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International shipping?

Snake Dave

Snake Dave

Schrödinger's cat
Hey everyone

I'm hoping to get a striped butter Corn, but they're virtually unavailable in the UK. Is shipping from the US to the UK permitted for live animals? If so what are the general rules and how much would it cost to ship 1 hatchling. I was looking at the South Mountain Reptiles website, to see what Don Soderberg had to offer. He does have striped butters, and they're $350, which works out to be £177. Now that's not that bad, considering I paid nearly half that for my amel (from a local breeder). Then when I found out the prices I was pretty annoyed (I didn't look for prices, just husbandry info).

By comparing the prices on his site, I'm guessing that a striped butter is a relatively high-end morph.

Any information regarding this would be great

Thanks

David

P.S. Here's a picture I found on cornsnakes.net (Don Soderberg's)
 

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Very, very few people ship internationally. It's expensive and complicated.

Your best bet is to find someone who imports from the US into your country and speak to them about acquiring what you want. It's highly doubtful someone is going to go to all the trouble of export/import over a single snake.
 
Very expensive - not worth it for one snake. You can read my international shipping info for more details here:
http://cornutopia.com/Corn Utopia o...s cornsnakes.htm#International Export (ONLY)

If you can go to the Hamm show in Germany, you can probably get Glades Herp to transport it for you for a couple of hundred $$ or so. Or go in with somebody else on a shipment from the US. It will cost approx. the same to export 1 snake or 100 snakes, so more is better.
 
Thanks for your help, yeah that makes sense. I suppose I could speak to a guy that lives about 10 miles away. He owns a fairly big shop and breeds quite a lot of his stock, but he also imports some. I could ask him when he's next going to import from the US, and maybe go from there.

If not, it's no big deal, I just loved the look of the striped butter. I had a look for some the UK but as I said I couldn't find anything!

All the best

David
 
I imported a bunch of corns earlier in the year from the US. I preferred to get them straight into the UK rather than from the breeder, to a shipping agent, to Hamm, just to minimise the journey time (and stress) on the animals. It is not *that* expensive to organise the shipping and so on, but I did find it quite stressful on me! You should really budget about $1000 for shipping and expenses in the US, plus a UK agent fee, then of course import duty and VAT.

It's not really the time of year for it, but I have seen plenty of butter stripes advertised in the UK, and I've seen a few people talk about breeding them for next season, so you may well find yourself a UK bred snake next year without having to go thousands of miles for it :)
 
Yes, if you are able to find it within the UK, it will probably end up being cheaper and less stressed than one coming all the way from over here. If you can't find one there, it is likely you could find a breeder with some in Germany or the Netherlands - still much closer to you than the U.S.
 
If you still want to consider importing, Coast to Coast in Darlington import large Corn shipments from Rich Z (who owns this board and runs Serpenco) and in the past have taken specific orders and brought in individual Corns on request.

A few things to note from my experience a couple of years ago:

- The cost of the Corn in dollars will be the cost of the Corn in pounds sterling, due to the high price of importing. i.e. if Rich Z is advertising a Corn on the Serpenco site for $500, then expect it to cost you £500 from Coast To Coast. The favourable exchange rate is just gobbled up by all of the costs associated with exporting/importing admin.

- Coast To Coast don't ship around the UK; once the Corn is settled in with them, you have to go and collect it.

- You have to pay in advance.

- You don't get to see the snake "in person" before it arrives; you buy on trust.

Advantages:
- You don't have to deal with all the legal, transportation, imnport/export, licencing, customs hassle.

- Coast To Coast won't let the snake out of the shop unless they are happy that it is healthy and has eaten at least once.

- Rich Z Corns are amazing! I made the long trek from the South Coast to collect a pair of Golddusts and a Stripey Butter Motley and they're growing on beautifully (mind you, the Butter is turning out to be a total nutjob headbanger, but I don't think Rich can be held responsible for character traits!).
 
Thank you both for the great advice, it may be possible for me to go to Hamm in March with my Dad, which would be awesome. I'm looking at flights and routes etc.

If anyone from the UK has been to Hamm before, are there any legal issues I should be aware of if I choose to buy a snake there? Because we will be flying there and back, so how would I go about bringing it back into the UK?

Once again thank you!

David
 
Unfortunately, carrying a snake by plane - even from another EU country - will incur all of the import/export hassle/costs, of importing from anywhere else in the world.

You might be best advised to make contact with someone who is driving over to Hamm and arrange for them to bring the snake back by road. Strangely, carrying reptiles through a ferry port customs post is a much simpler matter, as long as you remember to get the correct paperwork from the seller (things like a statement of its species, declaration that it isn't CITEs-listed etc).

You could even be able to find someone driving or going by coach from your area, that you can hitch a lift with.

Try a UK-based reptile forum like Livefood - http://www.livefoodshop.co.uk/forum/ . Plenty of folks from there attend Hamm and will be able to advise on the best way to carry reptiles, long distances, paperwork etc.

Beware that recent UK Animal Welfare legislation has placed some stringent requirements around the transportation of all animals long distances by road - reptiles included. Again, someone with experience of travelling from Hamm with reptiles should be able to advise whether they ran into any issues with this aspect.

An alternative would be if you have a local reptile dealer, you might be able to strike a deal with them to bring you back the Corn of your choice, without you going to Hamm at all (although that's not a much fun!).
 
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