Today I went to visit Family Reptiles in Lakeland, FL. I have enjoyed talking to them at the past couple of Repticons and I was very impressed with how nice and clean the facility was and how healthy all the animals appeared.

I was impressed until I asked if they had any frozen rat pups. One of the guys working, I didn't catch his name, told me they didn't have any frozen but I could get live. He then said he had just put some in the freezer but they weren't ready yet. I was under the impression that they had gassed the rats and they just weren't frozen yet. That was soooo not the case. He opened the freezer and opened a little storage bin and there were probably about 50 rats (from pinks up to almost weaned rats) that were still alive and half frozen.

They just threw the rats in the freezer to freeze to death.

It made me sick. How can you have so little respect for the lives of these animals? How can they think it is okay to just let these poor things have a slow death...

Is this common for people who supply frozen rodents? Is it an accepted practice to put live rodents in the freezer?

This just makes me even more thankful that I am able to produce almost all of the rodents I need to feed my collection.

I don't know, maybe I am overly sensitive.....but I can't support a business that does that once I know what goes on....I was literally crying in the store. It made me feel sick