Pam from http://www.forkedtreeranch.com/ provided prompt shipment and good quality blue bottle pupa. Highly recommended for anyone buying in bulk.
Forked Tree Ranch
- Thread starter yen_saw
- Start date
Help Support Mantidforum:
Yes, she is good to go, I've ordered twice in as many weeks and she is very helpful.
OGIGA
Dead Leaf Mantis
They supply maggots to GrubCo so that kind of speaks for itself in terms of quality. I ordered from them twice using 2-day FedEx shipping.
The first time was in the spring. The 2-day shipping actually took 5 days (stuck over the weekend). The maggots were still okay when I received them and none have pupated. Most of them survived and became flies over the course of about 5 weeks.
The second time I ordered was pretty bad. Pam went on vacation the day after I ordered and it was nearly impossible to reach anybody working there so my poor mantises were starving over here. I wasn't going to have them ship anything on Wednesday again because of the weekend problem last time. After being stalled for like 2 weeks, I finally got them to ship on a Monday. It was early summer and I used FedEx 2-day shipping like last time. It came one day late, but the maggots looked okay. I shipped 1/3 of my stock to other forum members to share so I wouldn't waste the ones I can't finish.
To my dismay, no more than 10% of the maggots made it to become flies and the rest died a stinky death. The ones I shared with others had 0% survival. I contacted Pam to see if she'll provide a replacement or some compensation but she said "WE DO NOT GUARANTEE THE LIFE OF THE MAGGOTS IF THEY ARE NOT SHIPPED OVERNIGHT" (in all-caps). I thought that 2-day shipping had some sort of guarantee because she earlier told me "USPS would be cheaper, BUT we do not guarantee live delivery, since delivery is not guaranteed." So here I am with hungry mantises, a few forum members who also have hungry mantises, just a few flies, a load of stinky dead maggots, and around $50 short.
Make whatever opinion you like out of this, but my opinion isn't very positive. I just have a couple pieces of advice.
1. Don't buy from them in the summer unless you're rich and can pay for overnight shipping.
2. If you do plan on getting overnight shipping, make sure you demand live-guarantee with that. I'm sure you don't want to end up like me.
3. Might as well choose USPS shipping instead of 2-day FedEx. You'll save money and won't be short of any benefits. Neither gets you a "live" guarantee.
The first time was in the spring. The 2-day shipping actually took 5 days (stuck over the weekend). The maggots were still okay when I received them and none have pupated. Most of them survived and became flies over the course of about 5 weeks.
The second time I ordered was pretty bad. Pam went on vacation the day after I ordered and it was nearly impossible to reach anybody working there so my poor mantises were starving over here. I wasn't going to have them ship anything on Wednesday again because of the weekend problem last time. After being stalled for like 2 weeks, I finally got them to ship on a Monday. It was early summer and I used FedEx 2-day shipping like last time. It came one day late, but the maggots looked okay. I shipped 1/3 of my stock to other forum members to share so I wouldn't waste the ones I can't finish.
To my dismay, no more than 10% of the maggots made it to become flies and the rest died a stinky death. The ones I shared with others had 0% survival. I contacted Pam to see if she'll provide a replacement or some compensation but she said "WE DO NOT GUARANTEE THE LIFE OF THE MAGGOTS IF THEY ARE NOT SHIPPED OVERNIGHT" (in all-caps). I thought that 2-day shipping had some sort of guarantee because she earlier told me "USPS would be cheaper, BUT we do not guarantee live delivery, since delivery is not guaranteed." So here I am with hungry mantises, a few forum members who also have hungry mantises, just a few flies, a load of stinky dead maggots, and around $50 short.
Make whatever opinion you like out of this, but my opinion isn't very positive. I just have a couple pieces of advice.
1. Don't buy from them in the summer unless you're rich and can pay for overnight shipping.
2. If you do plan on getting overnight shipping, make sure you demand live-guarantee with that. I'm sure you don't want to end up like me.
3. Might as well choose USPS shipping instead of 2-day FedEx. You'll save money and won't be short of any benefits. Neither gets you a "live" guarantee.
I concure, I hate to, as I buy from them and it is with great dismay, but they do not like shipping to people in hobbies, I talk to her all the time, and have had little suscess with the pupae, so I purchase the spikes and pupae them myself. I do not pay for express because it is a two day state here so I would not get them in one either way. I spend a few hundred a month every month with them and have to be careful with what I get, I do get a few cups of pupae, but a lot of times it smells bad and is clumped together, so mostly I just get the spikes now. And no, most of the time there is no guarantee.
