(Feeder) Euthanasia question

[MikeC1212]

I don't want to breed mice/rats for 1 snake. Don't want huge packs of frozen mice/rats in my freezer for 1 snake. Seems like the only thing I can do is buy them 1 at a time from the pet store. I'd feed live, but if my snake gets chewed on, I'll be pretty upset with myself....so....is there anything I can do other than dry ice or whacking? I read something about CO2 but it seemed questionable.

If there's really no other way, how do I even go about the "whacking"? LOL sounds stupid but.. I think of 2 things: 1) Having to really giving it a good one to take it out (seems messy) and 2) Not really giving it a good one, and only crippling it. I don't think that sounds good either.

someone let me know please


Mike

[Freakie_frog]

Well dry ice produces CO2 when it melts so thats cool.

[MikeC1212]

I guess I meant the CO2 from the dry ice and the CO2 canisters (used for paintball guns) ..how the ice was expensive/hard to keep and it was kind of hard to regulate the canisters. I'm not willing to pay a lot of money to kill a mouse, obviously. I'm just seeking out a cheap humane method for 1 or 2 mice.

[Nate]

You've got to experiment with different methods and figure out what works best for you.

If you can drive to a nearby store and pick up a live mouse or rat and just drop it in, that's the easiest it will ever be. But you need to watch and make sure the mouse/rat isn't biting your snake. These horrid pictures of chewed up snakes is the result of leaving a rat in with your snake for hours and hours, and then played up as if "if you feed live, this will happen to your snake!!", which is not at all true. I've had hundreds of successful live feeds, and I know there are people on here that have had muli-thousands of successful live feeds with no problems.

If you prefer f/t, then you could always buy in bulk from an online supplier... with 1 ball python, one box of frozen rodents could last you a LONG time...

[Kagez28]

http://www.ball-pythons.net/forums/s...ad.php?t=33850

here is a great sticky about setting up a little feeder killing box....

this way you can buy 5-6 mice, kill them, then freeze them, when you need them just thaw them, feed them.

this way you're not going to the pet store every week. and you won't have a freezer full of mice, just 5-6.

[cassandra]

Another thing to ask is if the store where you buy feeders will euthanize your feeder for you. It means you need to get home and feed it without dilly dallying too much, but if they do euthanize, they know how to do it quickly and painlessly for you. =)

My reptile store will euthanize for you and even, if you like, put feeders in freezer-ready plastic pouches, one feeder per pouch, sealed and everything (not quite sure how they do that, some sort of plastic heat sealer maker thing).

[Stewart_Reptiles]

I breed my own rodents but I am bad at planning, and do not want to be overstock with rat over 45 to 65 grams (which is the largest I feed) so I use a CO2 chamber like this one http://www.thereddragonsden.com/co2.htm

Very easy to make and it will cost you around 50$ for all the material all I did is replaced the jug by a 15 quart tub and since you want to do one feeder at the time you can use a 6 quart tub.

Dry ice is often hard to find and not really worth it for one mouse at the time since you cannot store it.

[lillyorchid]

Before I started breeding my own rats for my gang and well way before I had a "gang" of snakes, I use to just buy f/t mice from the pet store. Later on when I got more snakes and started breeding my own rats I now use co2 from a small paint ball canister to put them to sleep.

Go and buy a CO2 tank used for paintball, and what is called a remote (a tube with an on/off feature) and a box. Poke a hole in the box and turn on the gas and they go to sleep. Like the other method except in the tank the CO2 won't go bad until it is empty then it is three bucks to refill it. My 9oz lasts me around a months worth of gasing. then you can get it refilled!

I've also used the way of the sticky that is posted on here and that way is very easy to do so and works pretty quick.