Grimness

[kurgan]

Just had easily the worst expeirnce of my year of python husbandry.
The other night I tried to feed Monty his usual weaner rat (f/t) and I thought I'd try a 'reject' - one he previously didn't take and that I refroze. He struck very violently and the rat burst spraying blood and guts over the tank, this clearly grossed him out too as he promptly dropped the rat and hadn't eaten it when I checked a few hours later. He was still very much in hunting mode (strong rat smell ijn tank) and I think would have struck my hand if I had reached in to clean up. The smell was already vile and in the middle of an English heatwave I was in no mood to leave the dead rat in to rot overnight so I got it out with the forceps.

The folowing day there was a very bad odour in the tank and when I opened it up I nearly gagged - a chunk of rat guts had got into the waterbowl and slowly cooked overnight into fermented rat gut soup. I can still smell it if I think back

[xdeus]

I can sympathize. That is one of the most disgusting odors I've ever encountered, and my experience probably wasn't as bad as yours. One of my big snakes grabbed her rat by the belly and somehow ripped her up eventually stringing intestines all over the place. The odor was unbelievably foul, but I imagine your mess was much worse.

[jotay]

I feel your pain.
That is one of the minor reasons I switched to live.
No matter where I got my frozen rodents from or no matter what method I used to defrost when my bp struck them they would burst. And if ya didn't get all the blood etc cleaned up it would soooo may the cage stink.
I can still smell that smell. UGH !

[Emilio]

That's definitely a good reason to feed live.

[liam_rokocoko]

is it ok to refreeze mice?

[JLC]

is it ok to refreeze mice?

If it hasn't been out too long, yes. But I wouldn't recommend doing so more than once. If the snake doesn't eat it after 30-60 minutes, it's ok to put back in the freezer. If it's been in there overnight, I would go ahead and ditch it.

Refreezing does give you a higher risk of "explosions" as described in this thread.

[kurgan]

I get all my rats from http://www.eurorep.co.uk/ and none have exploded on the first thawing (yet!). I've probably fed about 5 or 6 'refreezes' and 2 have burst including this one (the first burst before it got near the snake). I have also noticed that feeding these has a much higher failure rate - presumably the extra freeze/thaw cycle loses a lot of rat scent. All in all if it wasnt that it seems such a criminal waste I would be inclined to not try them at all.

[Grim91Z]

Ewwwwwww!!!

My BP will draw blood from the F/T mice he's been chowing on, good thing I feed in a separate container with newspaper.

[lisa77]

sometimes when you defrost them & the water is too hot it makes thier bellys very fragile & they burst - & yeah it smells so so so so so bad !

[Lady Python]

Maybe I'm overly fussy, but I won't re-freeze any mice or rats my snakes don't eat - I bin them. I wouldn't re-freeze food for myself so won't do it for the snakes either.