Raising mice/rats for snakes and pets

[punk-a-doodle]

Yes, CO2 is the main approved method of small mammal euthanasia allowed in laboratories. If using a gassing chamber, there are several steps I would ensure to follow:
-If possible, do not have more than one animal in the chamber at a time, and do not keep, especially rats (they always seem light years ahead of the mice in awareness), other animals present in a room when you are gassing animals
-Allow the animal to remain in its home cage if at all possible through the gassing procedure. Ie. You could even move animals you know you will be gassing that week to small cages that can fit inside a gas chamber a week to a few days beforehand. This simply limits the stress of a new environment
-MOST IMPORTANT: Ensure you are allowing the gas to enter at the rate of 10-20 percent per minute. If you go too high, the animal *will* become distressed, and will thrash about. If you keep the rate low, you will have a calm animal the entire time
-Use a clear chamber so you can visually monitor the animal the entire time
-Use reliable beheading or cervical dislocation methods in any rodents under 14 days of age or sick animals that are breathing shallowly, as both take in much less oxygen and gas is not a good means to kill them with. You can use gas on them first and them use another method if desired.
-Secondary methods (ie. beheading after gassing) are encouraged to ensure death, but do check for breathing and a pulse afterwards if not using a secondary method

If done correctly, it is a low-stress way to kill animals. If there is a risk of doing it incorrectly, I strongly recommend using beheading methods instead.

On feeder animals, mice are easy to raise, and African soft-furred 'rats' are becoming more popular and easy to locate. They are being used instead of rats by some people I know. They seem to be intermediates between rats and mice on the evolutionary scale, but lean towards the side of mice in many areas. Their awareness and social level seems more mouse-like, which is one reason some seem to prefer them if they find rats to be too aware/intelligent to feed.

What kind of reptiles are you interested in getting/own? Let's see some photos!

 

[Gatorpit]

I worked at a internationally known reptile/rodent farm for around 6 years. They supply frozen rodents and pet reptiles to every Petco in the country, and supply private collectors as well.

There is (like in all things regarding livestock) a tremendous difference in raising a few dozen rodents personally as pets or feeders and raising hundreds of thousands for distribution. However, many factors are the same.

Just gonna hit a few points I've seen discussed.


Snakes and food color prefference.

Not all snakes use heat sensing pits to detect prey. Some use motion, some use smell, some use sight, and some use the vibrations prey makes through the ground.

Most snakes do NOT care what color their prey is, however some snakes (most notibly the ball python) will develop food prefferences based on size, species, sex and sometimes color of the prey item being offered.

However...as far as breeding mice, color DOES matter. White (albino) mice generally have smaller litters of larger babies, where colored mice generally have larger litters of smaller babies. People feeding geckos and hatchling corn snakes (for example) preffer to keep and breed colored mice because their new born pinks are small enough to feed to tiny reptiles. Conversely, it takes the pinks of colored mice longer to grow to the size required by slightly larger reptiles. Most large feeder mouse colonies are predominantly white with a sub-colony of a few coloreds, as they are not in as high demand (except possibly in hatching season if you just happen to live near a lot of reptile breeders, which is unlikely). Color in rats doesn't matter (as far as feeders go).


Are frozen rodents from pet stores killed humanely? (also: Methods of killing feeders)

Depends on the pet store, and your definition of "humane". If the store kills and freezes it's own frozen feeders, they may use different methods than the supplier of the frozen rodents at a different pet store may have used.

There are two widely accepted methods for killing a feeder rodent...gassing, and "bonking". Different people have different names for "bonking" but it works the same way. You take the animal by it's tail, and very forcefully swing it into a hard edge (table, cinderblock, counter), this will eaither crush the skul or dislocate the neck if done correctly. If done incorrectly, you may end up just injuring it, and having to "bonk" it again, and again until you get it right. If you know how to do it correctly, as violent as it sounds, bonking is the most humane method. It is the quickest, least emotionally traumatizing (for the animal) and least painful. Open cage, grab tail, swing, bonk, dead. As fast as it took you to read that. This isn't the most pleasant for humans though, you can't be squeamish or hesitant, or you WILL make the animal suffer. Best to let a pro do it if the though of doing this doesn't sit well with you, sometimes it can be bloody. If you hit the head instead of the neck (perfectly ok as far as animal is concerned, he's dead instantly either way), it tends to bleed quite a bit, and sometimes eyes pop out.

