- In the past, I've done videos
about live versus frozen rodents
for your pet snakes, lizards,
or really anything that's gonna eat rodents,
and I've always said that frozen is the best
and live is a pretty lame choice.
However, since making that video years ago,
I've actually fed
a pretty decent handful of live rodents to animals.
I'd say around 30 or 40 in this time,
and I've had more experiences with it.
I'll talk about why I had to later in this video,
but to start, we can talk about the pros to live
and the cons to frozen,
and then move on to some other reasons people have
as to why live might actually have some decent perks.
So first off, with frozen,
you don't have to keep 'em alive,
you just buy 'em frozen
and they're already dead, (laughing)
and they're good to go,
you don't have to care for them
before feeding them to your animal.
They're also killed for you,
they're euthanized in advance,
normally with carbon dioxide,
which is heavier than oxygen,
so it goes into the container that the rodents are in,
pushes the oxygen out
and they suffocate to death.
It's not the most painless death,
carbon dioxide and suffocation apparently burns,
I haven't experienced it myself,
but I'd still pick this
over getting crushed by an animal,
or mauled by a lizard,
and then suffocating,
so when it comes to the rodent,
it probably prefers it
if you gave it the option. (laughing)
And you don't have to do it yourself
if you're simply uncomfortable killing it,
and your animal doesn't have to do
the whole killing part either.
You can also get them in bulk
and for pretty cheap,
you can buy as many as you need.
In my experience, they last about a year in the freezer,
so yeah, I just buy whatever I need for six months,
and then every six months, buy a new supply.
Definitely cheaper than live
'cause they are just all raised in mass
for the sale of just a food and not as a pet.
They're also really easy to source,
there's a lot of options online.
I don't have any specific site I recommend,
I'd say pretty much any of the big companies are just fine,
but I have reviewed various ones on my channel,
so if you want, you can check those out.
But pretty much all these are more trustworthy
than the kinda sketchy Craigslist breeders,
the backyard breeders and pet stores,
although they will sometimes sell them to you as feeders,
other pet stores will only sell them to you as pets,
so it's a bit more iffy
if you're gonna use those to actually feed
to a snake or something.
And again, that's more expensive,
and you have to go out every time you need one.
They're also a lot easier to size,
'cause say you need a day-old pinky,
if you're gonna get a live one,
it has to have been born that day,
but if you get a frozen one,
it could've been born six months ago,
it's just been frozen
for five months and 30 days of its existence.
Same if you need a larger one or whatever,
sometimes sites truly are sold out
of everything of a certain size,
but it is easier than trying to find
the perfect-sized rodent that is still alive.
It's not a big deal if it's a bit too small
or a bit too large
'cause snakes can adapt to things like that,
but you can just be much more of a perfectionist about it
if you're feeding live,
if you're feeding frozen.
It's also completely harmless on the snake,
there's no risk of biting,
or scratching, or anything.
A lot of people say this risk doesn't really exist,
but I've seen it myself,
a lot of animals have come in
covered in scars and scabs,
some people have told us
that their animals have actually been killed
by rodents biting or scratching them.
A lot of people's response to that is,
"Well, you should've been paying attention,"
but even paying attention is kinda hard
when everything happens in the flash of a second.
You could say I'm being overprotective of the animal,
I would say that you're wrong,
but I don't like an animal getting bit
by those massive teeth of a rat,
and usually what I would do
is it's me and one other person
feeding a single animal a single rodent.
We both have tongs, we're both ready to go,
but still, everything happens so fast,
this rodent is literally fighting for its life
and it will do anything it can,
and that can easily scratch an eye or whatever.
I don't think it's overprotection
to try and stop your animal from getting injured,
because even a small scratch can become infected
and theoretically either cost you a lot of money
or kill the animal.
It also just damages them,
they don't look as nice,
its shed gets a little bit more stuck on scabs and stuff,
and I mean, why not,
if you can avoid it,
frozen is always an option there.
They're also way easier to feed
'cause they're also easier on you, the human.
You just thaw it out and it's good to go,
there's no fighting the rodent,
there's no worrying about what it's gonna do,
it's just plain and simple,
I don't even really need to mention that.
