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Freezing sticks to kill stuff

King21

King21

New member
How long do you have to freeze sticks and twigs from outside in order to kill everything that may be living in them before you can safely put them into a viv with a corn snake?
 
I think someone said you should put them in the oven at 250 degrees for like a half hour or something to kill everything. I never heard of freezing decorations.

Is that right??
 
danigurrl said:
I think someone said you should put them in the oven at 250 degrees for like a half hour or something to kill everything. I never heard of freezing decorations.

Is that right??
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I heard that heating is the right way. I never heard about freezing. I guess freezing would kill everything if it was cold enough but I do not think that the freezer would cold enough to kill everything.
 
You can do either. I personally baked my log because it just seems like heat would be the better bacteria and germ killer. Baking it at 350 degrees for 45 mins (mine was really thick though, so thinner ones take significantly less) and watching it all the time to prevent scorching. You should scrub it thoroughly first with hot water and a brush, no chemicals! But if you do want to freeze it I would suggest leaving it in there for at least 2-3 weeks. I'm no expert on freezing to kill parasites and such but it does take about 1-2 months to kill off all the nasties in mice, I imagine wood would be quite a bit less. Hope this helps! :D
 
Oh ya one more thing. Make sure you remove ALL bark from any wood you use. Most barks are bad for corns because of oils and not to mention the breakdown to fine dust which can create respiratory problems.
 
If I recall correctly from Biology class, bacteria can survive freezing just fine and dandy.

D80
 
Maybe I will just try the baking method. I dont remember where I heard of freezing, but I definately have heard of it.
 
Heating is definetly the way to go in my opinion. And boiling water straight from the kettle kills pretty much anything, as you might imagine :)

It's up to you whether or not you try freezing, but for me personally I really wouldn't rely on this to remove all bacteria.
 
I agree with most everyone here; heating is the way to go. I baked mine at 250 degrees for about 1.5 hours, and then cranked it up to 300 or so for the last 30 minutes. It seems to have done the trick. I haven't had any problems. Just keep a close eye and make sure it doesn't burst into flames :devil01:
 
your_only_nightmare said:
thias is gonan sound stupid,..... what if you cant fit the sticks in the oven, i have to great ones but they dont fit....
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Does your neighbor have a big oven? If not, I would suggest scrubbing your sticks very well with a bleach and water solution and rinsing them even better. You may want to soak them in the bleach solution in the bathtub until your confident that anything that could harm your snake is dead. Maybe an hour or so? Rinse them EXTREMELY well and then let 'em dry. That's what I would do, but others out there may have better ideas.
 
Bacteria can take all kinds of temperature extremes. If you want to be as sure as you can.....why not bake, freeze, and take it one more step and submerge in water and bleach solution. The only problem with the latter is in may cause some color fading.

What the heat doesn't get, the freezing will and what freezing doesn't get the heating will and then if both of those don't work you can hope drowning in bleach water may work! :crazy02:

But then again...corns do live in the wild and they don't bake their logs... :sidestep:
 
as others said freezing will not kill bacteria. freezing will temporarily stop bacteria's growth but not kill it. Parasites however can be killed by freezing.
i would worry more about parasites than bacteria, there's bacteria everywhere there;s nothing u can do. baking will kill the bacteria on whatever you;re baking but not the ones on your hands, tank, waterbowl, the air, ect... most are harmless so i wouldn;t worry too much.
 
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