How do you kill mice for snake consumption?

Question

Im thinking about getting a snake and I have found that breeding mice are cheaper then buying a frozen mouse at the store. But my only question is- How are the mice killed? Are they put into the freezer alive or what?

Im thinking about getting a snake and I have found that breeding mice are cheaper then buying a frozen mouse at the store. But my only question is- How are the mice killed? Are they put into the freezer alive or what?

1. please don't put answers like "Snakes perfer live mice" because snakes can get seriously hurts from the teeth of the rodent.

Thank you

Answer 1

Good luck with that project!

Depending on the size & type of snake you have & your snake husbandry goals (ie maintance or fast growth/breeding), you MAY need several mice a week.

As a rule snakes digest several smaller meals better than one large meal.
When I am encouaging my kingsnakes to grow rapidly or to put weight on the breeding age females, I will feed them up to 3 smaller size mice per feeding & feed at least twice per week. That would be 6 mice per snake per week.

Can you economically produce 6 mice per week? Probably not. The people who raise their own mice can do so because they buy wholesale quantities of food & bedding etc to cut down on costs. A friend who raises his own mice goes through a 50 lb bag of commercial rodent food every week!

If you have friends who also have snakes, I would recommend you & your friends get together & place a larger frozen mice order & split the order. Remember you will need a freezer to keep the extra mice in & if you are still at home with mom & dad, they might not want mice-cicles in with the frozen meat & veggies.
Sometimes local reptile clubs split mice orders to help out their members.

If you just want to maintain your snake & he/she doesn't eat much, you could raise your own rodents to ADD to your purchased rodents.
Mice are easy to "dispatch". Put the appropriate size mouse in a clothe bag or pillow case and whack him against a wall. That will either kill him or stun him enough that he won't hurt your snake. Only feed your snake when he is ready to eat.
Small pinky or fuzzy mice are usually too small to hurt your snake and do not require stunning/killing.

Answer 2

When they are pinkies and fuzzines they are harmless to your snake. I feed my large female cali king either jumbo mice or small rats. I don't kill or stun the mouse because she takes them out really quick. When I feed her rats I will stun them by putting them in a paper bag and hit them against the wall. Live food or freshly killed is a lot better than frozen thawed. But if you want to kill them you can stick them in a ventilated sealed tupperware and pop them in the freezer or build a co2 chamber.

If they are put in the freezer, yeah most likely they were alive at one point, when you buy them at the store, they were frozen a while back. Thats another thing, freshness can't be garunteed with frozen feeders.

The important part is your snake.. My ball python and my fore mentioned king will not eat frozen thawed food. Thats why I breed and give them live food. So some snakes take only live and some can be switched over to frozen and if you get a baby you can start them on frozen so you don't have to worry about them being bit. It really depends on what kind of snake you get.

For balls and my kings I was told to switch over to rats as soon as possible so they can get larger prey items and more evenly spaced out and rats are supposed to be better then feeding them mice.

If you'd like you can e-mail me if you have any questions, a few people do and I'm here to help. Or go to repticzone.com, a lot of people there are breeders and know what they're talking about with any snake you pick.

Answer 3

I built a CO2 chamber to pre kill my mice. It's considered the most humane way to kill rodents for reptile consumption. It costs about 40 to 50 dollars for all of the parts. Most of them can be found at a local paint ball supply store. Here is a link to the web site that I got my plans from. http://www.thereddragonsden.com/co2.htm In reality though it's really not worth breeding mice unless you have a lot of snakes. You're going to end up with a lot of extra mice that you don't need and wont use. They don't keep very long in the freezer and the mice will keep pumping them out regardless of how many you have stocked. Also CO2 isn't recommended for pinky mice because they aren't as susceptible to asphyxia as older mice. Pinkys are easily killed by putting something like a pencil or a screw driver on the back of their necks and pulling up on their tail. This breaks their neck and kills them instantly. I usually fed my snakes live pinkies though. Only freezing the ones I didn't need at the moment.

