i'm switching my balls over to f/t in the next few meals. i'm going to order the mice online. my question is, how long are the mice good in the freezer? do they "expire" or go bad after being in the freezer too long? i have four snakes feeding on mice right now, and buying f/t mice in bulk is the way to go. anyway, i appreciate any input. thanks.
~mike
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switching ball to f/t...question about the mice
mikem
Sep 29, 2003 08:44 PM
Replies (2)
Hoomi
Sep 30, 2003 12:13 AM
While I haven't had a lot of experience with the mice yet, most frozen items will tend to stay preserved indefinitely as long as you can protect them against "freezer burn". Essentially, if there is much airflow around around the item, the moisture will get drawn out of it and you end up with it drying out in the freezer, as well as taking on the freezer smell.
I think my tactic on this would be to divide the shipment into smaller lots, and seal those up in something like the Ziploc (r)freezer bags with as little air in them as possible. If you have a vacuum sealer, that would probably be even better. The more undisturbed the individual "sublots" are, the longer they'll last. The more often the storage bags are opened and reclosed, the more moisture that will be lost from them.
One thing to double check, though, before making your bulk order. I looked into the same thing, and while I could have gotten a great price on 100 frozen mice, the shipping was almost twice the cost of the mice. My guess is the price break is only fully realized on much larger lots than I would need, and by the time I would pay shipping and make the effort to divide the shipment up for storage, the cost savings wouldn't be quite as attractive (for me, at least). Other vendors may have more reasonable shipping costs than the one I checked into.
JLC
Sep 30, 2003 08:01 AM
If there are any herp shows/expos that might be coming to your area (or within a pleasant day's drive) it might be worth it to go. Not only are the shows really fun...but you can buy frozen rodents there. You can pretty much get exactly how many you think you'll need to last over a certain amount of time, and not have to pay any shipping.
