I was going to post this about two days ago but didn’t get around to it until today. I see that someone has asked the question earlier but I am posting this seperately since it seems to be a good topic all in itself. It seems like a lot of people out there have problems switching their animals from mice to rats. For some reason this has never seemed to phase me one bit and I have very good luck going back and forth with all my animals. I have had problems getting a few animals to switch from live to frozen feeders in the past but never from mice to rats. Call it “dumb luck” if you want to but I think it is just a matter of standard practices that I have always followed around feeding time. I hope that what I present here will help out some of you that may be having problems switching your animals over.
Late in 2004 and early 2005 I sold off all of my original collection which I had built up since 1994. This collection consisted mainly of Green Tree Pythons, different Ball Python morphs (before they had been identified as the morphs they are today. OOPS! Who Knew?) and various other boa and python species (about 70 animals total). Last year I realized that this was a big mistake. I really missed interacting with all of them so I started rebuilding my collection. This time I found that I was still in my arboreal phase but instead of Green Trees, I found myself purchasing the Carpet morphs that I had dreamed about keeping years before (Bredl’s, Tiger Carpets, Jag Carpets, Diamond Crosses, etc, etc).
As I started purchasing more and more animals, I realized that most of the breeders were all basically saying the same thing, “they are eating rats now, don’t switch them back to mice or they probably wont go back to rats for you”. Well, after a while of working with these animals, the subject popped back into my head. The other night I was thawing out frozen feeders. I stopped and thought about what I do and why I seem to have never been plagued with this problem. Well, since I have such a large assortment of animals I have a tendency to also have a large variety of feeders. I currently used everything from Fuzzy Mice all the way up to Jumbo Rats. It takes time to thaw out feeders and when you are under time constraints as I am you try to find the fastest way possible to do some of the mundane repetitive tasks. So on to the real meat of the story.
My thaw out process for my feeders is as follows, I sort out frozen feeders by the size of the feeder, place them into zip lock bags and seal the bags, run water as hot as I can get it out of the faucet into a five gallon bucket, place the bags of feeders into the bucket of water until they have thawed completely, pull out the bags and away we go, feeding frenzy. Well, here’s what I haven’t told you so far. When I put the feeders into their bags, I put all the feeders that go to certain size animals together into a single bag regardless of they are rats of mice so there is usually an assortment of both in aech bag. That means that in actuality, I have been scenting my rats and mice together all along. As the feeders thaw, the odor in the bags from the mice and rats becomes somewhat gaseous and all the feeders become one flavor if you will.
Since I have been doing this, I have also noticed that all of my animal’s activity levels are greatly increased while the feeders are thawing out. Whether it has been Balls, Carpets, Green Tree’s, Macklotts, White Lips, Womas, Ring Pythons, Bloods, Burms, different Red Tail Boas morphs, different Rainbow Boas, Yellow Anacondas or the many different Tree Boas that I have kept, this process of thawing and switching these out has worked time and time again. This has even worked with captive and imports alike. The other thing I didn’t tell you is that I take the thaw bucket into the reptile areas and leave it there while that feeders are thawing. Every one of the animals become super active after the bucket has been in the room after half an hour. It typically takes one to two hours to completely thaw out the feeders depending on the size of the feeder with larger feeders taking longer to thaw. So when I go to feed them, they have already been searching their enclosures for their food and are eagerly awaiting the food when it is ready to go.
I have been thawing my feeders out this way since 94’ and I have never had a problem. There are only two drawbacks to thawing the feeders out in this manner that I can think of off hand. The first one is that sometimes, toenails from the rats go thru the bags allowing water to get into the bas as well. This makes for some pretty soggy feeder rodents. The second drawback is that feeders that have been frozen for a really long time have a tendency to bust more easily after the dead tissue has been heated in this manner. Yuck….. Rat goo all over everything. This is more of a problem with pinky and fuzzy feeders. I have managed to figure this out as well too. If you are already dealing with good feeding animals, all you have to do is thaw the rodents to the point that they are no longer cold but have not yet heated up to the point of being really warm to the touch. Once they have reached room temperature, they are usually ready to go. If your snake is still being finicky, warm the feeder up until it just feels warm (not hot) when you place the bag into your hands. This is sometimes necessary for the tree pythons.
One final note. Please be careful that you don’t take the feeder out of the bag with your bare hands to feel how warm it is prior to offering it to your snake. Trust me, this is a mistake you don;t want to make (unless you want your hand to be mistaken for a feeder rodent of course). This thawing method may be a little more difficult for those of you that don’t have very many animals to feed and thus don't use a variety of different feeders. If that is the case, I would probably try keeping a few frozen feeders of each type together in a bag in the freezer until you are ready to use them. That way they all get a little pre-scented while still in the freezer.
I hope that this helps anyone that is having problems out there.
Thanks,
Chris
