I don't know why I do this to myself I always seem to get angry after I leave the store. Here is what happened to me: Yesterday my girl friend & I were bored so we took a drive to a new pet store just to look. This pet store is not a large chain store like the other PET COmpanies mentioned in the past. We walked in the store & saw that they had 2 cages of baby bearded dragons. One was a different morph (beautiful little guy) & alone in separate cage. The other 6 were in a tall enclosure & from the same clutch. .
Before I had asked to hold the little guy I took a look around at the other reptile enclosures like I normally do. There was a lot of old dried up, white feces in almost every cage & all of them were way too cold for any reptile to be in. I then went over to the beardie enclosures & looked in the cage with the 6 babies in it & they were very lethargic & a little on the skinny side. The cage was just filthy the bark substrate smelled musky & there wasn't a heat lamp. I then asked the pet store employee if I could hold the one that was alone (it was on calci-sand). As I reached in to pick him up he was cold to the touch so looked in the enclosure the temp was 70-75 degrees the same as most of the other enclosures. When I picked him up he closed his eyes like he was enjoying the warmth from my hands. I started inform the pet store owner about the things I saw that were wrong about the setups. For example too cold, wrong substrate.... There was a big list. She proceeded to give me an excuse for everything like they normally do. As I was petting the little guy & telling the owner how you should not have babies on substrates that they can ingest and become impacted. She then told me the one that was on calci-sand has been on it since it was born & there is nothing wrong with it. As soon as she said that the little guy's back legs locked up & it start to twitch in my hands. She said “Oh it’s never done that before". I Put him back in the cage(he was still twitching), shook my head then left the place before I went off on her. I plan on coming back with a care sheet for every reptile in that place & a digital camera. I will revisit in a week to see if they correct these problems & then go from there.
Lance
