why you shouldn't support Brian Barczyk/BHB reptiles/SnakebytesTV - a master post
i’m writing this because brian’s youtube channel is extremely popular, and a lot of people watch his content without knowing that he isn't a good resource for reptile care information.
possible warning for animal abuse/neglect, and animals being kept in unsanitary conditions
many people have talked about this before, but i wanted to make one big, concise post explaining it so people don't have to dig through tags on multiple people’s blogs. i’d like to thank @i-m-snek’s bhb critical tag for making it much easier to compile all this. If anyone has anything else you think i should add feel free to dm me.
i’d also like to say that it’s understandable if you just didn’t know! you are not in the wrong at all for unknowingly consuming his content. i used to watch him too. I’m not trying to attack people who are fans of snakebytes, only to inform you.
he keeps his reptiles in poor conditions, is neglectful to them, and frequently sells people low quality and sometimes unhealthy animals
BHB is essentially a reptile puppy mill.
he keeps his reptiles in tiny tubs with little to no enrichment, sometimes not even hides or substrate.
ball pythons despite popular belief, aren't actually pet rocks that do nothing but sleep curled up in termite mounds. in the wild their diet frequently includes birds, and even just googling “wild ball python” brings up several pictures of them being active and climbing trees. here is a more informative post about why breeding racks are bad husbandry, and sometimes even abuse.
He also encourages this as proper care for these animals, and many young and inexperienced keepers listen to him. on top of this he lies constantly, he’s claimed in videos that he’s downsizing his collection and focusing on proper care, yet in his most recent video you can see snakes being kept in the exact same conditions they've been kept in for years.
multiple people have purchased animals from BHB, and have received them with RI’s, mites, etc, and the leopard geckos he sells are very low quality (heres a post going into more detail).
in addition to all that, he keeps alligators in tiny plastic pools with no dry land,
he keeps large snakes in small, barren tubs, sometimes so tiny that they can't even fully stretch out,
according to him “they just don't do that”. here’s multiple photos of wild reticulated & burmese pythons stretched out. also, here are examples of zoo enclosures for large pythons.
His green tree python tubs are nothing but an empty box with one piece of pvc pipe,
many of his videos show him calling snakes aggressive/mean simply for being scared, or because he doesn't know enough about them to understand their displays of fear. this video is an example of this. just look at the way brian and the people who work for him handle snakes. you’d strike too if you were kept in a tiny box and only ever taken out to be antagonized and man handled.
his reticulated python lucy has horrible nose rub. according to brian she got hurt when she escaped, but in that video there is no visible mark on her head, indicating it happened sometime after. She appears in several videos in this condition, without it being acknowledged or brian talking about what he’s doing to prevent it from getting worse/happening again.
he cohabitates his female leopard geckos together in tiny tubs. many of them aren't even big enough that you could comfortably keep one gecko in them, let alone 4-6,
his leopard geckos’ tubs are almost always filthy,
(here’s some disgusting racks he left for sale outside an expo)
and in this video he pokes at and taunts a terrified baby leopard gecko.
mr smooth
“mr smooth” was a scaleless ball python produced by brian. there were two hatched, and he claimed to have “sold’ the female. there have never been any updates on who he sold it to or what happened to it, and in this video he all but confirms it’s dead.
i’m unaware of what ultimately happened to mr smooth, but i do know that it was/is very unhealthy. here’s a picture of mr smooth at around a year old. notice the cracked, dry skin.
it's clear he doesn't care about his reptiles’ well being, only about making money
he even goes as far as to laud breeding reptiles as a good way to get rich quick, as if you aren't dealing with living animals who depend on you, and actively endangering them by encouraging inexperienced people to buy and breed a bunch of snakes that they know next to nothing about. it is impossible to get rich breeding reptiles without compromising their quality of life.
brian owned, at his peak, fifty thousand snakes (according to him. i can't vouch for his statement’s truth)
even his wife knows that he’s irresponsible and shouldn't own this many reptiles. frankly this entire video says a lot about brian as a person, and his perspective on reptile breeding. “make sure you call back week by week to find out how many have died, because he’s going to forget about them”
he claims he wants to improve people’s view of snakes, and show them that they aren't inherently villainous or evil as they are often made out to be. this is hard to believe when half his thumbnails look like this. all he’s doing is contributing to the problem and harming the reptile hobby.
he refuses to listen to criticism, and calls anyone who tries to help him get better a “hater”
and despite all this he calls himself “the face of the reptile trade”
