blisters on a pinky

[Slippery Ernie]

I bought a batch of frozen pinkies from my local pet store, and noticed that one of them has 3 pretty large blisters on it. I flushed it but I was wondering if anyone knows what causes that, and if the rest of the pinkies are safe.

If its from thawing and refreezing, or if it's from some disease, I probably won't want to use them.

Thanks

 

[danvega]

How were the frozen pinkies packaged? If they were just in ziploc bags and not vacuum sealed, it may be freezer burn. If they were not packaged/produced by the petstore, they may have thawed out and then refrozen. I would probably return them to the store or toss them out, better to be safe then sorry.

 

[Taceas]

Was it a blister, or just a lighter patch of skin?

I've noticed that in extremely young pinks, when the mother(s) typically move them around, they perforate the skin a little. And when frozen in just a regular ziplock bag, that's the most accessible place for air to cause freezer burn. So you can get a cream colored spotted pink.

I've fed them off as usual, no snakes have had any issue with them. Most rodent parasites/diseases are long dead after being frozen for over a week, so its pretty safe, just not appetizing.

 

[cornmorphs]

its likely to be freezer burn i reckon.
for the price of a pink though i would just chuck it, not worth the risk.

 

[Slippery Ernie]

Thanks for the responses. There was only one pink with blisters, so I got rid of that. But I had it in a bag of 9 or 10 others that I didn't want to chuck. The others looked OK, so I fed them to my snake and he seems fine.

They were not light/dark areas, they were actual raised blisters. Looked just like a blister you would get on your hand from a burn or something.