looked around at the animals at our Petco. I checked out the reptiles, rodents, birds, and the bunnies/ferrets/etc. Didn't get over to the fish section, and only briefly looked at the reptiles. All of the animals had food and water, along with several toys and treats. They were not overcrowded, and they all appeared healthy to me. The mice were in two huge cages, and each cage had maybe 20 mice. Some were sleeping, some playing, some eating, etc. I didn't go into the bird room, but I looked, and they all looked healthy and happy to me, not overcrowded. I can't verify where the animals come from, I really don't know. But I think PETA can't condem an entire chain because of incidents in a few stores.

I sometimes go to the Petco near us to see the dogs from the Humane Society.( they bring dogs in every Thurs-Sun) I don't usually buy too much there cause it is expensice...Pet Supplies Plus is cheaper. The small animals I've seen there though, seem to look healthy and well cared for....

I would just like to comment on Petco and it's horrible conditions. Having been to several Petcos Ihave come to the conclusion that I will NEVER EVER shop there again for anything, period!

I have had the worst experiences with Petco animals and the conditions I have seen are discusting and inhumane. I do have to say not every one is like this but if you shop at one you support them all and like other people I do not purchase anything from a store that sells live animals. I have photos I have taken of dying Petco animals, they will be emailed to anyone who is interested. Some of the things I have seen are as follows:
1.dead rats being eaten by live rats because they have no food
2.Rats being fed a diet of corn, alfalfa pellets and tiny seeds, allof which is not healthy for pet rats. Corn also contains cancer causing agents and mold and fungus when dried. Sometimes they just recieve a hamster mix.
3. Ferrets living in tiny tanks with feces three inches thick!
4. Dying hamsters, reptiles, amphibians, rodents and birds.
5. One male rat who was so badly mangled by the other dominant males who had his intestines hanging out of his body andleft to bleed to death in the cage.
6. Rats so skinny they could not move because they had noe energy, sadly I watched one die in front of me. A cute champaign berkshire doe.
7.Rodents with "wet tail", upper respiratory problems and the dreaded Myco.
8. Birds cages full of feces, with no fresh food or water.
9. Dying and roting reptiles.

This is just to name a few.

I do have photos and will be taking more this weekend if anyone is interested. PLEASE for the love of the animals DO NOt shop at Petco! I beg you! If you shop at one you support them all.



And wanted to point this out also. When you care for an animal feeding, cleaning, and watering is not the basics. These animals also need stimulation among other things not to mention a healthy diet. I have heard all too many Petco employees say how good they take care of their animals at the store when most of them do not have a clue what to do.

Here are examples:

1. Any rodent that sneezes if not healthy. Some believe they sneeze just because, it is a sign of illness and can be a sign of a more dreaded URI, such as MYCO or SDA.

2. The food in which the animals recieve is not healthy. Rodents should be fed a diet specific to their needs. Dry corn and alfalfa seeds are not a healthy diet.

3. A typical one gallon tank is only room enough to hold two pet rats, and even that is pushing it. I have seen as many as twelve in one ten gallon tank. Anything over two is over crowding.

These are just some things most employees do not know. Having bred and owned birds, exotics, reptiles and rodents (rats rule) Iknow first hand how to properly take care of them. For links to informational pages please ask, I have plenty. It will show the people who work there what they are doing wrong and how they can make changes for the better until Petcos are shut down.

I opologize to anyone who works at Petco, this is not a direct attack against you. I am just giving my opnion on the store and asking others to listen to my side, after all I do have evidence!

Cass

a link about the petition the Petco boycott against a S.F. store and of course, the populat Petno site

But I do have to point out that Peta does get on my nerves!!!:rolleyes:

From these links, it seems that some Petco stores are horrible. :( The one that we go to, however, is nothing like those described. They have 2 huge tanks, I mean really huge...............1/3 my bedroom size, and each has 3-4 rats in it. The small one-two gallon tanks have only 1 or two mice or hamsters in it. The birds are also kept in huge glass thingies (I don't know what they are called) with ventilation, and they have clean food and water whenever I go. Last time I went they all had a bowl with seeds, another with vitamin supplements, another with millet, and another with dried green veggies. They also had cuttlebone and clean water, and there were 2-3 birds in each large glass thing, which is like 6 times the size of my birds' cage. I didn't go to the fish/reptile side, and I only glanced at the kittens that were sleeping in their kitty beds in their crate. I'm glad that our Petco is good, but its so sad to hear about their other stores. I had never heard anything like that before. All of the pet stores in our area sell live animals, and the smaller shops keep their animals in worse conditions. I never go to them because of that. I do go to Petsmart. Is Petsmart better in caring for their animals than Petco? From what I have seen in both stores, the Petco birds look healthier than the Petsmart ones. Do you think I should shop at Petsmart? There is no other place to buy my birds' food and supplies in the area besides Petco and Petsmart, and I like our city's Petco better than the Petsmart, especially after they moved to a larger store a few months ago. Grocery stores here do sell bird food, however, I don't like their food ingredients (not the healthiest options) and they only have one cockatiel options, that I bought once and my birds hated. I see no other option but to shop at Petco or Petsmart in my case.

