Mice?

[8leggedfriends]

If you buy Frozen mice and you keep it in a freezer will they keep fresh for a long time? I have 1 snake right now, and I would like to buy a large quantity to cut out trips to the store. I've been feeding live, and I can't bring myself to kill it, and I'm scared the mouse will hurt sophie. What should I do?

 

[pitbulllady]

They will keep fresh for a few months, providing they were freshly-killed and frozen when you bought them, which isn't always the case. Check your sources. They DO lose nutrient value over time, and how fast depends a lot on how they are packaged. You are right to be concerned about the mouse hurting your snake, though, since this is one of the main risks with feeding live rodent prey to a snake. Mice may be small, but they pack one heckuva bite! I actually ended up in the ER after having a mouse I was going to feed to a Coachwhip(this snake, like many of his kind, would only eat live food)turned around and sank its incisors into my index finger, all the way to the bone. It severed a lymph node in my finger, as well as a major blood vessel, and my hand swelled almost as if I'd been bitten by a Copperhead.

pitbulllady

 

[Cirith Ungol]

I've actually heard that they can be kept in the freezer for almost 2 years, but I'm not gonna have more mice than I can feed of within one year. I bought 100 mice for my two mature corns. They are gonna do away with them just in time I think.

 

[8leggedfriends]

what if i spin them around? will that make it less likely to bite?

 

[Cirith Ungol]

What do you mean by spinning? You mean like hurling them arround before you give them to your snake? I think the best is to hit them in the head with something or to whack them against some hard egde in order to stun them before you put them in with the snake. What kind of snake do you have anyway?

 

[Ravnos]

Good frozen rodent suppliers will sell them vacuum sealed (not just in ziplocks) and theoretically can have up to almost a three year shelf life as long as they stay frozen solid - I've never kept a supply that long, but I have had stuff over a year without a problem. Whereas ziplocks only have a usefulness of about 3 months, max, before freezer burn sets in.

Rav

 

[Cirith Ungol]

A thing I know from freezing fish is that if you want to keep it a very long time without it getting freezer burnt is that you freeze it within water - so that the entire fish/piece is within that block of ice (when frozen, obviously). Is that what you mean with frozen solid, Ravnos?

Anyway, then it lasts basically twice as long as when air can get to the frozen object. It takes some effort to freeze something that way and it takes some time to defrost it, but if you want something to last extremely long in the freezer, you can do it that way...

 

[Ravnos]

No, I just mean frozen - and not put through repeated cycles of thawing out a bit and refreezing. Freezing them in a solid block of ice might be effective for fish, but I'm not sure how well it would work for mice.

Rav

 

[Cirith Ungol]

Well, the thing with the ice is that it won't let air get to the item in question. So when you put the mouse in a water bath and freeze it you have basically restricted the air access... works with anything I would guess, even pieces of rock

 

[8leggedfriends]

I am feeding a Ball Python. I think I can go to a store some where and buy some fish. Where is a good place to buy fish? what kind of fish?

 

[Cirith Ungol]

I don't know anything about Ball Pythons so forgive me for saying the next thing:
Make sure Fish is a part of the regular and natural diet of a Ball Python!

The next thing I can say without any knowlage of it is that the fish should be complete, with head and guts and the lot. If you were to give it only the meat then the snake would fare ill after a while.

 

[MysticKigh]

I am feeding a Ball Python. I think I can go to a store some where and buy some fish. Where is a good place to buy fish? what kind of fish?

Chances of your ball taking fish are slim to none...
you'd have better luck offering something along the lines of a gecko

Back to the subject at hand... frozen mice ... always squeeze or suck the extra air out of the bag before you reseal in, and then wrap the sealed plastic bag in a paper bag... this helps eliminate freezer burn

Also ... immediately pull only what you need to feed, put the others back into storage ASAP.


Edit: Big Cheese Rodent Factory is who I use for my frozen mice... the nice thing about them is that they pack in bundles of 50 rather than 100 like most