Livefood

Many reptiles, amphibians and invertebrates require livefood (insects and other invertebrates) as a whole or part of their diet. Some mammals such as pygmy hedgehogs do to. At Angell Pets we have stocked a range of livefood options since we opened over 13 years ago.

We often get new customers who have been buying their livefood either on line or at a chain store comment on the quality, condition and price of our livefood when they first come in. Our pre-existing customers have obviously been benefitting from this qualityfor some time and know why they shop with us. How do we keep our prices down and quality up? Well hard work and care mainly

livefood

Sticking a box of livefood on a shelf and leaving it there until a customer picks it up is just about it for most outlets. Not us. When we get the livefood in from one of our high quality suppliers (on their own temperature controlled vehicles, not via courier where the heat of summer or cold of winter decimates the stock before it even arrives) it is first inspected for quality. Any substandard packs are removed and not put onto our shelves. Fortunately for us this is a rare occurence and is usually where a tub lid may have come off in transit. The tubs of livefood are then fed, usually with a thin slice of organic carrot, before putting on the shelf for sale. It would be easy to just put in a large slice and leave it at that for the week but it is important that all the food is eaten before it has a chance to spoil. Too large a piece and it will start to rot and spoil the tub of livefood. For this reason we revisit each and every tub three times a week to remove any uneaten food, replace with a fresh slice and also remove any moulted skins from the insects (crickets, locusts, mealworms, morio worms etc.). This is very time consuming and fiddly but essential if we are to keep up our excellent standard of livefood that our customers have come to expect. As I write this blog it is a bank holiday Monday. When I have finished the first draft here I am off to the shop to feed and water the animals (reptiles, amphibians, birds, mammals and fish) and yes, feed all the livefood tubs on the shelf.

livefood

Toward the end of the week, especially in the large and extra large sizes during the summer months, some of the tubs will have grown into adults or started to deteriorate. We then go through every tub, removing any dead insects and replacing with live ones (consolidating the tubs) to ensure a tub bought on a Wednesday afternoon is as good as a tub bought on a Thursday morning when the fresh delivery arrives. We also consantly review the numbers ordered and we have become quite good at ensuring we order just enough to keep stock on the shelf for the week and are just running out when the new stock arrives so the tubs are never older than a week and look as fresh as when delivered.

livefood

Why do we go to all this effort. Well, the main reason is it is important the the food you feed your animal is as full of nutrients as possible. Just being alive is not enough. A starving, dehydrated locust, with an empty gut and not enough energy to really move let alone grow is not as benificial to your animal as one that is fit and healthy. Also by keeping our tubs of livefood well fed and hydrated we ensure we lose very little stock to spoilage. Each tub lost is a tub not sold so effects the return on our investment. By ensuring spoilage is at a minimum we are able to control costs to the business and keep the price to our customers down. Finally although reptiles, amphibians and invertebrates such as tarantulas do require livefood to survive we believe we have a responsibility to these insects whilst they are in a our care. Just letting a tub die because “they are just crickets” doesn’t wash with us.

We hope you as a customer share our views on the importance of looking after livefood for the benefit of you and your animal and look forward to seeing you during the week when you can be confident that you are getting the best quality for the best possible price.

The Angell Pets Livefood Team

Gloucester Pet Shop Increases Stock – Some Old Favourites, Some New Lines

We are always looking to increase the range of stock we hold in store in our Gloucester pet shop. We have just reorganised the shop floor again to enable us to get a new order of stock in this week. We have restocked with some old favourites that are popular with our customers but that we cannot get through our regular weekly deliveries from our normal wholesalers and we have also added some new lines. One of the new lines is actually both. It is a new brand to replace the brand we used to stock but can no longer get. Turns out to be the same product with a different label.

Komodo Nano Vivariums

gloucester pet shop

These are our favourite enclosures at our Gloucester pet shop for housing tarantulas and other inverts. like mantids. They are glass, so easy to clean, well ventilated and stakable (for the larger collections. The larger sizes can also be used for small amphibians or reptiles (some of the smaller gecko species). We have stocked these before and they are always popular but due to minimum order levels are not always available.

Komodo Terraced Water Bowls

Gloucester pet shop

These heavy resin bowls will grace any vivarium. Will not be overturned by even the most active of lizards or snakes. We always sell out of these quite quickly. I have just found out the real reason they were on the order though. Billie wanted one to match the hides she has in her hognose viv. Cheek.

Hugs Dog Beds In Grape And Teal

gloucester pet shop

We have a new range of Hugs dog beds in stock at our Gloucester pet shop in two attractive colours. These come in rectangular and oval formats and compliment our other ranges of beds already held at the store. Theyt are also very reasonably priced considering their stylish design.

Geo Range Of Cat Scratchers

pet shop gloucester

This is a new product and we only have one model from the range in so we can make ourselves familiar with the product. They looked good in the brochure but we like to know what we are selling. From first look the model we have in stock looks like a winner and again is very reasonable priced as it is an activity toy as well as a scratcher.

Happy Pet Bird Toys

gloucester pet shops

A return of a range of old favourites to our Gloucester pet shop. With a couple of exceptions, we have stocked all these toys before and they sell out quickly everytime. Good value and will keep the fussiest of birds occupied for hours. We also have a couple of new items to expand the range further.

Happy Pet Crafty Creatures Range

gloucester pet shop

Back by poular demand, this range of soft dog toys in the shape of some of the animals we sell!. Spiders, geckos and chameleons. We also have Chuckie the chimp back in our Gloucester pet shop for the first time at Hucclecote.We stopped stocking him at Southgate Street because the drunks would continually set him off and it drove Bille mad. Not a problem we have now we are out of town thank goodness, so Chucky’s back.