It *seems* gruesome...but again, the animal is less likely to suffer when this method is used correctly then with any other. This is the method most often employed by private owners/breeders/reptile feeders and in pet stores that sell fresh "pre-killed" feeders. What this means is you go in, pick a live rodent, and an employee will take it in back alive, and bring it back out packaged discretely in a paper bag. If you've ever done this, you may have noted a bit of bleeding from the feeder's nose/mouth. A good indication that "bonking" was used.

Gassing is the method employed by all large scale rodent farms that produce and distribute frozen feeders. The gas used is CO2. Here's the problem with gassing with CO2. it is NOT peaceful, by any stretch of the word. The animals do *not* just "go to sleep", and it's MUCH worse when it's being done en masse. CO2 simply deprives the brain of oxygen, the animals suffocate, and they struggle, and gasp, and cry out, frantically trying to escape. It takes 2-10 minutes for the gas to do it's work. When you're gassing rodents by the sterilite bin full (200 mice at a time), it's hellish. We did rabbits once a month, and we'd have to sit on top of the bins to keep the dying rabbits from kicking the bin over or lid off.

And that's if things go *right*. Mess up, and the animals you thought were dead, and started processing regain consciousness and you have to do it all over again.

The end result is that the product are non-damaged, non-bloody, "pretty", "peacefull" LOOKING food items that customers can feel good about.

I'm not opposed to the CO2 method exactly, it's the only way if you're producing on a large scale, but it is certainly not the most humane method. Assuming your deffinition of humanity accounts for the emotional/mental suffereing of an animal as much as the actual level of physical pain. Suffocation may not *hurt*, but it takes a long time, and the mental anguish must be terrible.

A third method you may hear offered is spinal dislocation. Hold the head down on a surface, yank straight back on the tail hard until you hear a snap. This basically breaks the neck. Or it's supposed to. Works great on larger animals like rabbits. On mice and rats (especially mice and young rats) it's FAR more likely to simply "de-glove" the tail, or yank the tail right off. De-gloving is when the skin comes off. DO NOT use this method with mice and small rats, beware if you try with larger rats.


Housing feeders/breeders

MOST rodent breeders keep their rodents in plastic containers or specially made rack systems. I do not know of ANY rodent housing or rack system that employs plexiglass. For years rodent racks were made by hand out of wood, hardware cloth and plastic cat litter pans. The rodents lived in the pans which were arranged in the rack so that each pan could lide in and out like a drawer. We used these racks for years in the rodent barn at the snake farm...hundreds of pans, hundreds...and none ever got chewed through.

Racks are being commercially built now out of metal, heavier grade plastics and with super special automatic watering systems and such.

These rack systems (handmade or factory bought) are what all large scale breeders of rodents use, as they are the most practical in every way.

However, they are not the best for the emotional/mental well being of the rodents. If you can build wire hutches or cages, and keep the population to a happy minimum...probably 3-5 females and a male, they would be happiest, each "family" in their own cage. You don't have to go nuts with space, but for a family of 5 females and one male, you probably want to go at least 2 feet by two feet.

Rodents are extremely intelligent, and would be greatly enriched by giving them "toys" on occasion. doesn't have to be store bought stuff, just different random chewable items like pieces of wood, basically anything they can chew on that won't hurt them. Papertowel and toilet paper tubes are a favorite. They shred them for bedding and have fun doing it.

 

[Gatorpit]

shoot...I meant to say for setting up RATS make a "family group" of 3-5 females and a male. Mice do MUCH better breeding when the females are kept singly, Mice can have very strong/odd/violent group dynamics. A higher ranking female may kill the offspring of other females. Females in groups may become socially stressed due to bullying (that may be too subtle for the enexperienced human to pick up on) an abandon or eat their own litters.

Rats on the other hand, are probably the best mothers in nature. Not only will they care for their own babies in crowded or stressful situations, but they are widely known to adopt and carefor the infants of not only other rats, but pretty much ANY species you try. At the rodent/snake farm we used to give the nursing rats orphaned mice to care for. A behaviorist years ago noted this behavior in lab rats, and as an experiment, offered a variety of baby animals to see how the mother rat would ract. Without fail, she retrieved and attempted to care for everything offered, which included a KITTEN and a baby chick.

