Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I know I have read all the post on breeding of mice and crickets and all but question I have is if you breed the mice do you have to feed live or how do you go about freezing them?
Thanx
Tom

"T"
I feed my Monitors fresh killed!
If I have the need for a mass killing I use a small piece of dry ice.
Place a bunch of mice in a bucket, add a few drops of water to the dry ice cover the bucket and death follows closley.

I do not like to do this as it is a horrible death to the mice!!
I prefer to keep them live until I give them a good whack, death is instantanious!

If I had the choice for my own death I would want to be whacked in the head and not choked to a slow death.
Mike

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Mike's Monitors!

I heard the quickest/easiest way is to put the end of a knife behind the back of their head and tug on their tail, separating their spinal cord?

I also heard about the dry ice thing. Who knows which one the mice actually prefer.

I am not very good at breaking their necks, which is "supposedly" the most humain way to go.
I can tell you that watching a bucket full of mice gasping for breath for several minutes looks brutal!!
I'll take the whack over that any day!
Mike

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Mike's Monitors!

Yeah! Try taking a whiff of the CO2 sometime; it hurts!!!
Humane, my a$$.
A quick whack on the back of the head works just fine.
For large quantities, I've found putting them in a 5 gallon bucket & then putting another bucket in on top of them works well - no air, & they suffocate rapidly.
Cheers (for a cheery subject),
Max

np
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Mike's Monitors!

I did! I was agreeing with you & adding to it!!!

hh
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Mike's Monitors!

If they are gasping, your over gassing them. If done right, the Rodents will fall asleep ( peacefully, not suffocating ) and gradually shut down. A CO2 tank and regulator work well, Dry ice will get the job done but is, well, too reliable.

Best way I have found to freeze them is a Vacume sealer. Mine is a Tilia Professional II model. Although you need to pre- freeze them a little before vacume sealing. Vacume = lots of pressure ,when mice are soft they will all smoosh together making for mice stew! I can seal a complete weekly ration for my snakes and then just plop the bag in some cold water to thaw.Shelf life when sealed is greatly extended compared to ziplocs.
Barry

I never thought I'd see the day that I would spend hard-earned money to make an annihilation chamber to put rodents down with, but after raising a few litters, watching them grow & play, I grew tenderhearted. And I hate PETA.

I mean, after all, that's the reason I raised 'em, to feed 'em to my snakes & monitors. What the heck, they're gonna die anyway, right? It's not bad watching one or two suffer a lil' bit, but the more you do it, the more it should affect you (seeing 'em suffer).

Nobody can consistently whack a rodent to death with a single blow every time. Yeah, yeah, I know there's a few that can't click the "Reply" button fast enough just to tell me that they can. Save it for somebody else, I ain't fallin' for it. Ha! Ha!

"EricIvins" got it right, as far as I'm concerned. Dry ice in a bucket can not be controlled, regulated, and usually causes a horrible death just like "MikesMonitors" said.

Do yourself, and your mice, a big favor and spend $50 - $75 to build a CO2 chamber. It's simple to do and keeps things humane. A slow, steady stream of CO2 released into a tub of rodents will first put the rodents to sleep to where they won't feel a thing or know what's going on. They eventually peascefully suffocate due to lack of oxygen.

Personally, I suggest you learn to control your mice population to where you won't need to feeze them, but feed them as fresh-killed. It wouldn't hurt to freeze some for emergency situations, though.

And as for freezing rodents, I've never used any type of vacuum sealing. I don't need to. I've got rats in my deep freezer right this minute that have been frozen for almost a year, and I guarantee you that they're still good. I've used some that were just over a year old before and never a problem. I can get at least 10 large rats in a good gallon-size freezer bag, squeeze out excess air and slap 'em in the freezer.

I've found it best to let the rodent bodies cool to room temperature before freezing them. I've been raising/freezing rats for 3yrs now without the first problem.

Here's the annihilation chamber that I made. It's not perfect, it's not an air-tight container, but it works very well.
www.happyhillbilly.com/co2/

Have a good one!
HH
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Due to political correctness run amuck,
this ol' hillbilly is now referred to as an:
Appalachian American

I have found that if you whack them in the head and then dislocate the head from the spine (putting their head behind a knife or other object and pulling the tail) that you cover both bases and eliminate simply stunning them by just whacking them. Of course whether they are stunned or dead is usually more of an issue with finicky eating snakes than monitors. Freezing rodents for slow breeding times in rodent colonies is good but bear in mind having too many frozen rodents can quickly become a problem in the event of a prolonged power outage. This happened to me during hurricane Francis with larger rats which is a size I have limited use for. Another alternative to limiting breeding is to find an outlet for surplus rodents. Something not hard to do and that helps with the feed bill.

That head/spine dislocation is supposed to be quite effective but I never could get the hang of it & wasn't comfortable with it.

I used gloves, grabbed rodent by head in one hand & body in the other, and yank. The only one I did it right on, when I set it down, it's nerves/reflexes made it keep tryin' to take off, draggin' it's head. Eeeerrrryyyyyyy!!!

Later!
HH
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Due to political correctness run amuck,
this ol' hillbilly is now referred to as an:
Appalachian American