Komodo Turtle Food Range

pet shop gloucester

We stocked a very popular turtle food product range for a number of years. However the supplier became less and less reliable, to the point where we were finding placing an order a bit of a lottery as to what, if anything, we would recieve. We have been looking for a suitable replacement and have been disappointed with the alternative products. We saw this new range in the brochure and thought it looked good. Turns out it is the old product supplied under a their own brand name via one of our other suppliers. Result. We have limited numbers of each item this time round because we were not certain how good it would be. Now we know it is our old product, so popular with our existing customers we will order more next time.

Jelly Pots

gloucester pet shop

We always have a range of different flavour jelly pots in store but now we have even more. All the favourites with some exotic additions like melon. Always popular with birds, reptiles and invertebrates.

We will obviously keep trawling the trade press for new and innovitive products to stock in our Gloucester pet shop so keep up to date by visiting the store, checking out this blog or our Facebook page, visiting our webstore or signing up to receive regualr updates. Of course you could do all of the above.

Gloucester Pet Shop 10 Years Old

Way back in 2009 I was coming to the end of my martial arts teaching career due a combination of injury and wear and tear. I was looking for something I could do as a career that did not involve working for someone else. I had had enough of that with previous employers and had been spoilt by being self employed as an electrician (which I hated) and a martial arts instructor (which I loved). It was whilst out delivering leaflets for my martial arts academy in Tewkesbury that I noticed that just about every every house (near enough) had some sign of animals. This one had a barking dog, that one had a cat flap, this one had a load of bird feeders, that one had a rabbit hutch. One even had a sign saying “beware of the snakes”! I have kept a huge range of animals throughout my life, have an honours degree in biology and have lectured on various courses on relevant subjects so even I was able to put two and two together and the idea of Angell Pets took form. I had no funding, no knowledge of how to start such as business or where to locate it but you don’t become a martial arts instructor unless you are quite driven. Within a few weeks I had resolved all the problems I could think of and formed a company and our Gloucester pet shop was born.

gloucester pet shop
We’ve had venus 10 years this year too.

I borrowed a lot of money against an old endowment policy I’d had for years, and incorporated the company on 23/06/09. We then found a suitable property close to home in Abbeymead, purchased all the shelving, tills and everything else you need for a shop, sourced suppliers, enrolled on the courses needed to obtain a licence, commissioned a website and jumped right in. The whole process, from forming the company to opening the doors of our first Gloucester pet shop took just under 6 months and we finally opened on 17th of December 2009.

gloucester pet shop

We stayed in our first shop in Mead Road for the next five years. Over that time we introduced new services such as free home delivery, a webstore, a new information website, an offers email list and our Facebook page. Despite being launched during a double dip recession, the business thrived and grew every month. Unfortunately, when the lease came up for renewal the landlord wanted the property back for themselves and we had to look for a new location quite quickly. We thought we had found a good new spot at the quays and managed to move the entire business across in only two days! (although there was a couple of months of late nights preparing the new premises and decorating the old).

Unfortunately we did not take into account the stupidity of Gloucester City Council who, at the behest of the Quays development and against the wishes of smaller local businesses, decided to close the local carpark and promptly killed our business overnight. This happened 6 months after we moved in and cut our takings in half. We were tied into a lease for a minimum of 3 years so spent the next 2 1/2 years just scraping by. If it hadn’t been for the launch of our boarding service we would have gone under. Thanks Gloucester City Council.

As soon as we were able to get out of our lease (not cheaply, it cost thousands) we did and found our current property in Hucclecote. The move was not so easy this time. Both properties needed a lot of very expensive works. The Hucclecote site was an old Barclays branch and their contractors wrecked the inside of the building taking out their kit, plus maintenance of the building had not been kept up. They also left behind the vault door which alone cost a few thousand to remove. Worse was the work we had to do on the old property. In order to implement the break clause in our lease we had to carry out a lot of remedial work. Every piece of wood had to be glossed, every wall emulsioned, every piece of flooring replaced (3000 sq ft), shutters that had not been touched in the the 20 years before we got there serviced, the roof cleared of years of debris and repaired where it had been damaged from people going up there without permission (now you know why I was annoyed when the rugby painting on the cafe next door was put up without any consultation with us – it cost me £450 in repairs). Unfortunately most of this work was a complete waste of time and money. We knew, even as we were carrying out the works that the new tenants were going to rip most of it out and sure enough, one week after moving I looked in to see half the new flooring pulled up and stacked ready to go to the tip.

Gloucester pet shop

It was whilst carrying out the remedial works (fitting the carpet tiles that are now buried in the ground at the landfill site) that I injured my spine. This is what was responsible for us having to stop our free local delivery service, I can no longer walk too well and lifting anything is out of the question. I managed to keep it going during the move, when we were operating from a storage unit but had no option but to cease it when, whilst painting a piece of skirting in the new shop I was unable to get up because my legs were too weak. After finally going to the doctors I have been diagnosed with a reasonably serious condition that is not going to improve. I also became quite ill last summer so Billie stepped up and has been running the company since, doing all the work that at one point we had six staff (including myself) doing. George has also been helping out when he can and even Albert stepped in during a break in his studies.

However, despite all the problems with recessions, leases, idiot councillors and illness lining up to hold us back, we have made it to 10 years of our Gloucester pet shop and are still going strong. To mark this anniversary we will be having lots of offers on between now and December in celebration. This will be in additon to, not instead of, our regular monthly deals we already offer. Ever since we opened we have made sure even our usual prices have remained competitive and with all the offers coming up, there will be some real bargains. Like our Facebook page or sign up to our email list to be kept up to date with the latest bargain.

So visit us in our Gloucester pet shop at Glenville Parade in Hucclectoe. Lots of FREE parking and right on the number 10 bus route.

The Angell Pets Team