Frequently Asked Questions

Is a turtle or tortoise right for me?

What species of gecko is right for me?

Why are captive bred animals generally more expensive than other animals of the same species that I have seen on the Internet?

Captive bred means that we own the parents, we hatched out their offspring, and we have devoted many hours caring for the babies since their hatching. Many of the animals (exceptions being leopardgecko geckos and bearded dragons) for sale on the Internet are wild-caught adults. This means someone went into the animals' natural habitat and collected them (typically in large numbers), then sold them to importers, and eventually the animals are available for sale through retailers.

Wild-caught animals are inherently less expensive, as the animals are imported en masse, often from foreign countries. They only incur the cost of capture and transport, in contrast to the time and money invested in animals bred and hatched in captivity.

Why is buying a captive-bred animal better than buying a wild-caught one?

1) Conservation. Taking wild reptiles from their native habitat depletes their natural population; worse, most don't survive the transition strictly from stress and overcrowding. There are (unfortunately true) horror stories about reptiles being rounded up in large groups, piled into tubs or boxes, and shipped abroad for sale, with most of the group captured dying during the journey. In the case of turtles, hundreds of turtles may be collected from the wild during one day and piled into a large crate. The animals stay in this crate until they are ready to be shipped to a retailer. When it is time for shipping, the supplier will separate the healthy turtles (usually at the top of the crate), the sick (usually in the middle) and the dead (usually at the bottom). A supplier may receive a few dollars less for a sick turtle, but not enough to make them change their capture methods. There is no reason to buy a wild-caught animal when captive-bred ones are available.
2) Stress and Acclimation. Wild-caught animals will be more stressed than captive-bred animals due to their abrupt change in surroundings and environmental conditions. This means that a wild-caught animal will be more susceptible to opportunistic infections and diseases and may not adjust to eating food in a captive environment (in part because common captive diets rarely have what it was eating in the wild!). Wild-caught animals are usually much more aggressive and defensive (due to years of avoiding predation) and will be more difficult to handle. Wild-caught animals have been traveling and being kept in holding facilities which are almost always overcrowded, and have received little or no food. They are kept in these conditions sometimes weeks at a time. If you buy a captive-bred animal from the person who hatched it out, it has spent its entire life in captivity and is used to eating a captive diet. Though it will have to endure some traveling, it will be a much less exhausting trip.
3) Parasites. Almost all wild-caught animals are loaded with parasites and often are suffering from malnutrition, dehydration and disease. All wild-caught animals will require a veterinary visit and a fecal check, and usually treatment for internal and/or external parasites. Failure to bring your wild-caught reptile to a veterinarian will most likely lead to the early death of your new pet. Don't be fooled by those who offer wild-caught animals that are supposedly free from parasites, or have been "de-wormed" with some sort of parasite killer. There is no such thing as a wormer or parasite treatment that will cure your wild-caught reptile of all its parasites. Anyone who says they have treated large quantities of wild-caught reptiles for parasites means they have picked one type of medication, administered it to every animal (usually in the wrong dosage) and HOPED that it took care of any and all parasites that animal may have had. Also realize that administering the wrong medication, or a medication at the wrong dosage can harm or kill an animal. Therefore, people who blindly administer medication without the help of a veterinarian will experience fatalities at some point. The parasites that affect reptiles are extremely diverse. There are many different kinds of parasites and many different medications to treat the parasites, all of which are given in different doses depending on the species. When a reptile has a parasite, it must first be diagnosed. Then, the proper medication needs to be administered at the correct dose for that specific individual (determined by weight, species, and severity of the parasite load). Your veterinarian will be able to determine a dose that is not too large as to cause harm to the animal, and not too small as to be ineffective. Blindly treating a large group of wild-caught animals with a particular parasite treatment is a disservice to the animals, and will do more harm than good. Another part of this harm is because not all "parasites" are bad. Reptiles have many microorganisms in their digestive tract, but it takes a veterinarian to tell you which ones shouldn't be there and which ones should. If you treat the animal with some sort of medication without knowing what they have and wipe out all the good microorganisms, it can let the bad ones take over or leave your pet unable to properly digest its food due to the lack of beneficial microorganisms.
4) Do the math. Buying a wild-caught animal may save you money with the initial purchase of your animal will cost you more in the end. When you take your wild-caught reptile to the vet and get it treated, the money adds up quickly. A visit to a reptile vet can easily be $40.00 just for the office visit. A fecal check can be another $20.00, and if you are lucky, treatments will only be about $20.00 - but they can range up to and above $100. If you choose not to take your reptile to the vet, it will probably die long before its natural lifespan. If you want another reptile, you will be "replacing" it much more often than if you had initially bought a captive-bred animal. At the clinic where I work, we recently had a client bring in three wild-caught fat-tailed geckos that she had recently purchased. They were supposedly treated with a "parasite cure" before they were sold, but a fecal examination showed parasites in all three. Two also initially had stomatitis (a mouth infection) which could have been caused by a virus or the stress of being caught and transferred, and the third contracted this a week or two later. One died shortly after beginning antibiotics and the other two had to go through several months of treatment with both systemic antibiotics (injections) and topical antibiotics (swabbing their mouth with an antiseptic). Since the geckos had stopped eating after being caught, they developed calcium deficiencies and had to be treated with oral calcium supplements. This all cost several hundred dollars, and while not all treatments would be so expensive, most wild-caught reptiles cost much more in veterinary bills than a captive-bred reptile ever would.
5) "Bonus features". Not everything that reptiles carry is treatable. There are some parasites that are not only extremely difficult to diagnose, but there is no effective treatment for them. This is a problem with both captive-bred and wild-caught animals, but you are at much higher risk of your reptile having a harmful parasite if they are wild-caught. Viruses are another problem commonly seen in reptiles, and scientists and veterinarians are just beginning to understand them. These viruses are a huge risk to other reptiles in your collection, and of course, can be deadly to the original reptile that carries it. Entire collections of animals at zoos and large breeding facilities have been lost to viruses, and no matter whose animal you buy, you are at risk. However, captive-bred animals are much less likely to have viruses. It is also less likely for animals from a small scale breeder to carry viruses, infections or parasites than those in a huge breeding facility with thousands of animals; chain pet stores typically obtain their animals from the latter.