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Originally posted by moosmom
I shop at Pet Supplies Plus. Their stuff is so much cheaper than Petco.

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I agree here. And with my family, I need cheaper. But I do like the fact that petco does the adoption days, and they seem OK, but sometimes I am not observant enough.

I have been to Petco only two times, and I loved it! If PETA wants to complain about some sick pets store, they need to travel here to Wisconsin. The pet store where I rescued my two rats Skittles and Oreo, "Pet World" is GUT WRENCHING!! First of all, they told me that Skittles was really sick, and could not be sold. The salesperson (a lady) said she had a terrible cold. Her other cagemates couldn't be sold either, incase they were brewing the sickness. I ignored all the "bad health" statements, because just watching Skittles frantically paw on the glass was tearing my heart to pieces. I told the salesperson I want to see her (Skittles). I gave her a little examination: she had no visable eye or nose problems, and her breathing was just fine. I bought Skittles, and Oreo from that dump and took them home. The salesperson told me I would have to give her Pedialyte (sp.) for her diarrhea. As soon as she (Skittles) got setteled into her new home she was happy as could be, she wasn't sick!!!

Well, over the weeks since I bought them Pet World got sicker and sicker! They have crickets running all over the store, you step on a lot of them too. They have a freezer, out on the main floor, with see-through glass doors, full of bags of rats- from pinkys to adults covered in freezer burn. They also had full-body frozen rabbits too. THAT IS SICK TO SEE WHEN YOU ARE SHOPPING IN THE STORE!! When I go to the pet store, I have to look at every single display, except for the birds (they are too loud! :p ) Well, in the fish room they had tanks full of dead fish, there had to be over 10 dead fish in every tank. They had a newt tank too, and the newts looked extremely sick, and had white absesses all over their bodies. The live ones had to swim amungst the dead ones, just like the fish. In the reptile room, and was drooling over the snakes, since I like snakes, and I came to a tank with a baby Ball Python. I saw the snake laying on its side, not on its belly, its side. It never moved- IT WAS DEAD TOO!! I called a salesperson over, and I was kinda snippy I'll admit, and told her to take the damn thing off of display! Then I went to the small animal room. In the rabbit tanks, they had huge water bottles- WITH GREEN ALGAE (looked like) FLOATING AND CAKED ON THE INSIDE OF THE BOTTLES!!!!!!! All the bottles looked like the rabbit took one sip, and hated it. I have never seen a more disgusting place in my life!

The only time I will buy something there, is when I absolutely need it, and no other pet store has that item. I usually go in that pet store about once or twice a month, just to see how the place looks. This place is sick! Oh, yeah... I find this funny. I payed $5.99 each for two rats, that was in 2001- today they are charging $11.99ea. for pet rats. HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA! Get real! This place is located in Waukesha,WI just to let you know. Waukesha is about 10 min. away from Milwaukee.

There ya got PETA, another case to investagate! :rolleyes:


~*~*~*~YellowLabLover*~*~*~*~

**Proud mama of Skittles, Sept. 29,02 PET of the DAY!**

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Originally posted by YellowLabLover
I have been to Petco only two times, and I loved it! If PETA wants to complain about some sick pets store, they need to travel here to Wisconsin. The pet store where I rescued my two rats Skittles and Oreo, "Pet World" is GUT WRENCHING!! First of all, they told me that Skittles was really sick, and could not be sold. The salesperson (a lady) said she had a terrible cold. Her other cagemates couldn't be sold either, incase they were brewing the sickness. I ignored all the "bad health" statements, because just watching Skittles frantically paw on the glass was tearing my heart to pieces. I told the salesperson I want to see her (Skittles). I gave her a little examination: she had no visable eye or nose problems, and her breathing was just fine. I bought Skittles, and Oreo from that dump and took them home. The salesperson told me I would have to give her Pedialyte (sp.) for her diarrhea. As soon as she (Skittles) got setteled into her new home she was happy as could be, she wasn't sick!!!

