Bad F/T Experience

A couple weeks ago I lost one of my female breeder rats unexpectedly due to birthing complications. She died after having a 16 pup litter. Her sister (bin mate) had her own litter of 15 two days prior and adopted all the pups (many did not make it BTW). Anywho, this totally drained her and she did not throw another litter for 2 months. I was forced to order F/T rats online due to lack of breeders. To the point. Last week 2 of my big boys were in shed but usually eat in shed so I thawed them each a nice size 70-80 gramish rat. Both refused so I refroze. This week when I thawed them they looked a bit off (discolored skin) but I decided to feed anyway. Thankfully, one of the males likes his F/T food just laid in front of him. Unfortunately, the other one likes to strike his and constrict. Well, this action led to rotten rat guts ALL OVER everything. Disgusting! Both rats were rotten inside (cut the other open as the other snake refused it). Within my own stock, I refreeze all the time (only once though then discard) and never have any issues. So lesson is... do not refreeze store bought F/T rats. I think they may have been "refrozen" once (or maybe twice) before they got to me. BTW....I got them from a huge if not the biggest F/T distributor.

Sorry you had a bad experience.

I only feed f/t and if isn't eaten by morning I throw it away. F/t can be nasty but I prefer it for the convenience and safety. If u have to feed thawed again just throw away what's not eaten.

Wow... I'm hungry now... :weirdface

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Originally Posted by mpkeelee

I only feed f/t and if isn't eaten by morning I throw it away. F/t can be nasty but I prefer it for the convenience and safety. If u have to feed thawed again just throw away what's not eaten.

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I plan on it :O

I've frozen my own rats before and still wouldn't refreeze a rat if it was gotten up to proper feeding tempurtures. Rats are basically raw meat and I wouldn't refreeze raw chicken then eat it afterwards, so I won't refreeze a rat to feed my snakes.

Just my opinion but refrozen rodents have always been icky and basically unusable when thawed the second time. And if you saw it was nasty looking, why would you try to feed it anyway? Whole prey items are subject to spoilage in the first place, with all the guts intact(bacteria bloom inside those), so I personally would not risk it.

I had the same thing happen to my snakes. The rats weren't even refrozen, they'd been warmed under a heat lamp for a bit and when my big pastel girl struck at it the nasty stuff just flew all over. Scared me to death since I'd fed my mojave male before I fed her and he'd taken it down, but it's been about a month and a half and he's acting normal (refusing every other rat :rolleyes: ). Also got my rats from one of the big names in the feeder business too, was very irritating

I get my frozen rats from my buddy Jack, never had a problem with them. He breeds them for his own snakes.

Yeah, same here, I only refreeze if I thawed under running water and if I never got around to warming the rodent under the heat lamp. I've had several snakes turn up their noses at refrozen mice, and I trust their judgment---I get enough blood and gore in my life from the over-warmed ones "popping" when the snakes constrict. So mostly I just pitch the unwanted rats.

(Disposing of them is actually pretty epic, too: they'll stink up your garbage, I swear I can smell them a day later when I flush them, and the dogs dig them up if I bury them in the back yard. So I bury them in the front garden, with a big rock on top to discourage cats. Or wrap them in a plastic bag if garbage pick up is only a day or two away.)

EDIT: Now I'm curious. Any big breeders in the audience who feed f/t? What do you do with the "leftovers"?

Im a live feeder personally but I do have a couple breeder friends that keep large monitors as garbage disposals.


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