Culling mutated hatchlings:

[Eventide]

Jay_Bunny, I've thought of the same thing. I think that's the only time I would put a snake in a freezer: if I believe it will experience more pain waiting for the vet appointment than it would in the freezer. Yes, it's a judgment call, but it's a good one as long as one is focusing on the well-being of the animal and not on effort, cost, and/or convenience.

I have a flash freezer so I use that. It takes about 2 minutes for a hatchling to be frozen solid... I did test it with a still born before ever using it for such situations and through luck have only used it once since then. With that in mind and this being, the fastest way that causes the least amount of mess and has the least chance of human error in my opinion, would be the most humane. As to anything else I have had numerous snakes put down by a vet and no matter which vet I took them to, exotics vet, normal vet, or even reptile vets that I trust, There was atleast a 5-10 minute wait for the animal to die. To me that is not right. The faster the better. It may cause a little pain but not as much as I have seen from a vet or any other form of euthanization.

I can't say I know what a flash freezer uses to freeze stuff, but two minutes is still plenty of time to feel pain. The AVMA doesn't even recommend liquid nitrogen (LN2) for reptiles above ~40 grams (I don't recall the exact weight), and LN2 is 40 Kelvin!

Faster is not always better. Freezing in a normal freezer may sometimes be faster than taking it to a vet, but that doesn't mean the animal feels less pain in the freezer. The point isn't necessarily speed--it's the amount of pain the animal has to feel. Since vets euthanize by injecting a sedative, the only pain the animal feels is the injection. After that, the animal goes unconscious; even if it takes 10 minutes for the animal to die, it's not feeling anything during that time.

Something else I found interesting when I first looked this stuff up several months ago: Freezing is humane if the reptile is sedated first. Food for thought.