Question About Feeding Stunned Mice

[kc261]

As MarkS pointed out, there is a rather big and important difference between stunning a mouse, and killing it. I do not believe it is as common as f/t or live feeding, but feeding pre-killed prey is definitely something that lots of people do and it is perfectly acceptable as long as it is done right.

Stunning is just cruel and dangerous, and very hard to do right. If you use slightly too much force, the mouse will be dead. If you don't use quite enough, the mouse will either stay conscious the entire time, which is obviously very cruel, or there is the possibility it will wake up after you have put it in your snake's enclosure, which has the potential to be dangerous to the snake because the mouse is likely to wake up in a very defensive mode. This would be especially dangerous to any snake that will just start eating the disabled prey, rather than constricting it first.

Pre-killing is fine, as long as you do it correctly. There are 3 methods I am aware of. Cervical dislocation (breaking the neck) is easy and effective, and once you learn how much force to use, you'll never end up with a stunned but not dead mouse. In fact, I think if you don't use enough force, the mouse won't even be stunned. It is not for the faint of heart, though. CO2 is also a good method, but it does require a bit more effort to get set up. Once you have a CO2 set-up, it is not too much of a hassle. There is a chance if you don't leave them in the CO2 long enough that they could wake back up, but when they do they should be a little groggy at first, so it should give you and/or your snake time to react before the mouse has a chance to do anything. Finally, a lot of people whack the mouse. While a good hard whack probably could be considered a quick and humane death, this method has greater potential for creating an inhumane situation if you don't whack the mouse hard enough. For this reason, and since there are other, better methods available, I recommend against using the whacking method.

Personally, I find feeding live to be a good alternative also. With RARE exceptions, the mice die very quickly after being struck. Since there would be the occasional miss with any of the pre-killing methods also, I don't feel that allowing the snake to do the job nature intended is any less humane.