 

[punk-a-doodle]

Gator, if those rabbits were kicking, gasping, trying to escape, etc. too much gas is likely being introduced!! I would definitely bring that up with your previous place of employment immediately so they can look into it. Gas should not be present in the chamber when animals are placed inside it, it should be slowly introduced (10 percent rate is ideal), and the container should be secure so that it should work very rapidly.

I've had to gas mice before for work, and when the rate is correct, they do not do any desperate/panicked behavior. Low introduction rates should cause confusion rather than pain (high levels however will cause stabbing and intense pain). A tech did see that sort of behavior when a valve broke and too much gas was entering the chamber. The rats and mice freaked out, so they knew to have maintenance look at the chamber.

 

[Gatorpit]

You know, come to think of it...nobody there ever said anything about "proper amounts" of gas. We used big rubber sterilite bins with a hole in the lid just big enough to stick the nozzle that's attached to a hose affixed directly to the big (4 foot tall) commercial CO2 tanks and turned them on as high as we could. Hmm. Maybe I should send them an e-mail. Though, I hate to say it, being a profit based company, I doubt they'd be inclined to change their methods unless it was a legal matter.

So...don't buy you're frozen feeders from PetCo, because they were likely inhumanely killed...as all frozen feeders at all PetCos come from this particular company, that apparently has no idea that there is a "proper" way to gas feeders.

 

[turney31]

Punk and Gator, I haven't, much time to respond this morning, but great Info and thank you all so much. I'll answer questions later. Off to work.

 

[punk-a-doodle]

Quote: Ain't that the way of things?

 

[Gatorpit]

Ain't that the way of things?

You nailed it. It's a HUGE part of why I'm even on this forum. I want to know where my food comes from, what went into it, and how it was treated. It's why I never buy animals from pet stores. Ever. Same reason. Animals bred on a large scale to supply pet stores are not going to recieve the same care in breeding practices and husbandry (think: puppy mills, and "puppy" mills exist for every species you see in pet stores. Marshall ferrets would be another good example, so would the large scale chick hatcheries). I buy all my exotic pets from small scale private hobbyists and breeders. Will be doing the same for my vege. seed this year and all my livestock will come from local, family farms.

 

[punk-a-doodle]

That's the way to do it Gator!

Trying to go that route myself. I've been finding that even my fish do better from small, caring breeders. That's so neat about buying seeds from local farms...I never even thought to do that.



Quote: Man, off to work here too, but I really wish it was back off to bed and sleep instead. XD

 

[Gatorpit]

we just happen to have an organization here (not for profit) that's started a seed bank for fruits and veggies that gow well locally...that were actually GROWN here, as opposed to seeds from companies claiming the variety should do well here when the plants the seeds came from are grown in a completely different climate. But yeah...find locals that grow veggies, and hopefully they are the type to save their own seeds from their best producing plants instead of buying catalogue seeds every year.

And fish...fish have it the worst out of any pet trade family. Most tropicals available in petstores (not including varities like common livebearers that have been selectively bred in captivity...mollies, platties, swordtails, etc) are caught wild in either South America or Africa (or wherever they come from) shipped to importers in the US and emptied into seriosuly overcrowded (and subsequently disease ridden) tanks, stay a day or two, get scooped back up, boxed up and shipped out to distributers across the US, again unpacked and dumped into overcrowded, disease ridden holding tanks, and then yet again, boxed up and shipped off to individual petstores, and dumped into overcrowded disease ridden tanks. Even if they manage to avoid disease, the stress of the experience from wild river/lake to home aquarium frequently cause the fish's death in short order. It's a MAJOR reason why fish tend to die off so quickly/easily in home aquariums. No matter how well your tank is set up, if you buy stressed fish, they may die after a short period of time, no matter what yoiu do.

On the other hand, it's very difficult to find hobbyists who breed the popular tropicals. Livebearers (those mentioned above) and things like oscars, discus, angels and others are often captive bred, but the ever popular little schoolers like danios and tetras...nobody breeds those. Usually breeders focus on fish whose individual selling prices are relatively high. Trying to breed fish who sell for about $1 each isn't practical I guess.