Answer 4

And it is true that snakes do prefer live mice. I know a lot about snakes except there stupid teeth. What you need to do is first NEVER feed a snake in its cage, bathtub is best bcuz you dont want it to recognize you opening the cage with food what if your just holding it? Then what you do is put the mouse in there for no more than 20-30 mins and if its not eaten by then take it out. A lot of snakes will die before eating a frozen mouse. Just take it out and the snake will be fine. (I know you didnt want to hear that live mice are better, just giving a little advice.)

Answer 5

You don't kill them most snakes will attack and feed aggressively if the mouse is still warm and twitching. I know this sounds bad but its better for both the snake as well as the mouse. You simply hold the mouse by the tail and flick it hard in the head and I mean hard. This causes the skull to fracture and in most cases the mouse will start twitching which allows the snake time to constrict and swallow its prey. The only reason you do not put live is that you do not want to damage the snake while it is feeding. Mice can kill your snake and will chew scales off if just thrown in the cage. If you choose to go the freezer variety you have to pry open the jaws of the snake and insert the mouses head about halfway in and this sometimes will cause the snake to eat otherwise warm up some chicken broth and toss a frozen mouse in for a couple of minutes and this will sometimes allow the snake to eat on its own.....its just nasty to look at. I prefer the thunk and dunk method of taking a live vermon wacking it in the head and dropping it into the feeding tank. Its more natural for the snake and a lot better than freezing or gassing a mouse to death.

P.S. Never feel sorry for the food.........

Answer 6

put the mouse in a bag and throw it against the wall or the floor, it should kill it if you do it right.

by the way adishav or whatever, if you're not a veggitarian then you eat part of an animal that was murdered by humans to feed you probably more than once a day so whats wrong with a snake owner killing 1 mouse once a week or so to feed their snake that would kill another animal anyway if it were in the wild?

Answer 7

I have recently switched to frozen mice as it is easier to store them for my snake. However, here's the method that I used:

1. Hold the mouse by the tail with your left hand.
2. With your right hand, place a pencil across the neck of the mouse.
3. Pull back quickly with your left hand...this will instantly break the neck of the mouse.

Sometimes the mouse will twitch a bit, but this is just reflex. If done correctly the mouse is instantly killed and spared the slow crushing death of the snakes jaws.

Happy feeding :-)

Answer 8

Mouse Kills Snake

Answer 9

Is the snake refusing rats or mice? If it is refusing one try the other. We have had snakes prefer either or as their first meal.
Are you feeding live or frozen? Some snakes may take to live over frozen/thawed. The body heat seems to trigger the feeding response. Others will take to thawed over live because the movement discourages them.


What time of day are you trying to feed the snake? Some snakes will feed better in the evenings while others will feed better in the mornings, try both.
Are you giving your snake enough time to feed, are you being a Mother Hen? Over zealous herpers will check on their new pet every few minutes while feeding. Your snake will develop a strong feeding response over time, but at first they need privacy to feel secure. Also try to keep the prey item in over a 12-hour period without disturbing the snake (be careful with live prey and aggression). Novice keepers will remove the prey after just a few minutes in the cage thinking that if it did not happen immediately it won’t happen at all.


Now as far as how often to try and feed? Don’t do all these suggestions in a day’s time! Check the cage environment and try 1 method every 2-4 days until the snake eats. That’s not to say try it every day for 4 days straight! Try it once and if it does not work try again in a few days with another method. Offering all these different things to your snake at once will confuse it and may prolong the feeding process.


FORCE-FEEDING should be the last thing on your mind! Too many people are too quick to force a meal on a snake. After weeks of pulling out your hair, trying all things under the sun and thinking about just freezing the "damn thing", one day you will walk in and find that the pinkie is gone. You’ll check the entire cage, under and around the water bowl, under the substrate/newspaper. You’ll even look around the outside of the cage as if by some miracle this small, blind, hairless animal climbed out of the cage to safety. Then it will hit you, oh my god it ate!!!

Answer 10

breeding mice may be cheaper, but you will quickly find that you'd spend more time taking care of the food than the animal it's for... Pet stores sell frozen rodents for RIDICULOUS prices. You can get them in bulk for significantly cheaper at reptile shows and swaps. You can also purchase online, but for one snake the shipping for frozen rodents would hardly be worth it. Go for a show/swap/expo.