Frozen thawed/

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Originally Posted by JoshSloane

Im still waiting for someone to even venture a reasonable medical answer as to why a tiny amount of frozen center would harm a snake.

Here's a thought...Even if the rat is 90% thawed, the cold is in the center, and the outside is nice and warm. Now what part of the rat does the snakes internal organs interact with? Obviously the outside. The snakes digestive tract isn't even coming into contact with the cool part of the rat, which will simply thaw internally.

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You don't know your biology and chemistry very well, do you? Turning your nose up at something just to break "the rules" is very irresponsible, especially when there actually are documented cases of this going wrong and very valid medical reasons for not doing so.

Contrary to belief, stomach acids don't heat anything; they break substances apart, which means the internal temperature of a partially frozen rat does not change during the process of digestion and the frozen bits inside would thaw the same as if they were still on the outside.

Edit; Looked into it further after posting. It actually has more to do with the fact that at low enough temperatures a snake can't digest properly. Feeding them food that is still frozen in the center is effectively dropping an ice cube into the stomach of an animal that needs to use its environment to thermoregulate and therefore halting its digestive processes.

I have a plastic ice bucket that I fill with hot water and soak all my rodents for about an hour. At this point I swap out the water to get them good and warm and dry them off with a paper towel prior to feeding. I usually always still push up under the ribcage of the largest rat just to be sure it is warm throughout.

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Originally Posted by Marissa@MKmorphs

X2

I thaw my rodents room temp for about half a day, and when I am certain they are all fully thawed and room temp I take a low wattage heat mat made by Ultra therm (can order from reptile basics), lay a piece of foil down and let my rodents warm up on that slightly warm mat until they are slightly warmer than room temp. I have about 80 snakes to feed, so with this large heat mat I'm able to warm up, and keep warm many rodents (about 2 dozen small rats) at a time, so my feeding is as efficient as possible.

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I really like this idea. Thanks for sharing!!!!!


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