Temporary Opening Hours Change

Due to staff having to self isolate (another member of a household testing positive for COVID) we are having to change our opening hours and temporarily suspend our free local delivery service for a couple of weeks.

We will be closing at 4pm each afternoon until Saturday 23rd of January. Any orders already placed will be delivered by our remaining staff member but we will be unable to free deliver any new orders until week commencing 25th.

Customers who use our FREE local delivery service can still order “click and collect” through our website or over the telephone or visit the store (face masks please). We will be restricting numbers in the store at any one time to two customer groups ( currently 4) and would urge customers to bring as few family members as possible. We will also be closing for lunch during this period from 12:30 to 13:00.

As soon as the self isolation period is over we will review these restrictions. Please note that no Angell Pets staff members have tested positive but we are taking these steps to protect our customers in line with government regulations and guidance.

Thank you for your understanding during this difficult period

Latest Covid Restrictions – We Are OPEN

The government has just announced another almost full lockdown, similar to the one in March. Non essential retail and hospitality businesses must close from Thursday, you must work from home where possible, households must not mix (except for support bubbles) etc. As with the March lockdown we will be remaining OPEN. As we provide food and hygiene products for animals we are classed as an essential business and can stay open under the new rules. We will however have to make some small changes

When restrictions were relaxed, we were able to let more customer groups in at one time (we settled on three as this still allowed some social distancing in our rather small store). However, with the new guidelines and I am afraid the behaviour towards staff of some members of the public, we may have to restrict this further from time to time. In reality this will only have a small effect but it may mean you will have to wait for entry for a couple of minutes. To minimize wait times we would ask customers who know before hand what they want to pre-order their supplies by telephone or alternatively use our click and collect service available through our webstore (telephone is generally better). This just speeds up our checkout and will go along way to keeping queues to a minimum.

Obviously with potentially allowing fewer customer groups in at a time we cannot allow general viewing of the animals. Whilst people are looking at the animals that are on display (because their enclosures cannot be moved) just out of interest, someone else could be waiting out in the cold to be served, which is just not fair. It has been suggested that we should black out the enclosures we cannot move but I would rather treat our customers as adults and rely on them to be sensible. We will put up explanatory notices and ask customers to desist if it does happen, please do not be offended, we are just trying to keep it fair for everyone. If you are genuinely interested in purchasing an animal, please make this known to us when you come in and let us know what animal you are interested in first. We cannot accommodate request such as “I want to buy a pet” – “Which one?” – “I don’t know let me have a look at what you have”. We have a lot, it takes too long, you should know a little about the animal before you try to buy it in any case. All our current livestock is on our website and can be viewed before coming to the store.

We also still have our FREE local delivery service running (not for animals, you must come to the store to purchase an animal). Just telephone us your order and we will bring it to your door on the designated day for your area (generally two alternative evenings a week for each local area). We can also deliver further out for a small charge on Friday evenings (Stroud, the Forest etc.). At the moment we are open until 5:30pm and start our deliveries from then. However if the service grows rapidly in popularity again, as it did during the first lockdown, we may have to adjust our closing time to allow us to complete more deliveries per day. Watch this space!

We thank you in advance for you patience and recognise that our genuine customers have worked hard with us to enable the business to remain open and operating as well as it can with the restrictions placed on us all.

Unfortunately, as we do have livestock in store, we do attract a lot of people who are not customers and just like to have somewhere to bring their children to kill some time or just to treat us as a free zoo. We have had a significant number of incidents of abuse aimed of staff since the first lockdown and it is generally with these groups or with others who refuse to follow the guidelines on social distancing, masks, numbers in the store etc. I don’t like to have to re-iterate it but we will not tolerate any abuse, verbally or physically, you will be ejected from the store and where we deem it appropriate the police will be called (as with the idiot who for some reason threatened to run me over, rape my mother, attack my daughter and burn the shop down!) Yep, that’s what we have to deal with!

Unless you are wishing to make a purchase please follow the government’s advice and “Stay at home, protect the NHS and save lives”. If you are coming to the store to make a purchase or collect an order please “Wash hands, cover face and make space”. We are all in this together and we will do our bit to make your shopping experience as easy and stress free as we can, please do the same for us so we can remain open throughout.

