She took f/t first time but...

So yesterday I decided I wanted to try feeding f/t for the first time to my 2 1/2 month old, ~150g bp. I stopped by petco because I heard on here that they sell frozen. I defrosted the adult mouse for a couple of hours and when I got it out of the plastic baggie it was good and thawed. But...it's stomach seemed very water logged and squishy, skin gross and loose, there were several bald spots, and the overall condition of the mouse just seemed poor (especially when compared to a live mouse). Well everything went fine with the feeding and it only took about ten seconds for my bp to strike (alright hit, but poor coil). After "killing" it she looked around kinda in a confused manner so I left for 20 minutes and came back to her downing the tail.

My problem is that I was very disappointed with the condition of the mouse and believe I'm gonna go back to live (despite not wanting to). Live was just so much more fresh and seemed way healthier. Plus even though she took the f/t, her overall response and demeanor just seemed more lethargic. Are all frozen feeders in this condition? Or should I try and find a smaller exotic store that freezes their own mice?

I have been feeding my bp mice and now rats from Petco, and have not had any issues with the quality (although now I just put in an order to RodentPro -- even with high shipping costs I am still saving big over Petco).

Anyway, most of the frozens that I have fed to my bp have looked very close to live quality. It just may be that the Petco you are buying from doesn't move the inventory very fast so the quaility is not good.

Instead of going back to live, you could always buy live mice, and then freeze them yourself. I know someone has a sticky somewhere on here about making a simple co2 chamber that will humanely kill the mice.

Hope this helps...

George