Frozen Reptile Food

There is a lot of noise being made about a recall of frozen rodents for reptiles at the moment. There have been a number of cases of salmonella food poisoning loosely linked to reptile owners. Tests have revealed that one supplier has had salmonella found in the frozen rodents they supply to the trade. As a result, several businesses have been forced to recall their stock if they use this supplier.

We have never used this supplier for frozen rodents and so have not been directly effected by this recall. Our own supplier regularly tests for salmonella throughout their process and at the time of writing all tests continue to prove negative. So far so good.

However, as some of the businesses effected (such as Pets at Home) are quite large and as their customers are having to find new shops to purchase their own supplies from; this is now effecting the rest of the supply chain. Additional pressure is being applied as shops that were effected by the poor quality of their existing supplier are having to find better, safer supplies elsewhere. We are now seeing shortages in our supply chain as this increased demand all round starts to bite.

Whilst we still have large supplies in store, we are now seeing shortages in some sizes when re-ordering. We have fresh deliveries every week so these shortages will soon start to become apparent. Obviously we are also seeing increased demand as other shops’ customers start coming to us to find supplies.

Please make sure you get your supplies early, before you run out of your own stocks at home as over the next few weeks we do invisage running low of some sizes, particularly of mice.

Of course, even though our supplies have proved negative for salmonella it is always necessary to wash your hands after handling any animal. I am sure I don’t have to tell our own customers to wash their hands after handling a dead rat and before putting your hands anywhere near your face, work surfaces or food but apparently it seems there are about 900 people since 2015 that did need telling because they clearly didn’t do it!

The Angell Pets Team

Natures Menu Raw Feed

We have stocked Natures Menu Raw Feed for a number of years. In our opinion “Raw is Best”, closely followed by grain free kibble for those without the time and sadly in my case, memory to defrost food daily. The domestic dog’s closest relative is the wolf, not the chicken, so food containing wheat and maize should be avoided (most supermarket brands). It is put in for the manufacturers’ benefit, not the dogs (a filler that keeps costs down) and if the packaging mentions “meat and animal derivitives”, well, best put it in the bin, it is not meat as you know it.

This week we took delivery of a further two raw food freezers and moved our old freezers out the back, effectively doubling our stock holding of frozen dog, reptile and fish food. The new freezers are also display types so it is easier to see what we have in stock (and for us to find it!).

Our reasons for investing in new new equipment are mainly because, as more and more people see the benefits of feeding their dog a more natural diet, our sales of our ranges of raw and grain free foods continues to grow at pace and we just need the extra storage to keep up with demand. It also allows us to expand the raw feed ranges even further in the future.

If your dog has issues around food senitivity, either skin or digestive and it is more common than you may think, do pop in for some advice from our trained staff. It is amazing how many itchy skin, recuring ear infections, paw licking and loose stool problems are down to feeding food filled with wheat and maize. Just hink how much you can save in vets bill for repeated visits and how much more comfortable you dog will be.

We also have some FREE Natures Menu Raw Feed freezer bags for the next few customers that purchase from our new Natures Menu Raw Feed freeezers.

The Angell Pets Team

April 2021 Offers

Last chance for Aprils offers. The dog treats in particular are proving very popular this month.

Cheesy Sticks

Good Boy Cheesy Chicken Sticks 80g ONLY £1.49 RRP £2.99

Training Treat Duck
Training Treat Venison

Hollings Training Treats Duck 75g ONLY £1.99 RRP £3.19

Hollings Training Treats Venison 75g ONLY £1.99 RRP £3.19

Burns Original Chicken

Burns Adult & Senior Dog Chicken & Brown Rice 2kg ONLY £6.99 RRP £10.39

Tetra Pond Stick

Tetra Pond Sticks 100g ONLY £2.89 RRP £4.15

Dreamies Cheese
Dreamies Chicken
Dreamies Salmon

Dreamies Chicken 60g ONLY £1 RRP £1.56

Dreamies Cheese 60g ONLY £1 RRP £1.56

Dreamies Salmon 60g ONLY £1 RRP £1.56

Pet Head 2 in 1

Pet Head Quick Fix 2 in 1 Shampoo 300ml ONLY £8.49 RRP £10.99

Mikki Nail Clipper

Mikki Nail Clipper Small ONLY £8.99 RRP £11.99

Buffalo Steaks

Buffalo Natural Dog Treats Steaks 200g ONLY £2.75 RRP £4.99

Buffalo Tails

Buffalo Natural Dog Treats Tails 200g ONLY £2.75 RRP £3.99

Peanut Butter Paw
Gravy Bones

Pointer Gravy Bones 1.5kg ONLY £3.49 RRP £5.69

Pointer Wheat Free Peanut Butter Paws 1.25kg ONLY £3.49 RRP £5.69

Lilys Kitchen Casserole

Lilys Kitchen Adult Dog Chicken & Turkey Casserole 400g ONLY £1.99 RRP £2.69

Burgess Cat Scottish Salmon
Burgess Cat Chicken & Duck

Burgess Cat Adult Scottish Salmon 1.5kg ONLY £3.99 RRP £5.99

Burgess Cat Adult Chicken & Duck 1.5kg ONLY £3.99 RRP £5.99

Purine One Chicken

Purina One Adult Cat Chicken 3kg ONLY £10.99 RRP £15.49

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

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

New APL Superfood for Dogs

Our APL ranges of pet foods are very popular. From the entry level, hypoallergenic Super Premium range, to the higher meat content natural diet, Grain Free range. Many customers have moved onto these foods from poorer quality supermarket brands and noticed a marked difference in their pets appetite, digestion and coat. More have moved from over priced, supposedly premium brands and found the same thing, as well as more money in their pockets. No food will suit every single animal but the feedback from the vast majority of customers making the move has been very positive. APL Superfood is a fine addition to these existing ranges.