The Angell Pets Team

New Biodegradeable packaging for hay and straw

We now stock Pillow Wad hay and straw in 100% biodegradeable, plastic free, compostable packaging. This in line with our policy of trying our best to replace as much plastic as possible in our products and packaging.

pillow wad

We recently changed our APL Grain Free dog food to brown paper sacks and this has proved very popular with our customers. It has had an added bednefit to us as well as the new paper bags are tougher than the old plastic ones that often split at the seams during transit to us. Other brands, such as Hollings are also moving away from plastic and we are stocking more of their products as they do.

Venison strips

Customers may also have noticed that plastic is gradually disappearing from the packaging of other products as diverse as reptile thermostats and hamster balls as we work with our suppliers to reduce our impact on the environment. Or suppliers are also using less plastic packaging in their deliveries to us, replacing bubble wrap with heavy duty brown paper, polystyrene with cardboard and plastic bags with boxes.

We stopped using plastic carrier bags some time ago, long before the supermarkets etc jumped on the bandwagon so we were ahead of the curve there. Most customers bring their own bags now but for those who don’t have one we provide cardboard boxes, recylcled sacks or the inimitable “bag for life” for 50p.

Our next step is to replace the clear plastic bags we use for our “bagged up” bird, mammal and fish foods with a suitable biodegradable alternative. This is proving more difficult than it should due to finding the correct size and price. We recently found what looked like a contender but it turned out each bag in the size we need would cost us 600 times as much as our current bags (yes 600!). This would have added 59p to each item which made them not viable. We think we have found another alternative that is only 6 times the current cost (only!) which we think we can absorb without having to increase the price of most products. Hopefully as more competition enters the non plastic packaging market the price will come down further.

We are only a small independant retailer. In the grand scheme of things we know we are not making that much difference but our tag line is “promoting repsonsible and ethical pet ownership” so we have to do something and we would rather lead than follow.

The Angell Pets Team

New, Extended Opening Hours

With the continued easing of lock down measures, things are slowly returning to normal. This week schools started to re-open and even more year groups start back next week. Whilst lock down has been on we have been closing early in order to carry out deliveries to local customers who were self isolating or just could not get to us. With kids going back to school, customers will want us to be there after schools close so they can shop or pick up orders on their way home. We are also seeing a drop off in the amount of free home delivery orders in the afternoons as more people are coming to us to shop so we are now in a position to extend the opening hours to pre-covid times (remember them, it seems a lifetime ago).

Our new opening hours are as follows from Monday 07/09/2020

Monday 1pm – 5:30pm

Tuesday 10am – 5:30pm

Wednesday 10am- 5:30pm

Thursday 10am – 5:30pm

Friday 10am – 5:30pm

Saturday10am – 5:30pm

Sunday – CLOSED

Bank Holidays – CLOSED

Customers using the FREE local home delivery service will be pleased to hear we will be keeping this on for the foreseeable future. Obviously deliveries will be later in the day now as we won’t be starting until 5:30pm. We are happy to provide this free service but would ask those customers that are able to visit the store to do so as it really does stretch our limited and rather ageing (me) work force. Of course some of the items we sell are rather bulky and we are happy to continue to deliver these.

The Angel Pets Team

Face Masks Mandatory In Store From 24/07/20

As part of the governments relaxing of lock down measures and attempts to prevent a second spike in corona virus infections, face masks will have to be worn in shops from Friday 24/07/20. In response to this latest change in regulations we have updated our corona virus proceedures.

All customers will have to wear a mask to come in the shop from Friday until further notice. We appreciate that some people are exempt. However we have no way of checking if someone is in one of the exempt categories or not, so this is a very difficult situation for staff to manage. To keep it fair to everyone and to avoid any argument, only customers wearing masks will be able to come inside the shop. Exempt customers will be served at the door or can use our FREE home delivery service as most exempt customers (not all) are more at risk from the virus anyway and staying home would be safer for them. We have posted the following note on the door for anyone who does not receive a message before hand, although it has been widely reported in the media anyway.

The wearing of masks does reduce the risk of spreading the virus so it also allows us to let more customer groups in the store at a time (currently limited to one customer group). However we will still be limiting the total number of customers in at any one time, at our discretion. Due to this we are still not allowing general members of the public in to just look at animals with no intention of making a purchase.

