I am currently doing a bit of research, so would be intrested to get peoples opinions, experiences etc. We are thinking of setting up an exotics hotel, sort of a boarding kennels for reptiles, inverts, birds, rodents etc. I have checked my local area and although there are quite a few bording kennels and cateries, a couple of which say they will also take small animals, there is nowere that specificly mentions exotics, particuly reptiles. what I would like to know is what most people do with these animals when they go away. I know some pet shops offer a bording service, however i havn't used one of these in years as I don't trust pet shops, but if anyone has any info or experiences with this, that would also be very usefull. how many people would use an exotics bording service if it was offered, what sort of prices would you expect to be paying, and what else would you expect from it? I am realy just sort of testing the water here, trying to find out how practical it would be to do this, so anything you can give me would be helpful. thanks.

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David

Personally i wouldnt use this kind of service, simply because we have far to mny reps to put in to boarding and it will cause so much stress on the reptiles.

There is one major thing that worries me about this type of service and that is quarentine.
For example if a snake comes to you and has the start of mites how would you be able to ensure that they wouldnt be passed on to a snake of mine?

Or even parasites etc these things can be very easily spread

I would much prefer it if someone offered a service like house sitting for example they would come in to the house and look after the reps on a few days a week basis. But i wouldnt just let anyone look after them.

We have only been away once since we have been keeping reps and we took all the eggs we were incubating with us on the train in a polly box with heat mat and stat hooked up to it. You can imagin peoples faces on the train they thought we were carrying a bomb.

We have even aranged to get married after breeding season is over and before Hamm so that it dont clash, other wise there would be no way we could have a honeymoon lol.

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I honestly don't know what to do if we want to go on holiday. I don't exactly have loads of reptiles but I wouldn't want to move any of them apart from possibly the Beardies as tbh, they don't care who feeds them or where they are lol.

The only way I would go away is if someone came into our home to feed, water, clean and check on them all but it would have to be a friend or family as I wouldn't trust anyone else to just come into my home!

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Agreed. I had already thought of this and, as with any kennel or catery, there is always a small risk that your animal could catch something from someone elses. obviously every precaution would be taken to ensure that nothing crossed over; simple, easily sterilised setups, everything properly disinfected, no shared bowls/hides etc. everything would be treated as in a quarentine enviroment. If this goes ahead it would not be run from the house, but a purpose built facility, so this would all be kept in mind when designing it. All the animals would have a health check on arival and any that showed any suspisious signs could be kept in a seperate room, however I can't say it would be imposable for me to miss something. At the end of the day, despite all the precautions, you still have a lot of animals from diferent people together in the same area, so there is always going to be that risk with this type of service. the other part of this would be people bringing the animals in there own vivariums. this would obviosly reduce the stress on the animals as, even though they have been moved, their enviroment is still the same, however it would increase the risk of cross infection as these vivs would not be sterile. I supose these too could be kept in a seperate room, but I have not yet worked out exactly what the policy on this would be, so any sugestions on that would also be helpful.

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David