Also, if your snake chooses not to eat
as you're offering it,
maybe it got spooked by something,
maybe it's not really interested at the moment,
maybe it's just not paying attention,
you can leave frozen in the enclosure safely
without worrying about the rodent
doing anything to your animal
because it's dead. (laughing)
So in my experience,
if a snake doesn't eat,
I usually leave the rodent in overnight
'cause it won't get to gross in that matter of time.
I'd say this only works about 10% of the time or so,
but that's still one in 10 snakes that took a meal
that otherwise might not have
if I had to take a live rodent out.
Also, you gotta keep the live rodent alive
after feeding the snake if it actually chooses not to eat,
you either have to return it to the store,
keep it alive, or kill it yourself,
or just neglect it 'til it dies,
but I don't recommend doing that.
If the rodent's ultimately still not taken even a day later,
you can just toss the live, (laughing)
the live, I keep mixing them up,
you can just toss the frozen rodent,
in theory, you could toss the live one too,
but I would not recommend that either.
I'd say you should either return it
or find someone else to take it,
feed it to another animals, et cetera,
but it's easy when you can just toss an already dead animal.
And in a nutshell, that's all the great reasons
that I try to feed frozen as much as possible.
However, live still might have some cases.
I asked on Twitter why live might be a good option,
and Krista said, "If your reptile
"absolutely won't eat frozen thawed,
"you're at least putting nutrients into the body."
Yeah, although there are those risks there,
of course, live is a rodent
and it's something you can feed the animal,
and a lot of animals, whether it's a wild-caught animal,
if it's eaten only live in the past,
or if it's a young animal,
it just might have no interest in frozen
and might not associate it as food,
'cause even though you tend to warm it up
and try and get it to a body temperature,
you're still not gonna perfectly match
what a live rodent is like and how it acts,
so using live to switch it to frozen might be necessary
so your animal doesn't starve.
Dusty said, "People on TikTok told me
"they do it because it's natural."
I'm sure I've said this at least 101 times now,
'cause I think last time I said it at least 100 times,
just 'cause something's natural doesn't mean it's better.
In fact, there's a reason
that animal's life spans are longer in captivity
than in the wild,
'cause you can reduce the risk of things.
People love the buzzword natural,
it's a great marketing term,
natural this, non-GMO, whatever,
because, "Oh, I'm one with nature,
"I'm going back to my roots,"
when oftentimes natural isn't necessarily better.
It can be, but with rodents,
there's no proof that it is.
AutisticLabCoat said they can get a picky baby snake
to eat their first meal
and then transition off live pinkies or fish.
Yeah, similar to how some animals
will have only eaten live,
there are also those cases
where very young snakes
won't necessarily associate their first meal
with a frozen item
because it's not their instinctual response
to see that as food.
I haven't really had difficulty with this,
even with baby animals,
but it is a possibility,
and there are certain species
that are less likely to take, so.
And this is the reason why I think it's terribly stupid
that certain places ban live feeding of animals,
at least that's what certain citizens
of certain countries have told me,
that they literally, it's against the law there.
I don't know if that's true,
but if it is, that's terribly stupid
and I don't agree with that at all.
It seems to do more harm than good in my opinion,
but I don't live there, I could be wrong,
that's just my two cents.
Coe, Coe, Coe said,
"If the rat survives, they can become friends."
Yeah, I've gotten pictures myself
of a rodent cuddled up with a snake,
but yeah, okay, we're moving on.
Juan said, "There aren't really any,
"but people say it,
"quote, 'Preserves the animal's natural instinct,'
"as if instinct is something you can lose
"and it's not, you know, an instinct."
I've nothing to add there,
it might be hard to believe,
but if you lose an instinct,
then it was not an instinct in the first place.
Moving on, Rachel said her dad thinks
it would be cool to see a rat die.
And then Michael said,
"To witness the murder and death
"which also feeds the inner dark part of your soul."
I believe Michael is Rachel's father.
That's it, that's kind of the whole list
I got sourced from Twitter.
I did have a few other reasons of my own,
like I said, they're more likely to take live,
and people claim that it's more enriching to the snake
because it moves and they have to fight it
and it's a good exercise and stuff like this,
when enrichment for snakes,
they don't even need that much enrichment
in the first place,
but the actual taking of the rodent
doesn't involve that much enrichment.