In the last few weeks, as lock down measures have been eased and more people are out and about we have had too many non customers being abusive and aggressive to staff. We have been told to F off by an actual customer when he was asked to wait until the lady at the counter had left before coming in, had abuse hurled at staff when people have come in to kill time and have not been allowed to look at the animals as we have had genuine customers outside waiting, had grown men push past staff and shove their face next to them whilst they were feeding the reptiles, just to get a better look and then storm out when asked to maintain a safe distance. The list is getting longer every day. We have always had a zero tolerance policy to abuse of staff and anyone behaving in this manner will be leaving immediately. The virus has not gone away and in order to stay open we must follow government guidelines no matter what the public thinks of its efficacy or even what we think ourselves. It is a difficult situation for retail staff to find themselves in and we will not be engaging in arguments as to whether or not a mask is necessary. Staff do not have to wear masks under the regulations but to make genuine customers more comfortable and to head off the “why should I when you’re not” comments from the non customers; we will be wearing masks as well when customers are present.

Thank you in advance for your understanding as we all try to come to terms with the change in requirements.

The Angell Pets Team

July 2020 Monthly Offers

July’s offers are now avaialble in store and on line. A bit late this month but better late than never. All offers avaiable whilst stocks last until the end of July 2020 and FREE local delivery available on all orders over £10.

Beta Working Dog

Beta Working Dog 14kg ONLY £20.00 RRP £25.00

Felix AGAIL Favurites Selection 88 Pack ONLY £23.00 RRP £33.00

Bags On Board Patterned 140 Pack ONLY £3.99 RRP £5.79

Bags On Board Ocean Scent 140 Pack ONLY £ 3.99 RRP £5.79

Good Boy Chicken Dumbells 100g ONLY £1.49 RRP £2.99

Burns Sensitive Duck & Brown Rice 2kg ONLY £7.99 RRP £10.39

Iams Dog Vitality Senior Small & Medium Breed With Chicken 12kg ONLY £23.99 RRP £31.99

Burgess Cat Chicken & Duck 10kg ONLY £20.00 RRP £32.62

Burgess Cat Salmon 10kg ONLY £20.00 RRP £32.62

Whimzee Rice Bone Single 2 for £1.50 RRP £1.35 (Offer only available in store or via telephone orders)

Bob Martin Home Flea Spray Plus 500ml ONLY £7.39 RRP £9.90

Whiskas 1+ Can Meat Selection In Jelly 6 x 390g ONLY £4.25 RRP £5.15

Whiskas Complete Dry Kitten With Chicken 340g ONLY £1.00 RRP £1.69

Bow Wow Yum Yums Mint Single 2 for £1.00 RRP 66p (offer only available in store or via telephone orders)

Peckish Extra Goodness Cumble Mix 1kg ONLY £3.99 RRP £4.99

Barking Heads Pooched Salmon 2kg ONLY £8.99 RRP £12.99

Lilys Kitchen Venison & Duck 2.5kg ONLY £13.50 RRP £18.00

Lilys Kitchen Chicken & Duck 2.5kg ONLY £13.50 RRP £18.00

Some of these offers are already nearly gone so don’t wait until it is too late to grab a bargain.

The Angell Pets Team

A Sunny Afternoon Trip to One of Our Livestock Suppliers

We are often asked “where do you get your livestock from?” The truth is that the answer is not straight forward. We stock a very wide range of livestock and there is not a single suplier in the country that supplies a fraction of that range. Some animals we breed ourselves, although not many now due to ill health over the last few years, some come from local breeders that we have used for a number of years, some come from “breeder collectives”, groups of breeders who pool excess stock to sell to pet shops, some come from larger suppliers (again, suppliers we have used for years and can trust). There are also some sources we do not use. Rodent farms (we have visited one of these and wouldn’t use them on ethical grounds), accidental litters resulting from people buying mis-gendered pets from a well known pet supermarket (high risk of sibling mating), random people cold calling and trying to sell us animals (possibly stolen). We visit our suppliers homes or business premises to make sure we are happy with the conditions the animals are being bred/housed in first.

One Sunday in June we took the opportunity afforded by the slight easing of lockdown measures and a beautiful summers day to visit George and his partner Claire for a barbeque in their garden and to collect two crested geckos, bred in their collection at the college they work at. Whilst there I took the opportunity to take a few photos to show what one of our suppliers facilities looks like. This college teaches a variety of equine, agricultural, horticultural and animal courses. As well as taking classes, George is tasked with looking after the collection of animals kept on the college, including developing their environments.

