Anyone want to help with an info sheet?

[CaptainMorgantown]

Hey everyone!

I work at a pet store, and I volunteered to type up some new info sheets for new hires to look over. Our old ones were... old and a bit outdated. Anyway, I have all of the basic information like humidity and such, but if you guys could add any helpful tips for people that are new to taking care of chameleons, or reptiles in general, that would be awesome. An area I'm having a bit of trouble with is diseases and what to look out for. I just want to make sure that I include as much as I can. Also, anything that our new hires should know when selling them to people would be good incase there is something that I didn't think about.

I know you guys hate pet stores, but I'm trying to make mine better. So please don't complain about how irresponsible and horrible they are :/

Thanks in advance!

 

[carol5208]

we dont hate pet stores like yours though! What info have you got so far that you are going to use? Besides the basic lights, temps supplements etc I would stress to them to not buy a chameleon unless they have funds for vet bills. I just see too often on here peopl getting these chameleons and then saying I cannot afford to take it to a vet. Also, let them be aware of the cost of keeping a variety of feeders and the expense of them plus gutloading them. I am not trying to prevent you from having sales but these are key points to consider when buying. People think, run to the pet store buy some crickets, throw in some water and a potato and that is the extent of feeding. It does not work like that!!! Also, yes there are so many illnesses, mouth rot, mbd, skin infections, absysess, proplapse, eye infections, tongue problems, gout, edema....if you put all this on your care sheet your will probably never sell one! What I would do is have the customer read the care sheet FIRST. After reading, if they are willing to take on the comittment then fine. There are signs and symptoms of all these diseases. Right now I do not have the time to write it all out!! Sorry!!! Research on here and you can find out what to look for. I know you know all too well about mbd unfortunately.

 

[camimom]

We dotn hate petstores!

We only hate them when they dont care for animals properly.

i got my male veiled kink from a small town store, hes doing very well.

as long as the store cares for them properly, we dont care who the petstore is.

 

[CaptainMorgantown]

we dont hate pet stores like yours though! What info have you got so far that you are going to use? Besides the basic lights, temps supplements etc I would stress to them to not buy a chameleon unless they have funds for vet bills. I just see too often on here peopl getting these chameleons and then saying I cannot afford to take it to a vet. Also, let them be aware of the cost of keeping a variety of feeders and the expense of them plus gutloading them. I am not trying to prevent you from having sales but these are key points to consider when buying. People think, run to the pet store buy some crickets, throw in some water and a potato and that is the extent of feeding. It does not work like that!!! Also, yes there are so many illnesses, mouth rot, mbd, skin infections, absysess, proplapse, eye infections, tongue problems, gout, edema....if you put all this on your care sheet your will probably never sell one! What I would do is have the customer read the care sheet FIRST. After reading, if they are willing to take on the comittment then fine. There are signs and symptoms of all these diseases. Right now I do not have the time to write it all out!! Sorry!!! Research on here and you can find out what to look for. I know you know all too well about mbd unfortunately.

Well I have all of the basics: heating, lighting, supplements, gutloading, feeders, cages, substrate (or lack thereof). I personally don't care if we don't sell a cham for a year, at least the people that do buy one will know what they are getting into and will care for it properly. The one thing that I am a bit rusty on are the different types of illnesses. MBD was the first thing I put on here, of course, but I honestly don't know too much about anything else except for edema, since Jo had that for a bit, and females becoming egg bound. I looked around and included as much as I could find, but it's basically just a little blurp about what to look for. This is actually turning into a small book, I'm at 23 pages.

One of the reasons I decided to do this was because we have had a few people coming in with sick reptiles, chameleons included (although nothing horribly wrong, just the shakes, and one case of mouth rot). People around here usually only get a reptile to say they have one, and don't really do any research on them. I'm going to put little signs on all the cages telling the customers to ask for this care sheet if they are seriously interested in an animal. Hopefully this will lower the casualty rate.

 

[Elizadolots]

Here's a link to a .pdf file of a Petco care sheet. Other than temps that look a bit high to me, it's not really bad. I particularly like the "red flags" section on the second sheet.