What's pah stock?

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Reptiles4.3.5 Rhacodactylus ciliatus (+ 8 eggs)1.1.2 Goniurosaurus luii (+ 2 eggs)1.1 Gambelia wislizenii1.1 Lichanura trivirgata trivirgata1.1 Gongylophis colubrinus loveridgei (1 anery, 1 normal)1.3 Testudo hermanni

Pets at home I think.

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Chiltern Reptiles

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If that is what he means, that's definitely one of the funniest things i've heard in a long time.

How many years ago was this? Sounds more or less along the same lines of "Pets at Home used to sell reptiles"

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Reptiles4.3.5 Rhacodactylus ciliatus (+ 8 eggs)1.1.2 Goniurosaurus luii (+ 2 eggs)1.1 Gambelia wislizenii1.1 Lichanura trivirgata trivirgata1.1 Gongylophis colubrinus loveridgei (1 anery, 1 normal)1.3 Testudo hermanni

its happened for a few years i mean they cost like £5 for baby rabbits he used to give my sister £8.50each!

funnily he was also their bird breeder lots of old birds had to keep renewing the breeding stock with a full transit each week

its rubbish it all comes from europe, hamsters are like 42p eachcheaper to import than to breed

How many years ago though? Because nowadays they ALL are UK bred. 100% fact

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Reptiles4.3.5 Rhacodactylus ciliatus (+ 8 eggs)1.1.2 Goniurosaurus luii (+ 2 eggs)1.1 Gambelia wislizenii1.1 Lichanura trivirgata trivirgata1.1 Gongylophis colubrinus loveridgei (1 anery, 1 normal)1.3 Testudo hermanni

a couple years ago, but the breeders can still import and sell as their own, to pah

havent been to the places i knew were doing it for a while

there is no way they could garuntee that unless they were breeding them all themselves

'How many years ago though? Because nowadays they ALL are UK bred. 100% fact'

I would have to dispute this l am afraid.

An awful amount of rodent livestock is bought in Europe and sold direct into the UK.

Up to 8,000 units - yes units, are brought in every week by one very large and known commercial seller. In fact most of the exotics they bring in, also come from Europe.

Irrelevant to the size of the retailer they purchase the livestock at the 'right' price to their budget and sell out at their own mark up.

Some of the bigger wholesale suppliers hardly breed their own livestock to the quantities they once did, because over here it is more expensive to do so.

Thousands of rodents are brought into the UK every week by large scale operations and sold into any number of retail outlets, be they Pets at Home or smaller units.

Once the livestock is here, how would any buyer know whether they were UK or Euro bred?

Northern Ireland in fact used to have an indirect supply of commercial livestocks supplied direct from a mainland UK supplier.

It is simply not viable for a lot of the large scale commercial operations to breed their own in serious numbers anymore, they will have a holding stock, but we are looking at chinchillas, chipmonks, rabbits and guinea pigs not forgetting hamsters, gerbils, dwarf hamsters, rats and mice and a host of other little critters work their way into UK soil.

It is far cheaper and economical for them to buy direct fromEurope where the livestock is cheaper, this has been ongoing for many years, going back to when it seriously built up in 2000 - 2002.

It has become the spurge and death to many large UK commercial operations, who lost a lot of their breeders because those very same breeders could not compete with European prices.

If you breed rabbits and guinea pigs and you know that in order to break even then you need to receive [at the cheapest] £8 for a gunea pig and £12 for a rabbit to cover your overall costs, how on earth are you going to compete with Euro prices such as £3 guinea pig boar, £5 guinea pig sow, £5 - £7 for a rabbit?

You can not as a British breeder cope with that kind of drop.

I know this, there were many reasons l stopped commercial supply into the likes of retail, and that is only going back a few years ago. I could not compete with the Euro commercial prices.

Yet if you are competing with an operation that has inadequate conditions to begin with, is on cheap labour and therefore not restricted by legislation and animal welfare acts - also to boot, you may be doing everything correctly, and as such it is costing you an arm and a leg to do so - your counterparts are not doing everything and therefore are able to produce mass quantities at a fraction of the cost and sell to the highest bidder buyer who in turn sells to UK buyers, who snap them up in the hundreds to thousands.

I have seen the rabbits and the guinea pigs that travel over in the hundreds, and they are too young.

With the demand that UK retail is currently placing on suppliers that they want young cuddly animals, then Europe is the right market to purchase from.

It is the same consumer demand that encourages poor conditions of Chickens in the UK at present, it is price orienteered.

R

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Fair post - just for the particular company under discussion, I know that all their suppliers are UK based who breed their own stock. From the previous posts I thought they specifically meant the company directly dealt with suppliers on the continent. I have to admit, I didn't even consider the UK suppliers would import, considering the number of times that stores get shortages on specific animals! If the UK suppliers were importing in such numbers from the EU, I can't imagine they would have such trouble sending the requested number of animals into store sometimes... Doesn't make much business sense to be sending smaller orders than requested if they are supplementing their own breeding with imports?

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Reptiles4.3.5 Rhacodactylus ciliatus (+ 8 eggs)1.1.2 Goniurosaurus luii (+ 2 eggs)1.1 Gambelia wislizenii1.1 Lichanura trivirgata trivirgata1.1 Gongylophis colubrinus loveridgei (1 anery, 1 normal)1.3 Testudo hermanni

i do know that at one point.. some of the uk suppliers to places like PAH, were themselves being supplied by someone.. who was boosting his own stock by importing..

on the issue of what is supplied and orders being short.. the quality from the EU is not always high on the import side.. hence there is a large amount of "wastage" so to speak

N

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Pets at Home, l used to supply Pet City UK, before it turned into Pets Mart. Back then it was down to UK breeders. When Pet City went bust, a lot of us also went down the same path.

Pets At Home are supplied by those that they can regulate, but there is still livestock trickling into their zones that is not UK bred.

Some Uk suppliers are in fact not permitted to supply PAH, but still do in covert positions indirectly through other suppliers, and as such PAH would be none the wiser where the livestock came from if it had come through their legitimate source.

Soif PAH shop for their stores from UK supplier/breeder, but Uk supplier/breeder to PAH is short because of consumer demand, then that same supplier will buy from those not permitted to supply PAH.


The commercial market is a tough egg to properly crack, but as said the demand from some of the stores is critically high, some suppliers can not cope without the aid of the indirect suppliers.

R

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