Reminded why I breed feeders

Due to new additions and my females taking their dear sweet time getting pregnant again, I ran into a few weeks where no feeders were ready for snakes. My roommate grabbed a few "gourmet" frozen small rats from Petco. We thawed them in the bags and then dumped them into hot water and were immediately horrified. The water turned cloudy brown/red, fur was coming off in chunks, and the smell was like rotting fish. The rats looked thin, contorted, and sickly. Both packages looked like this and we immediately tossed them!

I decided not to test the rest of their stock and got live small rats from a trusted source. After witnessing what slimed out of those bags I'll never by frozen feeders again!

Yuck! Sounds like they were frozen for too long as well.



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Ugh, that makes me happy that I only have one snake to take care of. Less food to deal with lol.

I never liked buying Gourmet Rodent from the pet store. They were always gross.

Petcos rats and mice are disgusting. If you ever need to gry from a petstore again, use petsmarts frozen feeders, much much better

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Originally Posted by kylearmbar

Petcos rats and mice are disgusting. If you ever need to gry from a petstore again, use petsmarts frozen feeders, much much better

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I'll keep that in mind. Hopefully they won't give me the stink eye. My local Petsmart doesn't sell reptiles or reptile supplies, and if you mention snakes the saff practically turn up their noses at you!

If I had to guess they weren't frozen for too long. Instead they were probably thawed out somewhere along the way and refrozen....possibly even multiple times. That would cause tissue damage to anything, even a steak.

Yeah that's what happens when you buy rats from petco or petsmart. If the rat doesn't explode my snakes won't even touch them. They may be extremely overpriced but it doesn't link to the quality at all.


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and then dumped them into hot water

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This could also be bad news even for the freshest kept frozen feeders. if the water is hot enough it could easily degrade the skin and outside of the feeder.

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Originally Posted by BulkMice

This could also be bad news even for the freshest kept frozen feeders. if the water is hot enough it could easily degrade the skin and outside of the feeder.

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This. I would say your thawing practices are at fault here and not the rat you bought. Plenty of threads go over the 'proper' way to thaw, but I think in general you will find you are going to have a bad time if you thaw directly in the water whether from this or from the body exploding on strike.

Agreed!
Last time I bought a mouse from petco, it was yellow and smelled of urine, as if it had peed itself AFTER it went into the freezer.

None of the rats/mice I've ever killed and froze have had urine on them, except that one I let my sister kill. The poor thing was alive and pooped and peed itself all over the bag while it was in the freezer :(

$4 for an adult mouse is way too much anyways...
At petsmart, I think it's $10 for a med rat... wtf? Plus their pinky mice look like they were all the peanut of the litter. :/

I've bought feeders from the pet store in the past but now have a local herper that breeds their own rats. I get a few month supply every cull. Far less expensive, the rats are twice as fat, clean and healthy, and my snake has never been better for it. If my local connection ever gets out of the rat raising I'm going to be hard pressed to find anything half as good.

Maybe just a bad experience? I've gotten gourmet medium rats for my
boa a few times and every time they have been healthy looking and nice and white. Thawed fine at room temperature and snatched and eaten with no problems. Don't get me wrong pet co is terrible but I've never had problems with gourmet feeders

I find it amusing a few people decide my thawing practices are at fault rather than a bad batch of feeders. Never had a problem before with shed fur/skin, exploding guts, rancid odor, etc with frozen feeders. I would love for someone to explain how hot water (i.e. hot to a snake, not to us) turns it into a foul-smelling emaciated husk with internal juices sloshing about, all within five seconds of being dumped out of the bag.

In case anyone was wondering, I thaw smalls at room temp and hit with hot water for a few moments to bring up the temp. My snakes are picky, and the one that will take F/T won't strike unless the heat signature is extremely noticeable. This is the first time I was disappointed by Gourmet Rodent, but I'll still stand by my own feeders!

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Originally Posted by BulkMice

This could also be bad news even for the freshest kept frozen feeders. if the water is hot enough it could easily degrade the skin and outside of the feeder.

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I don't think there's a container in the world capable of withstanding the heat required to degrade skin and fur to this extent in the timeframe described by the OP. I also don't think it's possible to even get water hot enough to do it without it flashing to steam LONG before reaching that kind of temperature.

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I buy mine from a reptile store so I can see what's in the bag. Though I have never had a bad at from Petco...

Yeah Petco/Petsmart ones are pretty gross. I didn't know what a real F/T rodent should look and (not) smell like until I bought online. I will not feed those nasty Gourmet Rodent ones again. They're always contorted weird, smell, and are super skinny. I never had a problem with the insides falling out though.

I do know the big Petco's around here have pretty nasty feeders. However, I still would not recommend dunking a F/T feeder directly into hot water. :)

[QUOTE=satomi325;2208138]Yuck! Sounds like they were frozen for too long as well.

how long would be to long ?