Can I still use bloody f/t mice?

[micharoo47]

I just fed my baby her first f/t mouse (she has been eating live up until now) and she took it without a second thought! I'm so proud of her But almost every other mouse in the other bags has some blood coming out, and when I poked them they weren't frozen rock-solid like the one I thawed to feed her. Is it still ok to use the other ones? I have them at a colder freezer setting so they'll freeze up better.

[elbee]

I wouldn't be concerned about blood, but why they weren't frozen all the way. Had they been set out?

[BHReptiles]

They should be fine. If anything they will get you a better feeding response.

I'm also curious as to why they weren't completely frozen to begin with...

[kitedemon]

I too would be concerned about the freezer temp. I'd not keep them on a door... (not as cold) and personally I keep my freezer at -7ºC umm 19ºF or so.

[micharoo47]

I had them in the freezer section of my mini fridge near the front so it wasn't as cold as a kitchen fridge freezer... one of the mice in the packet (the one I fed her) was frozen all the way through but all the rest didn't seem completely frozen solid; ie, they gave way when I poked them in the tummy but other parts of them seemed frozen. Either way they were in the freezer the whole time and I only got them last week... do you think it's safe to feed them to my snake?

[Medusa<3]

I would get some other ones just to be safe.

[Pythonfriend]

the problem if the temperature isnt low enough is that the bacteria in the intestines of the rhodent stay active. And as these start feeding on the mouse from the inside, they produce warmth, release energy. In addition, dissolved salts and sugars and other stuff lowers the freezing point. so if you just go a little bit below zero, (in celsius zero is the freezing point of water) the rhodent can rot from the inside for extended periods of time without problems.

i guess thats why the bellies were soft while some other parts were solid.


id suggest -15 degrees celsius, wolframalpha says thats 5 degrees fahrenheit.

(by the way, dedicated freezers are much better than the freezer-sections of the fridge. the problem is that a fridge must keep the rest of the inside of the device ABOVE freezing while keeping the small freezer-section below freezing. As the temperature reaches equilibrium and the fridge-section gets close to freezing, the electronics will start heating the fridge-section, usually by switching on the 20 watt lightbulb inside the fridge-section, while cooling the freezing section to increase the temperature difference between the two sections. this imperfect design is not energy-efficient and leads to qute unstable temperatures.)

[LLLReptile]

The blood is not an issue, but the partially thawed mice is. I would throw them out personally, and buy new ones - it's hard to be sure how long they were thawed for, and as others have pointed out you don't know what kind of bacterial growth can be happening in the gut. Better safe than sorry!

-Jen