Freezing rodents

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Originally Posted by kitedemon

http://www.irishhealth.com/article.html?id=1946

http://www.comeunity.com/adoption/he...sites-NIH.html

I am not an expert on parasites. I have read conflicting data on how long but the longest I have seen is 7 days and that is to kill flukes. So perhaps 7 days is better. After my little experience I sent a selection of rats to a bio lab where a good friend works (masters students sometimes need non critical tasks to do, apparently). They ran a quick screen and out of 20 rats from 4 suppliers found 10% carried either hook, pin, or tape worms. We didn't look for anything else as they required more careful testing 2 or 4 suppliers had at one rat that carried something. The best reptile vet I have ever spoken to believes 5% of all pet snakes have worms.

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So really that's only 2 out of 20 rats. That doesn't seem too bad to me. I'd be interested to know if the 2 infected ones came from the same supplier.

Yeah, pinworm especially is common in captive snakes, but it's easily treated with dewormer, and feeding frozen won't guarantee that your snake doesn't get it.

Just to be clear, I do believe that freezing can help prevent many parasites. However, I don't feel that there is a great enough risk for freezing to be considered necessary. There are many breeders on this site that feed live exclusively.

I breed my own rats, and have never encountered parasites in (or on) my snakes.