Anyone buy frozen feeders from petco?

[BallPythonsRule]

I euthanize my own rats. I gas em and freeze em to MY standards. Kept clean and what not.

You know what?? At a local show we just had rodent pro was there and I had a chance to go through they're supply. After seeing them ill never buy from them. Sure they have good prices. But all they're rats were just yellow. It was gross.

I'm asusming that's because of the urine. It just doesn't look sanitary. Just my experience.

Gas them?? Is that healthy to the snake?
And the thing with rodent pro... hmm... intersting...

[Kristy]

I euthanize my own rats. I gas em and freeze em to MY standards. Kept clean and what not.

You know what?? At a local show we just had rodent pro was there and I had a chance to go through they're supply. After seeing them ill never buy from them. Sure they have good prices. But all they're rats were just yellow. It was gross.

I'm asusming that's because of the urine. It just doesn't look sanitary. Just my experience.

Exactly, the rats from Petco are yellow and dirty and sticky. Its like a film all over them and it is just gross. The smell is horrible.


I just remembered that they breeder I bought one of my cresties from is opening a reptile store here. So I may have to talk to him about feeder rats. Hopefully he will carry them. I need to find out who he will be getting them from though.

[grizz2534]

I have boughten from Petco in the past, but moved and now there isn't a petco near me. Petco was 30 miles from my house so I didn't buy from them much, but never had a problem. I work at Petsmart now, and I have looked through a lot of our frozen mice and they all look great. I have boughten about two dozen mice from my store so far and haven't had a problem. They are kind of pricey though, something like $10 for 6 pinkies and $11 for 6 fuzzies or "small mice" or "medium mice" and $11 for 4 large. More or less the small mice are hoppers and the med are normal mice. I know we get some animals in that die right away and look crappy, but we isolate them and take them to the vet and give them medication. I know since I've been there we've saved 15 birds and a dozen hamsters. I don't know if petco has this ability or not. But like petco we don't sell live animals for food (except feeder fish and insects).

[2kdime]

Yeah it safe for our snakes. The way it works is it asphixiates (sp) the rats. Its not something that stays inside the rat. You gas em. Let em sit for a few minutes. Then freeze em.

There's nothing harmful that remains inside the rat. Its the same way any of the commercial frozen feeder retailers do it if any one was unaware. If it wasn't safe they wouldn't be doing it and selling em to the public and making a living/business of it.

Not saying that's all I based my information on. I researched everything and made sure I understand what I'm doing. I didn't wanna be making a mistake doing it or feed unsafe food to my snakes. But yeah to wrap it up. Its safe.

[SatanicIntention]

It's just an overdose of carbon dioxide. Everyone breathes it in every single breath they take. It is absorbed or it it just released from the lungs, and poses no harm to the snake.

[2kdime]

You said it satanicintention!!

Its not something that gets absorbed into the body. Its just a gas that displaces the amount of oxygen thats available for absorbtion into the lungs.

Start slow to get em into a calm slow sleep state. Then up it a little more for a few minutes. That's about it. I don't know if it gets much more humane. Sure I could feed live. But why risk it.

[chz]

I know the petco here gets them from Gourmet Rodent. Don't know anything about that company.

I dont think the Petco "Gourmet Rodent" is a brand name, but more of a description of the bags contents (albeit a VERY misleading one). That would explain the differences in quality.. possibly different breeders?

[HellPuppi]

I work as a groomer at my local petco, and I only get frozen on occasion, and so far all the ones I've gotten have been in good shape.
It's rather odd, but everyone there knows I buy live mice for feeders, but no one ever has said anything about it not being allowed. We get a lot of people coming in buying rats and mice for feeders and I've never heard of it being against policy. Maybe it's just because we do have a tendency to ignore the rules .
The only complaint I have against my Petco (well it's mine until I move in a few weeks) is that we only have one person who knows much about reptiles, and he's only in 2 days a week. Everyone else is deathly afraid of the snakes, so I have to go help the poor girls out. That and we got some hatching chams in, and no one knew they had to be misted! Poor things! I did my best every day I worked, but unfortunately the 2 we got passed away. We do take sick/injured animals to the vet, but unfortunately something like misting gets overlooked in the course of the day.
Ah well. Don't think I added much to the conversation.

[AzureN1ght]

When I ran out of F/T this summer (I was trying to switch Auryn from mice to rats and I'd picked some up from Kara while I was a NERD), I went to PetCo for a bag of F/T mice, since Auryn was having none of the rats.

They were not only PUNY, they were the saddest, sorriest looking things I'd ever seen. Since Auryn hadn't eaten in a few weeks, refusing the F/T rats, I fed him the mice but I resorted to feeding a couple live for two weeks instead of feeding him those frozen things from PetCo while I figured out who to order F/T from online.

I used Big Cheese rodents ( http://www.bigcheeserodents.com/ ), their mice come in vaccum-sealed trays. They were shipped to me with dry ice, so the mice were frozen SOLID when they reached me, they were packed perfectly, look great and are the size I ordered. It's where I'll be getting my F/T from here on out.

[chz]

Ah well. Don't think I added much to the conversation.

Don't be so critical of yourself. I enjoyed reading what you had to say. Didn't know Petco had a policy against selling live mice as "feeders". Everytime I buy live from them I specifically say "can i get a feeder mouse."

But yea, Petco = horrible at caring for snakes. The one near me has 4 BPs in a single tank with no hides, and a dirty water dish. It's pathetic.