Breeding Pair in Pet store

[mishellyshel]

My son had a b'day party near a local petstore. I needed some hay so I popped in . To my delight they had a lot of rodents, including 3 chinchillas.
One was a standard baby, the other cage held a "breeding pair". sign said not for sale..........breeding pair. Is that common practice in smaller pet stores??

the cages were fairly clean, water & food was filled, so they seemed taken care of but of course not to any of our standards........ lol

I do have to say they had the freshest Oxbow timothy hay I have ever seen.
I asked and they said they sell a ton of it, so I will have to go there again just for that and maybe pry a bit about their chins.

 

[Thearina]

From what I've seen with smaller local owned petstores, mom and pop stores, it is pretty common for them to have store breeders. As in chinchillas, rats, mice, rabbits, and alot of the time guinea pigs. From what I've been told they do this because it would mean more money for the petstore since they don't have to buy from the breeder or broker. From what you described of the care the "breeding pair" in the store they are quite lucky. Almost all of the store breeders I've seen most is not taken good care of at all. They barely get the basics and they are there for the store to make money and that's it. If they stop having babies (money) then their sold to basically who ever has the money to buy them. Not all stores may be like that but I live out in the country and their are mostly feed stores and locally owned ones. And most don't care who they sell the animal too or what happens to that animals after its sold only that they get the money.