What are we doing wrong?

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Originally Posted by thegrandpoohbah

Are we doing something wrong and is there any way to prevent this?

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Short answer: thaw at room temperature instead of in warm water.

Long answer: Water crystalizes when it turns into ice, which includes the water inside cells of living things. When you thaw quickly in warm water, the ice on the outside turns into water and expands, pressing on the cell walls of the inside of the feeder animal. These internal cells still contain the shards of crystalized ice, which essentially shred the cells inside the animal. Once the water inside melts and warms up, it too expands and escapes through the perforated cell walls resulting in a gooshy interior. Combine this with the slightly perforated (and very compromised) cells in the external layers of flesh, and you get a feeder that explodes when squeezed.

So this week I tried defrosting the mouse in the fridge overnight. Then warmed up in a pot of hot water for about 10 minutes. Still no luck, the belly burst open and the intestines fell out before I even fed it to the snake. Any more suggestions? Should I not even heat it in hot water? Maybe I'll try the hair dryer method.

Don't use pot heated water. Hot tap water should do it.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by thegrandpoohbah

So this week I tried defrosting the mouse in the fridge overnight. Then warmed up in a pot of hot water for about 10 minutes. Still no luck, the belly burst open and the intestines fell out before I even fed it to the snake. Any more suggestions? Should I not even heat it in hot water? Maybe I'll try the hair dryer method.

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Again like I said previously thaw slow at room temp or in your fridge and use a hair dryer to warm up the prey. Since I have switch to that method I have experienced 0 prey explosion.

If you do this and your preys still explodes I would suspect that they were at some points thawed and re-freeze, and I would suggest you to find another F/T souce.