Reptile & Amphibian Forums

What is the best way to fresh kill rodents?

Someone here once said, snakes have been known to cause death in laboratory rats.

Haha...Think I am going to use a CO2 delivery system to kill the prey before feeding any chance anybody has used this method? Also I have been giving my snake diltilled water to drink, do I need to worry about mineral deficiency or anything like that?

I use a CO2 tank. It is about the size of a scuba tank. I just screwed a fitting on and connected a short piece of garden hose to fill a 5G bucket. Dry Ice is the same thing.

I don't think distilled water is a good idea, I can't remember why.

I gotta always wonder why after reading these posts...

tap water is fine, if worried....let it stand for 24 hours in a jug...... and feed live....

balls strike faster than cobras....really...they can handle it...

CO2 can be a pain, or hurt you too.....

I don't use it even if I have thousands of mice to kill at once....not needed...

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LOL......

I don't have a lot of snakes and only have about 4 or 5 female mice that produce litters of 15-20every month or so. I never have many to kill off at once so I put them (one at a time) in a gallon plastic bag and wack them real hard on the floor a couple times. Just got to watch out for when the bag breaks open, mouse goes flying....
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www.freewebs.com/snakesandstuff
"Such as I am, so shall I be"

My menagerie
3.4 Ball Pythons 1.1 Amazon Tree Boas 1.0 Dumerils Boa 1.1 Kenyan Sand Boas 2.0 Corn Snake 1.2 Black Rat Snakes 2.1.7 Bearded Dragons 1.1.5 Crested Geckos 1.1.4 Eastern Box Turtles 0.3 Chickens 2.1 Cats 1.1 Ferrets plus lots of mice and feeder insects and my Sweety-bird Sydney

i find it best to use co2 when culling off a group of feeders. one or two just isn't worth the time and the cost of the co2.

best bet would to sack-n-wack or feed live.

Pitoon

Thats always a great way to get your snake hurt or killed. If ball pythons strike so fast why do we see pictures of ball pythons with half their skin eaten off from rodents? Do your snakes a favor always feed dead unless a last resort for fussy feeder!!!
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GOOSEBALLS

lamina1982@hotmail.com

We see those pictures because people leave the rodents in with a snake for an extended period when the snake is not hungry, not because people feed live prey in general. As long as the snake is hungry it will be fine. We currently have about two hundred ball pythons in our collection and we have fed them live prey every week for the last four years and have never had a problem (You do the math). Many very well known and respected large scale breeders with literally thousands of animals also feed live. We pull any uneaten rats after half an hour.
What do you think they do in the wild? They have evolved over thousands of years to be able to handle live prey. I have never seen a picture of a wild bp that has been chewed up, only ones in captivity that have been in an enclosed space with a rodent for a very extended period.

-Andrew Varela,
Serpentine Exotics

you dont see pictures of wild ones because they are dead. Im not saying it shouldnt be done as ive had few snakes that took a bit to get to f/t-but why risk it? for the general public i say never live. Captive ball pythons arent wild creatures
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GOOSEBALLS

lamina1982@hotmail.com