Well, over the weeks since I bought them Pet World got sicker and sicker! They have crickets running all over the store, you step on a lot of them too. They have a freezer, out on the main floor, with see-through glass doors, full of bags of rats- from pinkys to adults covered in freezer burn. They also had full-body frozen rabbits too. THAT IS SICK TO SEE WHEN YOU ARE SHOPPING IN THE STORE!! When I go to the pet store, I have to look at every single display, except for the birds (they are too loud! :p ) Well, in the fish room they had tanks full of dead fish, there had to be over 10 dead fish in every tank. They had a newt tank too, and the newts looked extremely sick, and had white absesses all over their bodies. The live ones had to swim amungst the dead ones, just like the fish. In the reptile room, and was drooling over the snakes, since I like snakes, and I came to a tank with a baby Ball Python. I saw the snake laying on its side, not on its belly, its side. It never moved- IT WAS DEAD TOO!! I called a salesperson over, and I was kinda snippy I'll admit, and told her to take the damn thing off of display! Then I went to the small animal room. In the rabbit tanks, they had huge water bottles- WITH GREEN ALGAE (looked like) FLOATING AND CAKED ON THE INSIDE OF THE BOTTLES!!!!!!! All the bottles looked like the rabbit took one sip, and hated it. I have never seen a more disgusting place in my life!

The only time I will buy something there, is when I absolutely need it, and no other pet store has that item. I usually go in that pet store about once or twice a month, just to see how the place looks. This place is sick! Oh, yeah... I find this funny. I payed $5.99 each for two rats, that was in 2001- today they are charging $11.99ea. for pet rats. HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA! Get real! This place is located in Waukesha,WI just to let you know. Waukesha is about 10 min. away from Milwaukee.

There ya got PETA, another case to investagate! :rolleyes:


~*~*~*~YellowLabLover*~*~*~*~

**Proud mama of Skittles, Sept. 29,02 PET of the DAY!**

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Honestly, Petco is by far, one of the best pet stores out there. With all those many Petcos in the entire nation, almost one in every city, 10-20 cases is NOTHING and I mean NOTHING. Ok, there may be more, maybe 100, 200, but there were far less Peta reports than that, and with all those stores those are VERY few cases. You cannot expect EVERYTHING about a store to be perfect, and when an animal's time comes it has to go. You cannot blame an entire chain for the deaths of a few animals. If every other animal at Petco was dying, there would be a problem, but there are very few that have died because of neglect in comparison to other stores. Why can't Peta point those terrible stores out first? We have many pet stores in the area, but they are so terrible I don't even enter them. They smell awful, which is an indication of germs and thus, sick animals. They cram 40 birds in a cage built for 2. They don't clean their cages, don't give them fresh food and water, and keep their stores as dirty as possible. I went to one pet store the other day just to see, and I found it to be the smelliest, dirtiest, pet store ever. If any of you ever go to the flea market, you may notice the worst pet *stalls* ever. They have 40-50 birds crammed in a 2 bird cage, and they keep it as filthy as possible. Personally, I did buy my birds from the flea market, although I didn't want to. My dad insisted when he saw them that he felt terribly sorry for the poor things and he had to save at least two of them and give them a good home. He wished he could take all of them, but at the time we had only planned to buy two birds, and we were SUPPOSED to buy them from a quality breeder, but when we went shopping at the flea market and saw those birds, we just HAD to rescue them. There were 50 birds in each small cage. In comparative, Petco has only 3 in a tank 5 times the size. They were so conjusted they had a hard time eating, and they had the rudest staff ever. I would never have bought the birds from them if it wasn't with the intention of rescuing them. I am so happy we rescued our two birds because they turned out to be the sweetest little things ever. They were VERY scared at the time, but now they LOVE humans and spend their days lurking around on our shoulders. We took them to the vet immediately after purchasing them, and thank God they were healthy, but I know many of the birds in there probably weren't. We had a big argument with the "rude" lady working there and told her that they were treating the birds terribly and need to have more mercy towards the poor things. My dad told asked her how she would feel if someone locked her in a tiny room with 50 other people and all she did was this......:rolleyes:. Ofcourse we told her that after getting OUR birds in our own hands because if we did it earlier, I'm sure she wouldn't have given us the birds. We refused to buy a cage from them because of how they kept the animals, and ended up buying one from Petco on the way home. We could have gotten the same cage at the flea market for $50 that we got for $100 at Petco, but it was far better supporting Petco than supporting a store that is REALLY killing their birds. I was so :mad: when we went there but I'm glad we rescued our birds who were only 2 months old at the time and living a difficult life. Today at age 3, they are the liveliest little things that love to play and sing and eat their veggies. They were very thin when we got them (probably because they couldn't reach their food) but now they are happy and healthy thank God. If I were Peta, I would do something about those stores that deffinitely get their birds from mills and practically torture them until they get a good home. One of my friend's friend bought 2 parakeets from the flea market, and they both died just a week after they got them. :( Poor things. Probably suffering from a terrible disease. They got new birds after that from Petco, and it has been many years now, and the birds continue to strive. I bought a parakeet as a gift for a friend from Petco once (don't worry, she's had birds all her life and knows how to care for them) and Petco made us read a bunch of things about their care etc, and then made us sign that we will treat the birds humanely and provide vet care when they need it, and will feed them and supply them with fresh water everyday and take best possible care of them always, etc................andTHEN they gave us the bird. From all the pet store experiences I have, I think Petco and PEtsmart are the best, no doubt about that. So Peta, maybe you should go into looking at the other stores that are far worse first, and then go to the few particular Petco stores that are bad and take care of them, but I'm telling you, the majority of Petcos are great and I will continue to buy from them. Its far better than supporting a stor that crams 40 birds into one cage when Petco gives 2-3 birds a huge glass cage where they have enough room to fly around, play, get used to seeing humans, and generally live a good life before they go to good homes. I think Peta is VERY extreme, and I do NOT like most aspects about them at all. I think we can see for ourselves which store is good and which isn't. Petco doesn't smell at all like all the other stores do. They are very clean and I'm sure those "bad" ones are just a few out there. I've been to at least 5 different Petcos and I had good experience with all of them.

