Rodent Pro...PLEASE READ!!!

I am extremely upset. I ordered a bags of rats and mice from rodent pro a while ago and everything has been fine feeding these rats and mice to my snakes. The rats where in perfect condition. On the other hand I had noticed on the mice that the hand or legs would sometimes be broken or completely gone. I figured this happened during shipping, I couldn't think of any other reason. Well today I was thawing a mouse for my small female and once it was almost done thawing the head was hanging off. It looks like someone cut right through the neck but the head is still attached. I was extremely disgusted and immediately put this mouse back in the freezer. WHY ON EARTH WOULD A MOUSE, KILLED BY CO2, HAVE ITS HEAD SEVERED??? On the rodent pro website it says they use CO2. Can I believe this? Has anyone else had any issues? I am going to contact them. If someone wants me to post pics I will but right now Im too disgusted to grab my camera.

I've had this happen many times with Rodent Pro and it's why I stopped ordering from them. They say it has to do with the rats coming in contact with the dry ice. Not sure but after a few times I switched to Big Cheese. They are one of the best out there. I also use Mice Direct and have had a couple good experiences with them.

Hi,

To be honest when I see an F/T with bits missing I generally feel the broke off after freezing - we used to fill the freezer with fresh killed rodents and by the time you reached the bottom there were usually a few paws and the occasional head.

It was caused by us rummaging in the freezer to count them out and pulling and shoving at the entangled ones.

Just an alternative explanation.


dr del

Not to jump on the anti-RP train, but I haven't been too satisfied with them either. I get rats covered in poop/pee and on my 2nd to last order half of the "small" rats were mid 40 grams (they say 50+ on their site) and about half the "weans" were glorified rat pups.

I'm going to check out BCR next time.

JonV

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Originally Posted by dr del

Hi,

To be honest when I see an F/T with bits missing I generally feel the broke off after freezing - we used to fill the freezer with fresh killed rodents and by the time you reached the bottom there were usually a few paws and the occasional head.

It was caused by us rummaging in the freezer to count them out and pulling and shoving at the entangled ones.

Just an alternative explanation.


dr del

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Did it look like the head was sliced clean though? This is a clean slice. What your saying is most likely what happened though.

Maybe pics should be posted.:oops:

Hi,

Or experiments carried out - who wants to volunteer to snap the heads off a hundred frozen mice?

I would but I've got a bone in me leg. :bolt:


dr del

I deal with frozen rodents on a daily basis having several freezers with thousands of packaged rodents in each freezer. While moving packs around, they sometimes get a little banged up and if a rodents head gets hit at the right angle, it will break off and look as if it were cut. This also happens sometimes while separating rodents if they got stuck together.

i'm completely happy with RP... just thought i'd throw that out there. i hear people complain about their shipping costs and how they do it, but i just placed a very small order and the shipping was still less than any other place, even though other places claim to use a smaller shipping box to fit your order and save costs... mice direct and big cheese were going to cost about 5% more for the product and 15-20% more for the shipping. :(

anyway, i seriously doubt that RP euthanizes their mice by lopping their heads off. ;)

When I worked in a pet store that sold frozen feeders it was my job to get the feeders for people. I grabbed one large rat by the tail and it being stuck to the other rats the tail just snapped clean off. another time the rats were so frozen together that i had to bang the bag on the side of the freezer and one rat snapped in half.

I stopped getting the feeders for people after that... I just found that to be a little much at that point in time lol.

It's just another type of meat.
Nothing wrong with seeing the insides.

Well I don't get to grossed out by guts or insides.. just the act of snapping parts off did it for me at that time. I have a stocked freezer now and I lost a fuzzy head this morning trying to pull out a TV dinner.

my husband wont go near the freezer any more lol.

I'll add my experiance with RodentPro. I order mice from them every couple months and never have had any issues that I recall. Occasionally I do see a rodent that is broken, and I've always attributed that to the very low temps they keep the rodents at. Hard frozen, they break.
I've always been happy, and found any time I contacted them, they've been helpful.

