So maybe I am wrong but the beginning of this month a bought a Banana Ball python for a friend as an very early Christmas present because I wont ship close to that season. Anyway the little guy arrived not real active a little thin and died within 3 weeks.
How many here have lost a snake that quickly? I believe something was wrong with him before he shipped we both have been keeping reptiles of all size and species for many years.
I guess my question is should the breeder have offered something I wasn’t going to buy another from them since I know I didn’t cause his death.
@fireblade011 so sorry to hear that. I have reviewed this order to get more details. Regardless of how it happened, I know this is very sad and disappointing.
While we won’t talk about the breeder by name, because one the guidelines of the forum is we don’t do reviews here, I do recommend that you go and leave a rating for this breeder (however you see fit) on our site. You can go to your messages page, and click Rate This or respond to the message/email that gave you a link to rate.
A few observations and context for others helping out:
The breeder was a very large breeder, but so far has generally good ratings on our site at least.
The animal was listed at 95g indicating to me it’s definitely had a few meals, but unless you weighed it we don’t know that it arrived at that size. At 95g I would expect it would last a lot more than 3 weeks without eating.
Even though you said here you’ve been keeping lots of reptiles, but I understand from the other context that this was your first snake
It’s a tough thing to assess without knowing all the husbandry that you’ve provided, so I would encourage you to provide more information about the setup you used including temperatures and how you measured them.
The breeder offered a very small $25 discount on future purchases. Some reputable breeders might go a lot further here, however, most won’t guarantee anything beyond that day or week, because once the animal leaves their protection they really don’t have any control over its outcome. Personally that discount would not be enough for me to be interested in repurchasing from them. While they have a modest reputation I would go to someone with an even stronger rep, just to help rule out the likelihood of breeder error.
You are doing a great thing to learn more about animal husbandry to try to diagnose what went wrong (if possible) and prepare for future pets. I look forward to the thoughts of others.