We are now launching a new range of foods under our APL brand. Our new APL Superfood range. This food is even higher meat content again than our existing Grain Free range and will suit customers feeding the highest end brands such as Canagan and Orijen but at a much better price point.

APL superfood

Orijen Original, an 85% meat, high quality ingredient food retails in our store for £71.99 for the largest 11.4kg bag. Canagan, a British sourced and manufactured 60% meat food (Orijen is Canadian), retails in our store for £67.99 for the largest 12kg bag.

APL Superfood, a British manufactured, high quaility ingredient food will retail in our store for £59.99 for a 12kg bags. The 2kg bags are only £1.00 and £2.50 more than the existing APL Grain Free range.

The APL Superfood Adult Dog 65 Duck is already in stock and the APL Superfood 65 Salmon should be in tomorrow for those keen to give it a try and save some money against the more expensive (although equally as good) Canagan or Orijen. All varietties of the APL Superfood are already available online in our webstore.

Of course you may be using some other brand of grain free kibble but want to try a different brand to see how it compares, both in quality, condition, digestibility and price. If you have any questions please do contact us and we will be glad to help.

Remember local delivery on all our products including the new APL superfood is FREE during the current crisis (subject to minimum order of £5. Delivery further afield for the APL Superfood large bags will be £7 per order.

Gloucester Pet Shop Webstore Is Changing

Our popular webstore for our Gloucester Pet Shop is changing. We have used the same platform for a number of years and support for this platform is ceasing in the new year (a bit like Windows 7 support and security updates also ceasing next year).

We had a number of options available to us. Our current supplier offered us an update to a more modern platform. Unfortunately they wanted to charge us nearly £10,000 for the privilege so they have been told where to go. We have now found a new supplier with a cloud based platform. Over the last few weeks Billie and I have been busy putting all the stock onto the new EPos system (till) and this integrates with the new website. The basic form of the website is now ready to launch (we can add the fancy pictures and banners at our leisure). Unfortuantely we have to get our domain released by the old supplier so we can repoint it to our new site and this involves a bit of email to and fro so will take a day or two. Whilst this happens the site will suddenly stop working until we have completed the redirect.

During this period if anyone has an order they wish to place, please call us at our Gloucester pet shop on 01452 501882 so we can use the good old telephone ordering system. We will post when the new site is up and running. This site is not affected by these changes and will continue to work.

As part of the change over our old loyalty scheme is no more. Point’s collection and voucher issue was dealt with by the old system and this suddenly stopped working some weeks ago. Any customers with valid vouchers please bring the paper voucher with you to redeem by the end of this month. After that we will no longer have access to the old system at all and can no longer accept the old vouchers..

We are considering how to do a new loyalty scheme on the new system but it will look completely different and we will launch that once we have got over any bugs in our new EPos and webstore and got all the stock loaded into the databases (nearly there!).

Of course, throughout all this change our Gloucester Pet Shop has remained open in Hucclecote, serving the surrounding areas of Brockworth, Churchdown, Abbeymead, Abbeydale, Matson, Coney Hill, Barnwood and Upton. We are also easily accessible from further afield like Cheltenham and Stroud. We have a large FREE carpark and we are conveniently located on a major bus route out of town so please do pop in if you haven’t already.

gloucester pet shop

Angell Pets 5 star rated Gloucester Pet Shop celebrates 10 years serving the local community nex month, so watch out for some celbratory offers coming soon.

10% Off All Dog Beds

Billie and I will be going to the September Trade Show next week and spending some money on new stock. We need space for that stock so we have 10% off all our dog beds for the rest of September.

dog beds

Prices are whilst stocks last and our dog beds can be purchased in store, on line in our webstore or over the telephone for delivery or collection in store (if you wish to reserve a bargain until you can make it into store).

plastic dog bed

The Angell Pets Team

Gloucester Reptile Shop 10% Discount On Vivariums

In celebration of the 10th anniversary of our Gloucester reptile shop we have 10% off all Exo Terra and Viv Exotic vivariums for the rest of this week (until Saturday 13th July 2019).

Gloucester reptile shop

Exo Terra glass terraiums make excellent enclosures for some of the higher humidity species we stock in our Gloucester reptile shop. Species such as crested geckos, frogs and other amphibians, chamleons and water dragons.

Gloucester pet shop

Viv Exotic are an ever expanding brand and make wooden, glass fronted vivariums with excellent ventilation, for anything from a Kotschys gecko, leopard gecko and other smaller reptiles, up to larger snakes and monitor lizards.

gloucester retille shop

We stock both ranges of vivariums in our Gloucester reptile shop as well as all the ancillary equipment, the reptiles themselves and a good range of live, dried and frozen foods.

We also sell and can give expert advice on complete packages for all the reptiles and amphibians we have in stock and have access to even more by pre-order. Do pop in and see us in our Gloucester reptile shop. Out of town, with easy access by car or bus and with ample FREE parking in our parades large private carpark

The Angell Pets Team

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