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Unfreezing Mice

N

nluogameno

Down but not out
I recently purchased frozen mice and tried defrosting one. I but him in a pot of water and heated it up, bad idea. Got all soggy and the skinn started falling off. It was pretty gross and stupid. I suppose this is an amateur mistake, but I am new to snakes after all. What would you say is the best way to defrost the litle buggers?
 
I take a mouse out of the freezer in the morning, put it in a ziplock "snack bag" and put it in the fridge for the day ,then after I eat supper I fill the sink with a little hotter than luke warm water and throw the mouse in bag -in the water for 10-15 mins or until i can feel the head is not cold ... then i feed my snakes.... if you skip the fridge or forget to put it in- it takes about 30-40 mins from frozen

you don't want the water too hot or you par boil the mouse

good luck
 
I simply fill an old margarine/butter tub with hottish water and pop the mouse in. I've never had a problem with doing it that way. Though I do dry off the mice a little before offering because some snakes don't like soaking wet prey.
 
I suspect one advantage--and I haven't experimented, you understand--to bag-thawing one's mouse is that you can avoid touching it--by hand or with tools--in its thawed state. I figure I'm not going to transmit much human smell to it while it's still a mouseicle. So I pop one off, put it in a bag, thaw it, and then tip the bag upside down to "plate" the mouse. I haven't yet added a sprig of parsley or put a tiny piece of apple in the mouse's mouth, but I've considered it. :D
 
rushrulz said:
I suspect one advantage--and I haven't experimented, you understand--to bag-thawing one's mouse is that you can avoid touching it--by hand or with tools--in its thawed state. I figure I'm not going to transmit much human smell to it while it's still a mouseicle. So I pop one off, put it in a bag, thaw it, and then tip the bag upside down to "plate" the mouse. I haven't yet added a sprig of parsley or put a tiny piece of apple in the mouse's mouth, but I've considered it. :D
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I use the ziplock method as well. I run my tap water until it's as hot as possible (about 130 - 135 F), fill a mug and put the ziplock baggie in, weighted down with a teaspoon. I tried the plop-in-water method, but the pinkies felt slimey and my babies were a lot less interested in eating. It was the only time I had to slice the pinkies to get the snakes to eat. I went back to the baggie and my snakes went back to eating without the bleeding. Since the tubs I feed in, the papertowels they're lined with and the lids that close them ALL smell like me, I doubt the snakes care if the pinkies have a whiff of me as well.
 
I put the mice in an ice cream tub (here in uk they are plastic like butter tubs but bigger) and put that in the sink then i boil a kettle and fill the sink with a couple of inches of boiling water

give it 20mins and they are defrosted, they are also warm which monty seems to like way better than just defrosted to room temperature all day

i check them by rubbing them in kitchen roll to see if they are done (and so i don't touch them)
 
The best way I've found is to fill a bowl, cup, whatever (depends on what you're thawing; I usually just fill the whole sink) with the hottest water that will come out of the tap; don't use boiling water, you want to thaw the mouse, not cook it. Put the mouse/rat in a ziploc bag in the water then let it thaw. Afterwards the prey item is usually wet so I just blot up some of the excess water with a paper towel then feed. Works great everytime!
 
blueapplepaste said:
The best way I've found is to fill a bowl with the hottest water that will come out of the tap.... Put the mouse/rat in a ziploc bag in the water then let it thaw.
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There seems to be three schools of thought for how to feed Frozen/Thawed, with the majority of us using the first two:

1. Mice in baggie, very hot water in some container, thaw for a few minutes.
Dry as needed before feeding. Takes five to ten minutes.

2. Mice loose, Very hot water in some container, thaw for a few minutes.
Have to dry before feeding. Takes five to ten minutes.

3. Mice in container, let thaw to room temp before feeding. Can take hours.

I use the first, but understand why many don't bother with the baggie. I think it's just as much work to have to pat the mice dry before feeding as it is to put them in the baggie. It's a coin toss, but I come down on the baggie side because I think it retains more of the mouses scent.

Fewer people use the "let 'em thaw" method, and that's probably the riskiest anyway. The longer the animal is left in room temp, the higher the likelihood of picking something up from the environment.
 
I use hot tap water in a bowl. Pinkies and fuzzies go straight into the water. Anything with hair goes into a plastic bag.
 
Plissken said:
I simply fill an old margarine/butter tub with hottish water and pop the mouse in. I've never had a problem with doing it that way. Though I do dry off the mice a little before offering because some snakes don't like soaking wet prey.
Click to expand...


