Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I raise my own rats and feed off like 50 a week to my snakes. Once they get past sm/med size they are too big for my snakes. I still have too many and end up bringing them to the local pet shops to sell pretty cheap. I would prefer looking into freezing them. I don't know how to kill them because my snakes currently eat live. Aside from wacking them, I am loking for a way to kill them so I can freeze them. Can anyone give me details on the CO2 method?
Any help is appreciated.
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Steve

Air tight chamber with a CO2 tank attached via a hose line of some sort, open the valve, and dead rats.
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http://www.GilbertBoas.com/

If you're pretty good mechanically, you can make a "COS chamber like the previous poster mention. I know a guy that modified a broken paintball gun to do the trick. By fat the easiest way is to take a bucket, create a false bottom, add a little water and a nice sized chunk of dry ice, and cover loosely. CO2 is more dense than air, so it will fill a container...

np

CO2 works, but i cant see how anyone can call it humane. After using the method myself in the past i now wack all the rodents before being frozen. CO2 is not a slow death and the rats dont just fall asleep, seperating the vertabre is a much quicker less painful death.
Just my opinions and observations
Kim

I have decided to try F/T again for feeding my balls,I would rather feed live on a regular basis but as I aquire more snakes I see it will become expensive to keep feeding them this way, and the lady of the house will not let me breed my own rodents in the house due to the fact that she hates rodents , the smell, and we travel so I agree with her on that, so I am going to go looking around in thrifts stores for a small freezer , and start the process of weaning them of live, I currently now have 0.7 normal balls and 0.1 100% het on the way.

You have to add the CO2 slowly until they fall asleep. Done correctly they will just fall asleep before they stop breathing. I think cervical dislocation works fine but if you have to do a lot every week it gets a little time consuming and is not very easy on large rats.
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John Vandegrift

the wrong way.
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Jay A. Martin
Jay Martin Reptiles

I have been breeding rats for years and have seen many facities use CO2 methods the right way, and in my opinion it is a much longer drawn out death. We freeze around 500 small rats a week and i pre kill all of them by hand then pack them. When rats are killed in a CO2 they sweat and smell, i think a pre killed rat with the "whack" method is much cleaner. Then again these are all just my opinions and what we do.
Kim

Check out my site, I've got a whole sction on it, including pictures and a DIY step by step.
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www.strictlyballs.ca

My roommate works at my schools small animal lab and the way they usually put down mice and rats is to lay the animal down on its stomach. Press their neck down with a pencil or screwdriver or w/e, with a fair amount of pressure, then really quickly pull the tail, which dislodges the animals spine and kills them instantly.
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0.1 Normal Cornsnake
1.0 Sumatran Short Tail Python
2.2 Ball Pythons (2 normals, 2 pastel)

Yep, thats what I do when I want to prekill mice or small rats, but it is very difficult to do with a large rat. I can't imagine trying to go that route with say an XXL the size they have at rodentpro. I've seen dogs smaller than some of those rats...lol.

I don't want another "thread from hell" just looking for info on how a CO2 chamber works, and whats involved in making one. I never mentioned humane, I could care less about the rats (sorry Kim, but its the truth) other than the fact they must stay healthy in order to be fed to my snakes.
Dougle, I'm not sure if you really added ANY info I was looking for, but if I come across a cheap freezer, I'll let you know.
I liked the info on your site Mykee, thanks for the info. I am pretty good at building things and I will try something similar to what you had there. Now at least I have an idea to work with. Thanks for all the comments gang. I don't post much, but I'm always reading here to keep up. Usually alot of good stuff.

Here's a few pictures of my last project.

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Steve