Anyone who sells or buys animals will most likely run into scammers, false adds etc.
Most of the time if you know what scam adds look like you can avoid them. Most scam adds will have stock-photo looking pictures, poor quality pictures or little or no information on the animal. Often if you ask for updated pictures, they will send you the same photo as on the add.
Also, be VERY careful of sellers asking for full-price deposits, just don't do it, don't even put down a deposit on an animal unless you have gone out to their farm and know they are trustworthy or have requested updated pictures and convinced yourself that they are honest.
We have only fallen for one scam while raising livestock, it happened during the "covid" plan-demic, we were looking for laying hens and found a craigslist add with VERY nice pictures. When we got there the chickens were housed in a dark barn (no beautiful green grass like the pictures showed)and had very few feathers ("they fight a lot" is what we were told) the day we brought them home they started laying eggs with paper thin shells, one "hen" was also a rooster.
We ended up returning them and have ever since been very suspicious of adds with too good to be true pictures.
If you are the seller, be careful of buyers who contact you with a question like this:
" Is Nigerian doe $250 still available?" and if you respond they often ask if they can send a " six-digit verification code", no real buyer talks like that, nor has the ability to send verification codes. Leave them alone, they are just trying to get something from you.
Also, be careful of people asking to "borrow" your animal, if you do borrow out an animal only use your least desirable animals, one you were intending to sell anyways, and charge full price, if the person really does bring your animal back you can refund part of the price.
Cover yourself. Don't let someone "borrow" an animal when they really mean to take it for a much lower price and not return it.
When you are looking to buy an animal remember that just because the add has poor quality pictures, or super high-quality pictures, doesn't make it a good or bad product, the seller may just not have a good camara, or they may have a very good one. It's always a good idea to go out to the farm and see the seller and animals yourself before you commit to anything.
The best way to find out if the seller is honest is to ask a lot of questions, some example questions you could ask would be:
why are you selling this animal?
how old is it?
what are you feeding them? (The mother and the babies if you're buying a younger animal)
how are they being housed?
are you the breeder or are you re-homing this animal?
how long have you been raising this particular type of animal? (Just because someone has only been raising a particular kind of animal for a short amount of time doesn't mean they are bad breeders; everyone has to start somewhere!)
is this animal friendly? (Be cautious of buying a scared animal, unless you have the desire, and the time to tame it, you are going to have to deal with its un-friendly behavior).
ask to see their parents.
ask to see their living quarters.
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