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Originally Posted by jessie_k_pythons

i had to bang the bag on the side of the freezer and one rat snapped in half.

I stopped getting the feeders for people after that... I just found that to be a little much at that point in time lol.

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:O lol

I have been dealing with Rodent Pro for years. I know Casey personally and see him twice a month. I have never gotten bad rodents from them . To tell you the truth I get very high quality stuff from them. I email my monthly order to them and they have it boxed up and waiting for me at the shows I vend

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Gary Orner

I have been dealing with Rodent Pro for years. I know Casey personally and see him twice a month. I have never gotten bad rodents from them . To tell you the truth I get very high quality stuff from them. I email my monthly order to them and they have it boxed up and waiting for me at the shows I vend

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Definitely great that you haven't had a problem. Lots of others have. Missing heads, dirty feces and urine caked feeders. Pretty disgusting stuff.

Big Cheese won me over with the vacuum sealed trays :gj:

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Originally Posted by Spaniard

Big Cheese won me over with the vacuum sealed trays :gj:

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The best in the business hands down. Best quality rodents. Maybe not the lowest price but as its plain to see, you get what you pay for!

Grow yer own! :P

*crawls back under her rock*

I have ordered from them many times,

and i know that when i have dropped a mouse, it has broken, and actually, last time i fed mice, the neck had snapped funny, like it did look as if it was cut off... but it was from me dropping them... =D

I get mine from American Rodent - I think lol. I had one fuzzy thats head was off its body, a clean line too, it was definitely from freezing though! All the insides were at a clean line too, and I would imagine if someone cut the head off of an animal it would be pretty messy prior to freezing, not packed perfectly in the sad little decapitated head! I'll find little feet or tails snapped off or hanging off the body too, not much to worry about (I've only seen this with fuzzys or pinkys though, I haven't had parts break off the big guys in my freezer).

yeah i have had the foot thing too... its kinda grose lol

I've ordered from both RP and BCR and haven't really noticed any difference other than the vacuum sealing. The orders I've gotten from RP have been fairly clean and good size. A few that had poo, and a very (very few) broken legs, etc. The order I've gotten from BCR have been about the same. I know people rave about the vacuum sealing but I found it to be kind of a pain. The entire packs are frozen solid in a big slab. Had to let them thaw a tiny bit and work at getting them seperated. Then the bags they used to seal are pretty useless after that. So then break out the big zip lock freezer bags and transfer everything into them. I've also had some that had poo and pee on them from BCR. I've ordered from some other online place (don't recall the name), but they were about the same. Just my 2c.

Rodent Pro and The Mouse factory are the two the I have gone through.
We have only a few snakes and both places are good about small orders.
The Mouse Factory I call and place the order and it arrives on about 2 days versus whatever the RP shipping schedule is...I am too impatient to figure it out...but their orders seem to take more like a week+ to get here.

I found that the smaller the mouse the more missing parts...makes sense...thinner and more easily breakable.

The one bag of Rodent Pro pinkies had no arms, legs or tails and 5of the 100 had severed heads. Our corns ate the heads then the bodies...they didn't seem to mind.

I do know that the mice from both places look better than most pet mice for sale and have no nasty odor like I ran into with the smal fish/pet stores 'home grown/ mice.

I've had orders from The Mouse Factory and from Big Cheese. Orders have included several sizes of rats, from fuzzies up to mediums.

The Mouse Factory has the cleanest, plumpest and best vacuum packaged product hands down. No feces. No urine. No broken limbs. Low odor.

Big Cheese has vacuum packaging that may or may not be actually vacuum packed. Rats are dirty and there are feces and urine visible in most packages. Rodents are scrawnier; not scrawny, but noticeably thinner than those from TMF. Big Cheese rodents smell.

I'm going back to TMF when this BC order is depleted.