If you want, you can shake it around
and treat it as if it is in fact alive,
but when it comes to the exercise,
they actually get the most muscle working and stuff
when they're actually swallowing the meal
because it's this big mass
they have to get into their little tummy
and they're gonna be using all those muscles
to push it down.
And that is kinda how they burn the most calories
and build the most muscle,
not the actual thrashing around with a live rodent.
I'm sure it makes a difference,
but is it really worth it?
Also, I get this one a lot,
it's always hard to tell
when they're joking and when they're not,
but, "Fresh is better than frozen."
Again, they treat it as if we're talking
about Harris Teeter products or something,
where because the meal is frozen,
it's lesser for the animal,
it's grosser, it doesn't taste as good,
it's not as nutritional, nutritional,
nutritious, or whatever.
I mean, if you freeze something multiple times,
it's gonna start breaking down,
because it's gonna heat up,
bacteria can grow, it can decompose a little bit
and then you freeze it again,
so I wouldn't recommend ever freezing a rodent
a second time and then using it again.
I've been curious
so I just froze and thawed out a few times,
and by the second time, it's just super gross,
but food is frozen all the time,
most food humans eat is frozen,
and although fresh does tend to taste better for us,
I don't think this applies with snakes.
Even the breeders that I completely disagree with
on everything out there
can probably agree with me,
we're probably all on the same page
that a snake is not going to be
more or less happy or healthy
if it's eating a frozen rodent over a live one
because it is not fresh.
Then there is a third option, fresh-killed,
that's when you buy a live rodent,
kill it yourself and then feed it to the animal.
The most common way to fresh kill a rodent
is actually pretty aggressive.
Most people, I think, just kinda take the rodent
and hit it over a hard surface,
like really quickly.
And it's actually surprisingly painless.
(desk banging) It sounds pretty bad,
and also, the idea sounds bad.
It is surprisingly humane,
it's possibly more humane
than euthanizing with carbon dioxide.
It's hard for most people to do this
unless they truly like the feeling of killing,
but the thing is, some people say,
"Oh, well, you can use carbon dioxide yourself,"
which is true.
A lot of people do this through dry ice
because dry ice just releases carbon dioxide,
but it's so cold that it oftentimes cools the rat down
to a temperature that's too low.
You can do stuff like buy,
I guess it would be airsoft canisters
because those are CO2,
and you could just slowly release those into an enclosure.
Kind of a pain,
but technically it would work.
I think it's best to do this
as a transitional item, kind of,
so if your snake is eating live but not eating frozen,
then you could try out fresh-killed
and see if it's a nice transition,
so it doesn't act quite like a living rodent
'cause it is in fact dead,
but it still has some of the characteristics
of a living one,
like the perfect body temperature
and a super clean and fresh scent on the rodent.
Also, you still have to keep this one alive
until you end up killing it,
so fresh-killed, I think, is a pain
and I haven't done it myself.
The reasons I've had to feed live
are snakes that come in either already eating live
or they've been off feed for simply too long.
So I have had to do it,
some people, like there's been African soft furs
that have only been fed to animals
so we had to use Africans soft furs,
'cause they're kind of addicting apparently,
like with ball pythons.
There were six that, or seven,
six to eight snakes that were all just on live,
and it took over the course of about six months
to switch them all to frozen.
Some immediately took,
I think three immediately took,
and then two took forever
and then two were pretty gradual.
So even then, that's using like half a dozen rodents
every week or so
just to switch over these handful of animals.
And then there's the other ones that come in,
maybe certain species that are wild-caught or whatever,
so I have had to do it myself.
It's a pain, I don't enjoy it,
I don't like the screaming of the rodent,
and there have been kicks and scratches
and even some small nips on the animals,
it's an absolute pain.
So even after all my experiences,
I still love using frozen,
I'm very happy it's an option
and I highly recommend it for you,
but live does have certain use cases
and I think it's stupid
to anyone that thinks it should be banned
to feed live to an animal.
Yeah, that's it, leave your opinions below,
your experiences with live
and your reasons, pros and cons to either,
that I might've missed.
I have a few playlists,
like one, "Reptile Keeping For Beginners,"
where I just try and cover
as much reptile keeping as I can for beginners. (laughing)
You can check out the links in the description
for products I recommend
and a bunch of other stuff there.
But that'll be it for this video,
so I'm Alex, and thanks for watching.
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