The existing aviaries are stocked with a variety of small birds, including Zebra finches supplied by Angell Pets. There are also large new aviaries currently being developed with different levels of plant growth. The corona virus pandemic has put a hold on populating these as there are currently no students on site but when things return to normal new birds will be sourced for these.

Meerkat enclosure, ferrets, rabbits, aviary.

Where the old aviaries are sited there is also a large compound of other enclosures housing Meerkats, ferrets, chinchillas, guinea pigs (some supplied by Angell Pets for breeding), rabbits, tortoises and others.

Inside the building is a rodent room with rats, mice, hamsters, gerbils, degus, chipmunks etc. Another room houses the aquatics section with cold water and tropical fish (some supplied by Angell Pets – angelfish and sydontis and some from which we have had supplies – swordtails and guppies) and terrapins (although these are to go outside into an adapted pond enclosure soon).

In the reptile room are frogs (including a huge African bull frog, grey tree frogs and Brazilian milk frogs – supplied by Angell Pets), salamanders and musk turtles (tank and turtles supplied by Angell Pets). Also there is a large enclosure for a common boa, corn snakes, royal pythons, bearded dragons, a water dragon (supplied by Angell Pets), leopard geckos (some supplied by Angell Pets), crested geckos (breeding colony) and skinks. In a separate room, all to itself is an adult male green iguana.

Back outside at the rear and sides of the buildings and enclosures are several paddocks. One contains the old duck pond (where the terrapins are going to go) with some ducks still to be transferred down the site to the new, larger pond. Next door are the chickens, where my old hens spent their final days when I became to ill to look after them. Behind are some of the pigs. Further back are the goats and alpacas and further back still are the sheep and llamas. coming back round to the other side of the compound are the donkeys and a pony. There are more livestock in the agricultural department, where the stables, milking sheds and farrowing pens including cattle and horses. We have visited these facilities before but my legs weren’t up to it this time. It’s a big site!

Down towards the entrance is the horticultural department, new aviaries and large duck pond. Some impressive growing tunnels and planting areas, not at their best at the moment due to the lack of activity on site with the lock down but still looking good in the bright sunshine. This is where some of the plants we have on sale in our shop for bio-active set ups come from, including those in the leopard gecko set up on our counter.

As well as the crested geckos we have already sourced from George, when the guinea pigs start breeding we will be having their excess stock. If the leopard geckos breed again we will also have these. Once the aviaries are up and running properly I am sure the birds will start breeding and we will also source some of our birds from here too. The purpose of the collection is to teach animal handling, husbandry and welfare not to breed animals commercially. However in discharging these duties there will be excess animals produced and I am sure having seen the excellent conditions the animals are kept in and the time, effort and indeed money that is spent on their welfare, they are a good fit with our mission statement of promoting ethical and responsible pet care.

The crested geckos mentioned are now on sale in our shop as are zebra finches from the same cohort as those supplied by us for the aviaries. Incidentally we also supplied the original birds for the aviaries at Hartpury college just after George finished his degree there, from memory they had cockatiels, budgies, Java sparrows, zebra finch, Japanese quail and Chinese painted quail.

We are in the process of developing new aviaries and animal enclosures in our Hucclecote store so I am sure our relationship with this excellent supplier will continue to grow.

The Angell Pets Team

June 2020 Lockdown Offers

We are well into the lockdown and hopefully coming out the other side. The Gloucester pet shop has remained open throughout and obviously we always have our webstore. This months offers are available in the shop (one customer group at a time), for telephone order and collection in store, free local delivery to Gloucester and Cheltenham, for a small delivery charge to Stroud and the Forest of Dean and normal courier charges UK wide.

gloucester pet shop

Best Pets Compressed Hay only £2.99 saving 25%

gloucester pet shop

Pedigree Biscrock Gravy Bones 10kg only £25.00 saving over £8.50

Felix Pouches Mixed selection In Jelly 96 x 100g only £20.00 saving £8.00

pet shop gloucester

Hollings Dried Sausage Carry bag 1kg only £10 saving over £2.50

gloucester pet shop

Hills Science Plan Mature Cat Chicken 1.5kg only £9.99 saving £5.50

pet shop gloucester

Pedigree Markies Minis 12.5kg only £30 saving over £11

gloucester pet shop

Animology Fragrance Body Mist For dogs 150ml only £3.79 saving 30%

Bob Martin Clear Spot On Wormer Cats & Kittens 4 Tube only £8.49, 2 Tube only £4.99 saving 20%