That's the way, I do it and I also have no problems with getting my snakes to take it.
 
I actually do it slightly differently...

I just take the pinky out, and let it sit at room temp for about 15- 20...
next i just use some tongs and bath the pink under fairly hot tap water...
let them set again, and repeat about two times before offering it to them...
finally, I dry them a bit and feed them (never touching them throughout the process)…
(i usually use this time to handle them a bit too)...

does anyone see a problem/concern with this method... just curious...!?!
i havent had any problems to date...
 
logic said:
I actually do it slightly differently...
I just take the pinky out, and let it sit at room temp for about 15- 20...
next i just use some tongs and bath the pink under fairly hot tap water...
let them set again, and repeat about two times before offering it to them...
finally, I dry them a bit and feed them (never touching them throughout the process)…
(i usually use this time to handle them a bit too)...
does anyone see a problem/concern with this method... just curious...!?!
i havent had any problems to date...
Click to expand...

You seem to be creating unnecessary work for yourself. If you put the pinks in a baggie and let the baggie sit in hot water for five minutes, you can simply remove them with the tongs and feed them: no repeating of rinses, no patting dry, no touching the mice, and no waiting around for them to warm up to room temp.

I remove my mice from the freezer, put them in the baggies and set the baggies in hot water. I then set up my feeding bins (plastic shoeboxes with lids, lined with white papertowels). By the time I have the snakes in the bins, the mice are nice and warm and I can feed immediately. No time wasted, no extra effort.

Laziness is a virtue: it makes you be more efficient.

I also have arranged my feeding schedule to minimize the work, both in setting up and cleaning up. All babies are fed every four days. All yearlings to subadults are fed every eight days. My one adult is fed every 16 days; he is the only one who eats live, not F/T. Sixteen-day schedule is:

Day 4: Feed babies (pinkies)
Day 8: Feed babies and subadults (pinkies, fuzzies)
Day 12: Feed babies (pinkies)
Day 16: Feed babies, subadults, adult. (pinkies, fuzzies, live)
Set Brain to Day 0, repeat.

All I have to remember is whether I fed subadults the last time and whether I fed Lucius, the adult, the last time I fed the subadults. I've discussed my feeding schedule with several local breeder/hobbyists, and they seemed to agree it was a healthy schedule for the snakes, so long as I didn't oversize the meals for the babies and subadults, ie power feed. I pick the smallest pinkies for the smallest babies, smallest fuzzies for the smallest subadults, etc. Rarely does anyone skip a meal, and I don't panic if they do. The babies will have another chance in a four days, the subadults in just over a week.

Lucius wasn't always hungry if I tried to feed him in less than two weeks, but he wastes no time gulping down three adult mice every sixteen days. He went over three months without eating, from December into March (his choice, not mine!) I offered him a mouse once a week; when he ignored it for longer than a half hour, I removed it from the viv and put it back with its pals and pretended I wasn't worried about his disinterest at all <yeah, right!>. When he finally decided to eat again, he went right back to his old schedule as though it had never varied. I'm getting a two-year-old Taiwan Beauty, and she will be on the same schedule as Lucius.
 
I'm still using pinkies. I just run warm water on the pinkies in a bag. I can feel the pinkie thru the bag to tell if it's defrosted. Takes two minutes.
 
Joolz68 said:
I'm still using pinkies. I just run warm water on the pinkies in a bag. I can feel the pinkie thru the bag to tell if it's defrosted. Takes two minutes.
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Hey, that was the way my mother defrosted hamburger: toss the package in the sink, run lukewarm water over it until it thawed.
 
jaxom1957 said:
Hey, that was the way my mother defrosted hamburger: toss the package in the sink, run lukewarm water over it until it thawed.
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EXACTLY! If it's good enough for me, it's good enough for Nibblet.
 
Anyone buy live,,then "brain it' when you get home ?.This would seem to be the next best thing,outside of feeding live.
Can you convert your snake when he reaches adult hood ?.Go from handing him his dinner,to making chase/hunt it down for him self.
 
DO NOT brain live mice! This is curelty at its worst! Braining should only be done on mice that are already dead.
 
nluogameno said:
why would you brain a dead mouse?
Click to expand...
I have to with a hatchling, adds aroma to help trigger feeding.



I thaw all size rodents at room temperature. Take out 1 hour before feeding, they'll thaw.
 
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