I did my stint at the reptile show yesterday. It's a lot like the bird mart, but with reptiles instead of birds and two or three times the size of the bird mart. It's even in the same location as the big bird marts.

It was an interesting place, although I'm not into reptiles so I didn't do any serious looking. The most interesting part was the way they displayed their animals. Instead of cages or aquariums, there were a lot of plastic tubs like they use for fresh-ground peanut butter at the natural grocery store, and acrylic boxes that would be nice for storing craft supplies. These aren't my pictures, but this is typical of what I saw:

So lucky! I can't wait for the reptile people to come to this thread!

There were all kinds of snakes, plus lizards, turtles, spiders, and teeny tiny poison dart frogs, to name a few of the cold-blooded offerings. Strangely enough there were also a couple of people selling hedgehogs, which were cute and funny. There was a petting zoo that included a 6 or 7-foot alligator with its mouth taped shut.

There was also a vendor selling live mice, which was creepy because I knew they were all doomed. They were meant as snake food not pets.

We were there to promote the bird mart that's coming up in three weeks, and we needed to have something attention-getting on our table. The club president was the other person at the table and she brought a gorgeous plum-headed parrot. I didn't feel comfortable bringing my birds to a reptile show so I brought Squawkers McCaw instead (Perfect Polly stayed at home).



He turned out to be a better draw than a real bird would have been. He's basically a talking robot bird who moves in a fairly natural way, and from a distance it was hard to tell that he's fake. I'd press the remote control to make him start dancing whenever there was a group of people with kids looking more or less in our direction, and it really lured them in. If we had a dollar for every time somebody said "I thought he was real" after they saw him up close, we wouldn't even have to hold a bird mart because we'd have enough money already lol. He was such a good attention-getter that the president asked if I'd leave him there for them to use on Sunday. So Squawkers is working the reptile show today even though I'm not.

I was surprised at how many bird lovers were there. It looks like hanging out at the reptile show is a good way to advertise the bird mart.

The guys in the first picture are milksnakes and corns. Second picture is leopard geckos. Third is ball pythons! Fourth, I'm pretty sure those are retics or maybe burms... not entirely sure.

At first I thought they were Halloween treats

In the first one there's some hognose and right at the very front I'm sure I can see a pituophis species! Looks like a nice colubrid table. And the fourth is both retics and burms. Tics at the top and burms at the bottom

Looks like they had some nice animals for sale!

Smaller snake species and some smaller lizards are often kept in tubs (over here it's Really Useful Boxes) that come in various sizes. I keep my royals and hatchling or young snakes this way. I also use them for transporting. The delicup ideas is usually useful for the shows and if you want to buy a few different animals you can stack em up to take home. Most people intending on buying a few things usually take a larger box and pop them in there. Snakes don't tend to do so well in open spaces and need a lot of hiding space to feel secure, if they were to provide them with larger enclosures they'd be stressed and if they were to make them more covered with say foliage nobody would know what they were buying

You'd be surprised at how many bird owners keep reptiles and visa versa... I don't know what it is. Maybe it's our love for exotics in general? I don't think anybody can be an animal lover if they only love the fluffy things

I've seen those macaws advertised, I didn't realise they were so good! At least he turned a few heads for you. I love plum heads too. I'm very partial to Asiatic birds

There were a lot more species than the few I've shown here. I don't really know reptiles but there were a lot of different kinds.

We have 3 big shows in the UK (all the same but the September one is absolutely huge) quite far from me and then there used to be a smaller one local to me but they stopped it. A lot of anti-caps ruin things like that for people who enjoy them I went to that local one in 2013 which was the last one and in 2014 I went to the IHS one in Doncaster. It was a long drive but so worth it. I haven't been able to go since due to not getting anybody to give me a ride up there and my reptile friends having no space in their cars. I'm going to go next year though. The variety of animals at reptile sales can be absolutely baffling!

Reptiles don't have the same ventilation requirements as birds do (aside from chameleons from my understanding), so carriers don't necessarily have to be exclusive to something like an actual cage. Additionally, the containers are very cheap, and some reptile species can have well over 100 babies per year (no this is not an exaggeration), so having a cheap and efficient way of transporting them is important when selling for these shows.

I remember when I went there last year, the most common I saw were veiled chameleons and sulcata tortoises. Both species lay a lot of eggs and are rather easy to breed when you know what you're doing.

However sulcata tortoises are small when they first hatch, but don't stay like that forever. People buy them all the time when small without knowing just how big they can get. There was one breeder I saw who brought one of the parents just to show people how big they get.


They grow pretty fast too, so you can imagine that they get rehomed fairly often.

Birds and reptiles are both considered exotic animals, so I wouldn't be surprised to know that a lot of reptile lovers may also love birds. I remember conversing with some bird lovers last year at the reptile show too.