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thawing food for snakes

R

rockysnake

New member
just a quick question how do all of you defrost/thaw the pinkys/fuzzys for your snakes?
it was my 1st time feeding a snaked yesterday and all i did was take the mouse out of the frezzes and leave it in a sleaed dish until it was completley defrosted...

is there a better way of doing this and how long should they be defrosting for ?

thanks adam and rocky
 
There was just a poll on this. Most people thaw in water, either in a plastic bag or right in the water. With a large mouse, it's probably better to start out with cool water until the mouse is thawed completely, then raise the temp of the mouse to 100F with hot water. You don't want to cook the outside and have a cold inside. I thaw small pinks/fuzzies in 100F water, using a meat thermometer (in the water) to maintain the temp. It just takes minutes.

Nanci
 
Thaw both my pinks and small rats in a very large meassuring cup. Of course the pinks thaw quicker , but I have found that to be the best way...
 
I thaw pinkies in a strainer under running hot water. Doesn't take long. This washes off some of the urine smell and the hatchlings eat them better. Adult mice go in a bowl of warm water.
 
Snakes are weird about smells- some _don't_ like the smell of mouse/mouse bedding/mouse urine, but others who aren't eating can be enticed to eat by rolling their mouse in dirty mouse bedding.

If I were you, I'd just thaw it in water and make sure the temp of the mouse when you give it to the snake is about 100F- the normal body temp of a mouse.

Nanci
 
I like to help the snake out by taking a knife and making a long slit on the belly and the spine of the mouse (while still frozen.) It helps speed up digesten. I then put the mouse in a ziplock and put it in hot water for a couple of minutes and get it nice and warm. Then I give it to him in a shoe box (while inside his viv) and close the viv screen cover and turn off the lights. When he is done he will climb out and go hide.
 
I do mine sort of like Trigger Happy but I throw a twist in it. First I defrost my mice in a ziploc bag and put the bag in warm water for about 4 minutes. Then empty the cup and refill it so the mouse is nice and warm when it comes time to eat. While that is going on I usually take her shoebox that she is fed in and put it on top of my space heater so it can warm up a little bit so she feels comfortable. Not too hot but just a little warm, about the temp of my hands or a little colder. Put her in the box, grab the tongs and wave the pinky in front of her and wham! She eats it and then cruises for a little bit, then I empty her back in the Viv.
 
I get my mouse out at night and let it defrost naturally, then fed her during the day. Is this a bad method? Not had any problems so far.
 
mine just defrost in a tub, no water. when they are defrosted i put the tub ontop of the viv by the bulb to warm the mice up. my snake has never refused a mouse so it works for me!
 
The bad thing about defrosting food items by sitting on a counter or exposed to the open air is that they will begin to grow bacteria very quickly. Which can be bad for your snake, causing them to possibly get sick, or regurge. That's why thawing in water is the prefered method, either with warm water to speed the heating, or cool water to inhibit bacteria growth before a short time in hot water to heat it up. All my mice are heated in hot tap water before feeding in a seperate feeding container.
 
When my snake was on campus in one of my classes, I thawed the mouse by wrapping it in a paper towel, and placing it beside the heat pad. Sometimes I put it on the heatpad if I wanted to warm it up quickly, or a certain part wasn't as warm as the rest, i'd put that part on the heatpad. At home now i've been putting the mouse in a plastic bag and running it under hot water.
 
sbourget said:
The bad thing about defrosting food items by sitting on a counter or exposed to the open air is that they will begin to grow bacteria very quickly. Which can be bad for your snake, causing them to possibly get sick, or regurge. That's why thawing in water is the prefered method, either with warm water to speed the heating, or cool water to inhibit bacteria growth before a short time in hot water to heat it up. All my mice are heated in hot tap water before feeding in a seperate feeding container.
Click to expand...

I can agree there but think about the wild snakes and the bacteria on their food. I know ours are captive bred but they need to be able to build up an immune system. Thats my opinion anyway.
 
carolinacorn69 said:
I can agree there but think about the wild snakes and the bacteria on their food. I know ours are captive bred but they need to be able to build up an immune system. Thats my opinion anyway.
Click to expand...

It's not just a matter of bacteria on the food--it's the bacterial growth that results from the rotting of the mouse carcass that is a problem. A snake's diet in the wild is probably composed mostly of live prey, or of fairly recently dead prey (in general, dead prey is not going to last as long in the wild as it is on a kitchen countertop), so by trying to "build up" the snake's immune system you're probably exposing it to something it wouldn't encounter in nature--and therefore to something that its immune system hasn't evolved to cope with. To me this sounds a bit like feeding a small child raw hamburger in order to "build up" his/her immunity to E. coli. I know nothing about reptilian immune systems, but I suspect that they're much different from the mammalian ones from which you're adopting the "building up" of immunity theory. And even for mammals, this can be a pretty miserable process which can result in death if not for the safety net of antibiotics and other therapies.
 
I guess. I might start feeding pre killed rather than frozen because I dont like feeding my snakes wet mice although it probably dosent do anything. In reference to the decomposing of the mouse, they are literally out of the freezer for half an hour before I give them to the snakes. I doubt theyd start to rot in that time, but, I could be wrong. Cheers for the advice anyway.
 
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