Nylabone Original/Chicken Extra Large £9.99 BOGOF £9.99 and also save £4.00

Johnsons Dog Flea Shampoo/2 in 1 Manuka Honey Shampo and Conditioner 200ml only £3.19 saving 20%

Whiskas 1+ Cat Pouches Fish Selection in Jelly/Poultry Selection in Jelly Mega Pack 40 For The Price of 36 40x100g only £9.00 saving over £2.50

gloucester pet shop

Nature Diet Purely Chicken 390g Buy 2 For £2.00 saving 33%

pet shop gloucester

Burgess Excel Indoor Rabbit Nuggets with Dandelion 1.5kg only £3.99 saving over 25%

gloucester pet shop

FIPROtec Spot On Medium Dog 4 Treatments and WORMclear Dog upto 40kg 4 tablets buy both for only £16.99 saving £5.50

Visit us soon in our Gloucester pet shop

The Angell pets Team

Increase in Gloucester Pet Shop Opening Hours

Fortunately we have been able to keep our Gloucester pet shop open throughout the lock down period. We have done this by monitoring government advice, customer behaviours and expectations and especially the needs of those in our community particularly at risk from the virus. As the situation has evolved we have adjusted our opening times, provided new services and restricted non essential sales.

At the weekend the situation changed again and in view of this and changes to the products we can offer (livestock), the associated welfare needs of this livestock and changes in our customers’ behaviours, we have made further adjustments to our opening hours to cope.

A few weeks ago we reduced our opening hours to 2pm closing. This was to enable us to do FREE local delivery. A lot of our customers could not or would rather not come to us during the peak of the pandemic. We had also stopped selling animals (non essential) and actually had very few left in stock. Feeding, watering, cleaning, health checking and monitoring of the livestock is actually what takes up most of the time in the business. We were therefor able to close to do the deliveries because of the time saved by not having a lot of livestock in. As I posted below, this has now changed and we are selling animals again and so we need this time back.

gloucester pet shop

Also many of our customers now feel more able to come to us and actually prefer it because they can browse the shop better than they can the website. Quite a lot like the excuse to get out after weeks of being shut in. It helps them that they can do this safely because of the control measures we already had in place in our Gloucester pet shop in the period prior to lock down. These measures, allowing social distancing remain in place. This has reduced the demand for FREE local delivery, enabling us to reduce the time spent on this service. It is still available to those requiring it but we will be starting the deliveries later in the day. In order to ensure we can still get to all the customers that really do still need us to deliver we have increased the minimum order from £5 to £10. This is to hopefully reduce the amount of deliveries further (we were delivering to some very local customers who weren’t self isolating every other day with orders a couple of pence over the minimum each time).

With the reduced time for the deliveries we have also introduced a delivery schedule, to avoid delivering to opposite ends of the patch on the same night and wasting most of the available time in one long journey. We will continue to monitor the situation and make changes if any of this causes our customers any issues.

gloucester pet shop

The new schedule for FREE local delivery from our Gloucester pet shop is below along with a couple of sensible conditions.


Property must be sack truck assessible. We will leave the order at the front door of the main property, telephone the contact number given (or knock, or both) and wait until someone collects the package. We will make only one delivery attempt. If you are not in, or do not answer, the order can be collected from our shop from the following working day onward. If you can do orders to collect please do so as delivery numbers will be limited for the time being. Click and collect is available on our web store but FREE local delivery orders MUST be done by telephone on 01452 501882 and paid for in advance by card. Sorry, no cash on delivery. Cash purchases can only be done in store.

Minimum order £10
Orders must be in by 3pm for same day delivery.


Monday – Hucclecote. Longlevens, Longford, Churchdown, Innsworth, Cheltenham, Brockworth.

Tuesday – Abbeymead, Abbeydale, Coney Hill/Saintbridge, Upton, Robinswood/Matson, Glos Centre, Tuffley,Tredworth, Podsmead Kingsway/Quedgeley, Hempstead.