Colorcham427
Well-known member
Hey Rebecca,
When you get the pupae, is there a high hatch rate? I don't mind the smell nor the sticky-ness feeling or whatever they have lol.. just want to make sure they all or most of them hatch! lol...
also, how do you pupate the larvae? easy right? just let them dry out?
does this species pupate at a smaller stage of larvae if given no food?
Have Rick move your post, as this belongs in the food and feeding arena and we can talk there.
TheOtherSpecies
Well-known member
Love Forked Tree Ranch Pupae! Great people to deal with!
Small Pet Feeders
Well-known member
I hate to ever speak badly of another company, as its usually in my opinion that it is very unprofessional to do so, but honestly after reading OGIGA's reply to this, I had to say something.
I had a very similar experience with Forked Tree that could have been easily solved by Pam, but she chose to be hardlined and in my opinion completely unsympathetic to an issue that was very much her responsibility to fix, being a live insect vendor myself I know this sometimes unfortunate fact.
I used to stock SmallPetFeeders.com with the blue bottle fly pupae from Forked Tree, ordering about 5-6 different times before discontinuing business with the company. Several of the shipments arrived with 5-10% of the flies hatched, and I was beginning to get feedback from clients that their pupae were always hatched by the time it reached them, despite being less than a week old. In the final shipment, I called the order in, to which Pam said "2 day shipping is ok?", and of course it was in my opinion because if it were an issue I'd think she wouldn't even recommend it. We completed the order, and I got a call from fedex 2-3 days later asking where I resided because the package was shipped to my old address. I quickly jumped up and drove to the fedex driver to intercept the package ASAP, without blaming anyone for the mishap, just wanted to do damage control. Well I get the bag and its buzzing like crazy, and all the pupae are hatched.
Well I call Pam and let her know the situation, to which she tried telling me live flies were still good, even though it's a virtual impossibilty for me to package and sell live flies. With it being a hot time of year, I was very understanding of such a situation as I've found myself on the losing end of a bug dead gone dead several times, but I still needed Pupae to get out to my customers, and I certainly wasn't going to sell something that was near death since it had already hatched, so the whole batch was useless to me, a fact Pam knew very well. So I offered to pay the shipping costs of the replacements, so Forked Tree didn't need to spend any additional money rectifying the issue, I understood it was hot, and the 2 Day shipping just didn't work this round. Her response shocked me:
"Dave, you are always trying to pinch pennies and cheap out on shipping costs. This is your fault, and we are not responsible for any of the shipment since you chose not to ship your package overnight."
I was floored and utterly flabbergasted that a professional would speak to a client like that. I mean, my jaw literally dropped and stayed there for a good 2-3 seconds before I confirmed that I did actually just hear that. I responded as professional as I possibly could have, letting her know that I am not a stranger to this business, and whether she chose to accept responsibility or not, it is the seller's responsibility to ensure that the proper shipping method to get the product to the client safely is chosen and ordered. It's like if you ordered a mirror, and there was such a thing as "Careful shipping" and "Not Careful Shipping", and the client chose the cheaper of the two, only to receive a broken mirror which they did not order. It is the vendor's responsibility to make sure that product arrives in the condition in which it was ordered.
She chose to disagree with me, and stick to her guns, so I politely ended the conversation and called my credit card company to which I promptly filed a chargeback on the whole $150 transaction. Around a month later, I get a letter telling me the money has been refunded after the power that be found in favor of my company. This is the usual case of any chargeback, as the customer always seems to win disputes over vendors, but the fact that I was very willing to help pay the shipping costs to make this right, even when I really didn't have to, only to be berated like an un-favored stepchild by a company I was selling products for. It was absolutely appalling, and Small Pet Feeders hasn't sold Blue Bottle Flies since that point to this date.
I'm sure many people have had favorable experiences with them, but don't ever expect them to come to your aid when something goes wrong. I encourage everyone to not allow such companies plow over you, and if they are unwilling to talk to you about a mutual reconciliation to a problem with a shipment, then take the only other action available to you.
Personally, even when something goes wrong with a shipment that I told that client over and over that it was a risky move, I always make an effort to help repair the issue, and could never dream of demeaning a customer the way Pam from Forked Tree did me. Today, if I don't think a package will survive the journey, I won't ship it and will approach the client with the issue, explaining I can't ship it or it will die for certain.
Hope this helps. Also if anyone knows any other Blue Bottle Fly farms and suppliers, please let me know so www.SmallPetFeeders.com can start carrying them again.
-Dave Cross, LMT
Small Pet Feeders, LLC
