I used to work at an animal care facility and I've culled rodents by freezing them (home) and by CO2 (work)...and by swiftly popping them against a hard surface (ie, table). And I will say without a doubt popping them over a table is much more humane, perhaps not as accepted but it is more humane; it is instant death.

My experience with CO2 was that this is a terrible and inhumane way to kill rodents; they visibly suffocate. Funny thing was the CO2 system was installed to be a humane alternative...we only ended up using it for very large rats or times when we were calling 100 animals at a time. I will say you once you work with CO2 enough you can kill pretty quick.

Just freezing them is a little inhumane, and lazy. It takes little extra time to pre-kill your rodents before freezing. Sometimes you can ruin a batch by freezing live, because for a period they still radiant body heat, which if packed in a zip lock bag too tightly can cause them to start rotting pretty quickly and you'll end up with a solid bag of frozen mice that smell to hell when thawed out.

Best method, pre-kill by popping them or CO2 (in some cases) and then freeze them.

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