Bad Guy Beware: Reptile Doc/ Docssnakes/ Dr. Derryl G. Walker

[cobstein]

I am putting this out here so nobody else has to deal with what I had to. I found a post by reptiledoc on cornsnakes.com advertising an Opal Bloodred and Ultramel Bloodred het lavender pair. wanting to get in on this project I contacted him. He was very easy to work with and even gave me a bit of a discount. They arrived in the morning in a tiny box. I couldn't believe how small it was. I use boxes that size when shipping hatchlings! Also they weren't even in separate bags, it was one bag taped in the center to separate them. When i finally got them free I saw that they weren't even close to being big enough to be breeders. The male was 180g and the female 165g. I texted him about them and he gave me the BS response of "they just came out of brumation do you expect them to be fat." Finally the Ultramel Bloodred wasn't the same snake that he sent me the picture of. I have confirmed that she is an ultramel bloodred by the diffused belly pattern and the dark eye, I just don't know if the hets are what they are supposed to be. I asked about the ages and he said that the Opal bloodred was a 2007 and the ultramel bloodred was a 2010. I got them tested by the vet and they were cleared but that meant that they were severely malnourished. I can only speculate that they would refuse to eat because he said that he fed them large adult mice. I don't think that they would eat a large mouse if they tried. I am not going to breed them this year or brumate them over the winter.

I will be posting pics of the snakes and my conversations with him over email and text later.

 

[Lucille]

http://www.faunaclassifieds.com/forums/showthread.php?t=286400&highlight=walker+darryl

 

[cobstein]

thanks for the link. Ive read that one and the other thread on him. I'm putting this out here to see if anyone else has had this problem with his adults

 

[cobstein]

here are some of the conversations I had with him. I will be posting more conversations and pics of them on the scales.

 

[cobstein]

Here are more conversations I had with him about the size. Also he claimed in the email he fed the females every 7 days and the males every 10 days. I doubt this because of their size.

 

[cobstein]

Finally here are the pics of the snakes plus the pic that he sent me of the 2 breeding. As you can see it is not the same snake. The female has gained a little bit of weight, which is a good sign.

 

[leftycrane]

Doesnt surprise me at all coming from him. That thread Lucille posted is a good read about his character. Youre lucky theyre alive...

 

[brodie691]

Cobstein, I sure wish I would've seen this thread, and the others pertaining to "Doc" Walker before I sent him $575 yesterday (04/04/16)...

I just filed my paypal dispute against him about 10 minutes ago.

It stated: DocSSnakes,
These animals are grossly misrepresented, and I want to send them back, and a full refund. I should've done my homework on you, and sadly enough I did not. You advertised them as being proven breeders just out of brumation, and 4-6 years of age. If these females were to be bred at this size it could most certainly kill them. They are horribly underweight and malnourished! The female opal bloodred has a major kink in her spine! The female Upper keys hypo weighs 165.5 grams The female opal bloodred 177.0 grams The female Goldust stripe weighs 174.3 grams The female Goldust weighs 169.6 grams All total in the 1 bag you shipped them in, in a 7X7X7 box (which is used to ship hatchlings or yearlings), not 4-6 year old adult "breeder" females they weighed (with their poop all over each other), a whopping 728.8 grams! I have pictures of all of them being weighed together and separately. I've kept everything, shipping box, FedEx label, bag, everything. This is going to FAUNAS BOI, as I should've checked there first, and maybe I'd have seen the other threads started about you being a bad guy, and saved myself this hassle.


And it is all in reference to his sales thread on cornsnakes.com here:

http://www.cornsnakes.com/forums/showthread.php?t=132969

I have pictures but can't resize them from my iPad or I'd post them now.
I can do so in the morning at work though.

Matt Watkins

 

[snakesareawesome]

Just curious, what sort of Doctor is he, like an MD?

 

[Shiari]

His doctorate is apparently in pharmacology/toxicology.

I am providing a screencap showing that he feels these females are of appropriate breeding size. This means he is comfortable breeding females that are well under 200 grams, which IMO is extremely unethical. They may be capable of it, but so is a 5 month old kitten. The health of our breeder females should be far more important than the number of eggs we can get out of them.

He's also clearly lying in the screenshot by saying he's had no issues in 6 years. There are threads here from 2011 and 2014 at least.

 

[nickolasanastasiou]

That may offer a simple explanation of how so many problems have been reported. Yolk quality. It is not just about the strain on the female's body (although that concern is more than obvious to most of us). It is also about the quality and quantity of micronutrients and macronutrient building blocks (usually derived from tissue reserves in a larger animal) that become donated in the formation of the egg. This is an afterthought (or non-thought) for many breeders of many egg-laying species, so that might be the case with the issues described in failing offspring. Not saying it is the case. Just saying it offers a highly plausible explanation in this context for at least a portion of the failures.