reptile shop keeper talk

[EquestrianBabe]

I wouldn't listen. The guy obviously has no experience with these wonderful creatures. I think the reptile store guy only wanted to make some money out of you buying a vivarium. (As if any tort lover would buy one!!) Just feed your tort natural things you know he is allowed. And you are 100% right and that guy is 100% wrong!!!

[Alan1]

Originally Posted by sherri

terri i didnt even know pet at home sold tortoise i thought that was just for dog and cat birld when they start doing tortoise ect there

I think they have stopped because of pressure on them not to sell but not sure if that was just for the winter months or permanent. There are threads about it on here somewhere

yeah..... i wouldnt buy an actual tort from there but good they have the supplys.... just my point was that even a big fancy pants main stream shop give better advice then the "reptile shop" to do with this thread, its quite worrying really ive only just got my baby after a good months worth of hard research.... i think selling them in shops makes people impulse buy and not actualy think about the needs of the baby, and this thread just proves many people do not know how 2 care for them, its sad! there must be so many poorly torts just because of the rubbish advice they have been given..... and they think they arnt doing anything wrong

[Pussygalore]

its not 'wrong' advice but outdated! you only have to go back a few years and what you were told was the way of keeping tortoises at that time. I have a couple of old care sheets one from the TT and another from the BCG and on both sheets the diet/care was very similar to what you were told. I suppose that if you don't keep upwith changes you'd still be doing the same, my rehomer Sid was kept the old fashioned way untill I had him and his owner had no reason to think that things had changed, she wasn't being cruel or keeping him wrong just hadn't kept up with progress and theres probably hundreds of torts still kept that way and to be honest many of them are far older than the ones we know and keep today. I'm not saying that the old ways are good but considering torts were kept like that for many years things can't have been that bad. Its no excuse for a shop not to keep up to date but not everyone spends all their time on computers and a lot of older people don't use them at all. I also think that many of the new ways although we hope they are better haven't been around for long enough to have been proven and some seem to be almost 'fads' ie a couple of years back aubiose or hemp was all the rage untill someone found a problem with male torts so it became very unpopular over night, who's to say that any of the other 'modern' ways won't go the same in a couple of years time. My point is that maybe some of the people that give out what we think is wrong advice genuinly believe in their methods as much as we do ours so instead of automatically saying they are wrong it might be the starting point for a conversation on 'did you know we now think' or 'have you heard' rather than 'you are wrong'

[scapula]

Well thought out and reasoned pussygalore!! lets hope our new methods do prove themselves over time ..hopefully research and biochemistry will bear this out..as it could take several hundered years statistically!!!