Essentially your directions for dry ice are correct and I am sure helpful. There are two discrepancies that I wanted to correct for information's sake. CO2 suffocates the rabbit- the rabbit doesn't go to sleep. It suffocates to death, which means care must be taken to ensure it is calm when it goes into the CO2 chamber. An upset or frightened rabbit will suffer an inhumane death with CO2 as much as with incorrect cervical dislocation. Place the dry ice into the ice chest or trash can first and let it build up to a cloud- when you put a calm rabbit inside it will immediately succomb to the gas and it appears to be relatively painless and quick. The smaller the rabbit (less than two pounds) or the larger the rabbit (over 8 pounds) the more time needed. While I use gas directly from a tank and not dry ice I find it takes about one minute for the rabbit to succomb to the gas. If it takes 20 minutes something is not being done correctly and it will be 20 minutes of slow suffocation. The key to using CO2 humanely is a calm rabbit andallowing the gas to build up before the rabbit is placed in the container.
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Marcia Pimentel

Tango River Reptiles

GiantFeeders

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