After seeing so many people and animals get hurt, I feel as if it necessary for me to add my personal experiences with Chaz 'Anthony' Stewart of Avangel Reptiles.
Yes, I (Emily Estrada) was partnered up with him and saw what was going on first hand and got out at the first chance I had.
The very first time I visited his apartment (November 2014) where all of his reptiles are kept I was asked to clean and feed all of his animals. I was disgusted to say the very least.
The ground of all the tubs were covered in a combination of poop, dirt, and shed skin. The waters were either filled with a dirt/slime mixture( His words were 'That's the type of water they would be drinking in nature' ) or they were completely dried out and crusted with whatever that slime stuff was. Some of his geckos were literally skin and bones and when I asked about them he said 'My time is too valuable to waste it on geckos that don't want to eat- I can't force them, its their choice.' He then showed me a tack in the wall wall that was filled with tags and said 'See that? That's the bad part of breeding' The tack was filled with tags of deceased animals probably a good 150 tags hung there. I also noticed that his heat tape was no longer making the tubs warm- but that was the least of my worries.
The second time I went back was in January for the Reptile Super Show-Yes I went back...I was in a contract and I really wanted to get as many geckos placed into better homes as soon as I could.
This time my boyfriend Matthew Lucas came with me. We were first asked to clean out his ball python tubs, all of which were infested with maggots and filled with a caked poop/dirt substrate that was matted to the bottom of the tubs and had to be scraped out with one of those paint scraper things.
After, we were told to sort his dubia colony- here's where it got worse. While sorting the tubs we found numerous leopard gecko skeletons (At least 5 whole skeletons) Chaz says ' I don't want to waste anything and that the circle of life' Mind you he then feeds these dubia back to his geckos!! If you think about it, its pretty much forced cannibalism!
Chaz had us take home 8 "worthless geckos that he would never be able to sell" that were apparently 'refusing food' of these 8, 3 had the worst cases of mbd I had ever seen their jaws weren't even strong enough to bite into soft bodied insects so I fed them slurries. 1 gecko was literally skin and bones with layers and layers of old shed skin on him, he had a very bad eye infection in both eyes ( one eye went blind). The other 4 geckos were very under weight. The sad thing is all of these geckos willingly ate after my first try.
After the Reptile Super Show Chaz left his geckos completely unattended for an entire month. 4 whole weeks! He asked me to tell people that his brother- who lives over an hour away and knows nothing about reptiles was checking on them but he didnt give anyone a key. After he returned he immediately shipped out any reptile that had been ordered. 4 weeks with no food then shipped across the country definitely calls for sick, dying, parasitic reptiles.
*side-note* During the time he was gone he complained to me about customers saying that they were driving him crazy and such.
On ARMION- I do have some good as well as some bad on this. I did a ton of research on armion ( as this is the reason why I partnered up wth chaz in the first place) I talked to multiple Cal Poly professors that are Veterinarians and Biologists/ Animal specialists and all of the ingredients are safe for reptiles.
The bad- I found out on my second visit that armion is simply a vionate/osteoform mixture (which he doesn't state anywhere-Is this even legal??) combined with a bunch of other ingredients. Two of which he doesnt even state at all ( sweet potato and beets)
more bad- He told me he sent his 'concoction' into the fda to have the ingredients tested and such the paperwork he said he "misplaced and was somewhere" now I'm wondering if he ever had them at all. If he did have it these nutrition facts would be completely wrong because he changes the recipe for every batch he says that he goes 'by the look' of it and his weight guestimates are just an estimate of what he puts in.
I had access to all of his social media websites: Facebook, instagram, and gmail. I saw multiple cases where he was being inappropriate towards women and had other women show me proof of their horrible experiences they've had with him. I'm happy to say nothing too excessive happened with me, he did tell me multiple time to break up with my boyfriend but I shrugged it off even though I felt uncomfortable.
One other thing that I can think of right now is that Chaz wrote off every single meal as a 'business expense' He ate out literally every day and even tried to mark off condoms as a 'business expense' how is this appropriate for a business at all?
I'm sure that there are plenty of things that have slipped my mind but I will continue adding as I recall them. I will answer any and all questions as well as add photo evidence as I dig it up. I just don't want to see anymore good people get hurt or have any other animals get neglected or abused by Chaz Stewart.