thaw frozen mice and rats

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Originally Posted by Lolo76

One time I heated it TOO much, though, and almost burned poor Pedro's lips. :( So make sure you check it before serving!

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Hey, that's good to know. I use a hairdryer, but hadn't thought about OVERheating. This whole thread has pretty good info throughout.

As for me, I move the mouse from the freezer to the fridge the day before, then leave it out on the counter for a few hours before feeding, with a short (15-20 seconds?) warming up with a hairdryer immediately beforehand. That method has worked well.

I double bag the rats(hate dealing with wet rats) and put in a bucket of hot water and weigh them down with a piece of driftwood.

Certainly not an expert and dealing with only one BP, but my f/t mice go into a Ziploc baggie, get submerged in a large plastic cup of hot water and sit for 30-60min (I usually dump and refill with more hot water at least once, but it probably isn't even necessary). I feel them (through the baggie) to make sure they're warm enough and definitely thawed through. Tyler's video was pretty cool, since mine doesn't bother with striking or constricting anything, and he's as easy to feed as any "normal" mammalian pet, so I just toss it into his enclosure. He just finds his mouse and swallows it. Given my experience with other pets, it's generally a bad sign when I get an "easy" one right off the bat, so I imagine my next snake will only eat live blue Berkshire dumbo Rex rats with only left eyes and right ears that are exactly 101F, left-"handed", and suffering from respiratory infections. :rolleyes:

I only feed f/t to my kingsnake (or to those that need assist feeding). I run the hottest tap water I can, put the frozen mouse directly into the hot water, let it sit for about 20 minutes, dump the water, and refill with hot water again for about 5 minutes, check to make sure the belly is completely thawed and feed off. No exploding bellies, no ziplocs, no drying off.

What I do is get some tissue put the rat on the tissue and put it on top of the heat strip im using in the daytime and at night it should be thawed then i heat it up with a hair dryer!

James

I do the same thing that several people here do: Put the rodents in a ziploc bag and put the bag in a bowl of warm/hot water for a while, changing the water out as necessary. Once they're thawed, I stick them under a ceramic heat emitter for a little while to heat them up to snake-preferred temps.

After some experimentation, what I find works good for me is the following.

1) Take frozen mouse out before handling the snake, which will give it time to partially thaw while you handle the snake (away from the mouse!)
2) When you're done handling, bring the snake near the mouse, and let the snake get a whiff of it -- This should very clearly put it into feeding mode (keep it away from your face at this point)
3) Put the snake into either its feeding enclosure (this works well for me) or back into its home
4) Bring a cup of water big enough to hold the mouse just barely to a boil in the microwave
5) Put the mouse in the cup, and immediately put the cup near the snakes feeding enclosure or home, so that it can REALLY get a strong smell
6) Five minutes should be enough to thaw but not cook it, and get it to a temperature worthy of presenting
7) Present ; Watch out, my BP has exceptionally strong responses to this whole procedure. It is not uncommon for her to go after the nearest warm object.

Of course, use tongs or something other than your hands to handle the mouse at all times. Obviously you can replace mouse with rat, I just thought of that.

Well I just fill a 5 gallons bucket with hot water (as hot as I can get from the tap) then I dump them all in the bucket. I usually have to change the water out several times since it cools so fast (thawing 30+ rats at a time). Once they are thawed I fill the bucket with hot water again and let them set a bit to bring up the temp then comes the zombie rat dance. I have noticed some of mine will not eat if the rat is still wet, so I will towel dry and set in front of a heater for a few seconds.