Well I think you should call your local ASPCA or Humane Society and report this! This is animal abuse! Even if nothing is done maybe it would make the owners get their act together. $5.99 is the typical going price for a pair of feeders, bred for food that is. PET RATS- those the store only sells as pets usually run anywhere between nine and twelve dollars for one. They will charge more for unusual colors such as chocolate or blue, if they are rex or velveteen or of course, if they have dumbo ears. Hairless seem to run just a few bucks under these guys because of their known lactating problems and are a bit harder totake care of, makin them sell less. So twelve bucks sounds about right. If you went to a breeder such as myself you can expect to pay as much as $50 dollars for a pedigreed show quality tailless buck etc. But of course mine are pedigreed, been handled since birth, are not infested with parasites, fed the right food, show quality with ribbon winners in their background etc. Not to mention rare.


As for the store please report them. Even as much as some people hate Peta and their overreacting they can seriously do something about this if you cared to have the situation rectified. Hey, it's an option, hehe. Also you mentioned your rats were not sick. Most petshop rats are sick, they just hide it. All rats carry MYco and it will show when they become sick or stressed, and petshop rats are more prone to have flareups. Just something to watch out for. For more info on Myco just ask.

As for havingno other shopping option, have you looked online? There are many great online petstores that carry just about everything and have amazing deals. Just something to think about. :)

Both Oreo and Skittles were 100% not sick. They had a vet appt. about 5 days after I bought them, and the vet did a number of tests on them, and everything turned out to be o.k. I notcied in a previous post, about the $11.99 pet rat response.(PET RATS- those the store only sells as pets usually run anywhere between nine and twelve dollars for one. They will charge more for unusual colors such as chocolate or blue, if they are rex or velveteen or of course, if they have dumbo ears.- Posted by luckies4me) Um... at Pet World, the rats that are $11.99 "pet rats" look 50 times worse than the feeder rats for $5.99!!! All they had for pet rats are albinos- and I hate Albinos, the red eyes creep me out. (No offense to any albino owners :) ) There was a GORGEOUS lilac colored dumbo marked as feeder for $5.99- Heck, I'd buy the dumbo feeder dumbo instead of the red-eyed albino for $11.99!!

This place is a real dump, and they don't have their heads screwed on tight. :eek:

Oopsy! I forgot to say sumthin about Petco in my last post. The Petco I was at had a HUGE tank- it had to be over 500 gallons- was full of rats. They had some of the coolest looking colors I have ever seen. The tank was extremely clean too. There only was about 20 little poopies, out of 50 rats or so. The rabbit, guniea pig, chinchilla, etc. cages also looked pretty nice. By far the niceest set-ups I've seen. I think this one was in Kent. or Tenn. I can't remember exactly where it was. (brain fart of the day)

" There was a GORGEOUS lilac colored dumbo marked as feeder for $5.99- Heck, I'd buy the dumbo feeder dumbo instead of the red-eyed albino for $11.99!! " Isn't it ironic how they do this?!


I totally agree with you on that one! So you are fimiliar with rat genetics and color? Most people do not know what color Lilac is. It is by far one of my best colors!:D