Wednesday – Hucclecote. Longlevens, Longford, Churchdown, Innsworth, Cheltenham, Brockworth.

Thursday – Abbeymead, Abbeydale, Coney Hill/Saintbridge, Upton, Robinswood/Matson, Glos Centre, Tuffley,Tredworth, Podsmead Kingsway/Quedgeley, Hempstead.

Friday – Painswick, Stroud & The Forest of Dean (£5 Charge)

Collection in store AVAILABLE FROM OUR gLOUCESTER PET SHOP AT 2/3 GLENVILLE PARADE, HUCCLECTOE, GLOUCETER GL3 3ES.

The Angell Pets Team

Animals now available for sale

Throughout the lock down we have had an embargo on the sale of animals from our store as non-essential items. No one should have been leaving home for any reason that was not essential. Food for your pet is essential, as are a number of other items, bedding, hygiene products, medicines, toys (essential for the well being of your pet) etc. A new pet was not essential, so unless it was to replace a deceased partner of a social species, or you were in the store buying your normal supplies anyway we had stopped selling animals. We knew this embargo was coming in advance so we stopped restocking with animals before the lock down happened so for the most part we didn’t have any in stock anyway.

pet shop gloucester

The government has now moved to a new phase. The emphasis is moving away from “stay at home” although you should still do this if at all possible, and focusing more on responsible social distancing whilst trying to gradually return society back to normal, over time and with very strict monitoring of the results of any changes. We feel that in line with this change we are now in a position to start offering our livestock for sale again.

gloucester pet shop

This is not a case of everything returning to normal. We already have a social distancing policy in place at our Gloucester pet shop. Only one customer group in the shop at any time, queuing kept to a minimum outside the shop with customers keeping at least 2m apart. Staff maintaining 2m from customers at all times. Click and collect ordering available by telephone and on line in our web store and FREE local delivery for telephone orders. We will be keeping all these procedures in place and this will have an impact on the returning sale of animals.

reptile shop

In normal times we actively encourage prospective owners to interact with their new pet (hold where appropriate), prior to purchase. Under the corona virus restrictions we cannot return to this at present as it would break the social distancing rules. You may ask to look at an animal in its enclosure and where possible staff will try to place the animal in a carrier for you to look at, both of these can be done whilst maintaining 2m between staff and customers but I’m afraid that is the limit of interaction before purchase. You will not be able to hold or inspect the animal further. Our staff will do all the normal pre-sale inspections and of course our livestock policy (the most generous we have found) remains in place to offer you protection.

gerbil

This is the only way we feel we can return to selling animals whilst maintaining protection for our staff and customers. Please note that this service is available to customers only. We still have a policy of no browsing the animals. We have wide variety of livestock and it attracts a lot of casual visitors. During normal times this is not an issue (unless the “free zoo” visitors get in the way of genuine customers or, as happens from time to time, are disruptive – in which case they are asked to leave). However during the pandemic they represent an unnecessary risk to staff and customers and would also be preventing genuine customers from entering the premises. So for now the “Free Zoo” remains closed. We have had a couple of instances where members of the public have become abusive and/or aggressive with staff when asked to leave if they are not making a purchase and just want to “look at the animals”. Fortunately the number of these instances have been very few but they should not have happened at all. We have a zero tolerance policy toward abuse of staff and will remove from the shop anyone who decides that the middle of the worst crisis to hit the country since the war is a good time to start trying to throw their weight around. As I say it’s rare and we appreciate the rest of our community who understand the need for these restrictive practices at this time.

reptiles

We update our livestock list on this website daily (or when it changes) and our web store also has all our livestock displayed with prices. All animal sales remain in store only. We do not sell animals to anyone we have not met and chatted to, about the care and welfare of the animal, first.

african grey parrot

Finally, customers often have to have a think before making the decision whether to buy that particular animal. Quite right too, you should never rush into purchasing a particular pet. We would ask however that whilst making the decision you leave the store if it is going to take a few minutes as we cannot allow anyone else in at the same time as you so there could be a queue outside.

Difficult times call for difficult measures and we know none of this is exactly an ideal “customer experience” so we thank you all in advance for your understanding as we try to remain in business whilst protecting ourselves and our families as well as you and yours.

The Angell Pets Team