Firstly, I have my health issues, but I have no immune system problems. And, IF it proves to be true they had this virus, I am even more disgusted with them than the the one time I purchased rodents from them. Things happen when breeding animals, I'm sure most here seem to agree. But a problem like this, if known, and distributed, its beyond reprehensible. If this is true, and they were aware it was even possible, personally, I hope they are prosecuted to the full extent of any law available to hang them.
O.k., Here's my bit to add to the story. I'm going to do my best to avoid anonymous quotes. From time to time, I buy rodents from a local rodent breeder, Mark, @ Tampa Bay Rodents, (I don't know his last name off hand).
http://tampabayrodents.com/
I go to his place, and pick the rodents up live, or he euthanizes them while I'm there. A little over a month ago when I was there, he said he had been working on selling off his colony, equipment & possibly his business name (i can't remember positively), to pursue other business interests, but in the meantime, while he was still maintaining his colony, he had been wiped clean consistently, because he had picked up a number of large accounts, due to the fact that RP had called most of their large accounts and told them they wouldn't be able to provide them product for awhile. We speculated salmonella, due to the mice direct problems, and he seemed to know a bit about that, because supposedly they use the irradiation plant in Mulberry, Florida, which isn't far from his place. If you look at his site, it was updated on 6/18, which I believe was when he added the disclaimer about not accepting new clients, which was 6 weeks ago.
The reason I bring this up, is because it seems RP is being choosey about who to deny rodents to. My first thought then was either 1. Larger clients because they had a limited supply due to whatever the problem was. 2. Larger clients because they were more worried about sending worse product than normal to their big money guys. 3. Larger clients because maybe they were shutting down, and were using smaller clients to deplete whatever they had left.
But after reading all this today, another thought occurred to me. I don't know what type of facilities the Kentucky Reptile Zoo has, but maybe they avoided sending product to anyplace they thought may have the ability to run tests, or may have the rodents tested by any outside lab. I obviously don't know all of the places rodentpro cut off, so this is all more speculation. But it really reeks of them playing CYA, and screw anyone we can to get some money out of this.
And if possible, I'd appreciate it if he didn't get bombarded with phone calls. I'd rather not be responsible for him having to shut his phone off tomorrow, lol. I doubt he knows much more about RP itself, nor would he want to name his clients to random callers.
He is obviously a competing business, albeit smaller, but he had always been straight with me in the past. Just an FYI.
