Disposing of Rat

We have a feeder rat that is a good size for both of our larger girls. Unfortunatly, neither of them will take the rat. Soon the rat will be too large. We do not want to use it in our breeding colony and if we let it go outside, there is a chance it will return to our home for food and shelter. I would like to use it as food for our ferret (its not too terribly large. Might take the ferret longer to consume it than a mouse would, but its a good sized meal (2-3oz)

I have stunned mice before, but rats are something new to me. I have attempted to stun rats in the past, but because their skulls are thicker, when I attempted to stun the rat, it went into seizures and it took a few minutes to die. It was horrible. Now I have this rat which is even older than the previous rat and I'm both afraid of causing it pain like that and not being able to stun it properly.

I CANNOT smack it against a wall or hit it with anything. I can't bring myself to be that violent. While it may not seem 'violent' to some, to me it is horrible and I can't do it. I have no access to dry ice tonight and I need to use it tonight as I am out of cage space and it is currently in a cardboard box that we brought it home in.

I can't think of anything to do other than let it go. Any advice? (Other than having a seperate enclosure for situations like this?)

Do NOT ever let a domesticated rat go in the wild - it's unfair to an animal that's had all the wild bred out of it.

Check the sticky above on humanely euthanizing.

put it up on Craigslist.

I can't C02 the rat till Monday and I have no cage room for it. I figured at least one of my snakes would eat it, but none are interested (the ones that are of appropriate size).

I want to feed it to my ferret, but the rat would need to be dead or knocked out due to the fact a live, angry rat, in a cage with a ferret who has only killed mice before is a bad thing.

So, I can't use a CO2 chamber for a few more days and I can't smack it against something and its really hard to knock it out.

Any other ideas?

your best bet is to get it a temporary enclosure and wait till you can either CO2 is or find someone via craigslist that is willing to take it off your hands for what ever purpose.

do you have any tubs/tanks that you can put it in? throw some shredded newspaper/phonebook pages in and a little food ( cereal, pasta, left overs), some water, and it'll be set till monday.

i def would not let it go for reasons robin mentioned.

I don't want to let it go and getting a temporary enclosure will work till Monday. I can get a tub and make it the "Emergency Feeder Keeper."

good plan....

i always have a spare tub/critter keeper incase something like this comes up. it's a good practice.

You could always take it to the pet store couldn't you? Wouldn't they be glad to take it off your hands?

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Originally Posted by Pwilliams58

You could always take it to the pet store couldn't you? Wouldn't they be glad to take it off your hands?

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And resell it! One rat twice the price always a bargain for the seller! :)

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Originally Posted by Pwilliams58

You could always take it to the pet store couldn't you? Wouldn't they be glad to take it off your hands?

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No some pet stores won't take a rat from a private person, especially the chain stores. If you're a live feeder you just have to plan for the occasional refusal and have supplies on hand to deal with it. Turning a feeder rodent loose outside is never an option.