Tired of thawing bloody rats

Originally Posted by ~Just Curious~

That's different, I've never seen that before. Don't think I'd like it much myself to be honest...
I'd like to hear the reasoning behind it as well, perhaps you can ask the distributer if you see them at another show?
Thank you for taking the time to share those pictures!

A lot of times the rats with cut throats are from labs. They cut the throats to bleed them out to test the blood.

I actually could not ask the man selling rodents at the show about the cut throats because he was busy with other customer & had really large orders he was getting together but the gentleman in the booth next time him lent a hand & got my order for me. I was able to get a business card & did email him. This was the reply I received in regards to the rats coming from a lab & having there cut throats.

"Its a guy with a lab but he'll buy my retired stuff n other people's cuts them for the blood sells the blood to a different lab for testing. So the rats don't actually come from a lab for animal testing or anything like that. The plasma is what goes for the testing"

Thank you so much for the answers! That's interesting.
Good to know that the animals themselves aren't having anything tested on them, I wouldn't trust those as food if they had medications or such in their system beforehand, but I still don't think I'd be wild about thawing drained rodents with holes. Not a big deal honestly, I know I'm nitpicking, but I personally have enough options that I'm going to avoid that. Just my opinion.

Thanks for letting us know!

The lab guy buys retired breeder rats to drain their blood and then gives them back to the frozen feeder guy for free so he can sell them cheap at a show?

Why would a lab want to test blood from retired breeder rats? Maybe they're putting something in the rats before they collect the blood.

Honestly, I'm not 100% sure why a lab would want to test blood from retired rats either. I'm personally looking into other options myself for future reference. If the life of an animal is taken I hope it is at least used for proper purposes but don't know how I feel about it being used over & over before getting into my freezer or not being advised of the blood testing prior to purchase. I think I could sleep a little better at night knowing more about & not just taking someones word in regards to the rats I feed to my snakes. I never imagined I would have to even question such things until now but I guess everyone wants to make as much money as possible? Either way, I'm sure it will be less messy when thawing out without the cuts.

Older thread, I'm aware, but only just saw this.

I euthanize my own feeders with CO2, and discovered that if you refrigerate them for a couple hours before putting them in the freezer, they don't get nosebleeds. It's only when I put them straight from the box to the freezer that they bleed.

That's good to know since I euthanize my own rodents as well. I always have nosebleeds with mine as well, but I also use blunt force trauma rather than co2 so that is a factor as well. It hasn't really bothered me as long as they don't drip or run all over. I bag them up still warm and freeze them with just a useable number of rodents to each bag so I just thaw a whole bag out at a time in warm water and just use tongs. Blood doesn't bother me so it has just never been a concern.

I have tried C02 before but it seemed to take some time to put them out which is why I use blunt force trauma.

I think one reason some of them bleed is damage AFTER death as well. Going from room temp to freezer post-mortem or from freezer to hot water is an extreme temp change. All those tiny vessels will burst or were already burst by ice crystals that formed in rat's body. Though I'm sure the methods and others are related as well. The longer dead or frostbitten ones bleed more because they are more broken down than fresher mice. Ice crystals really rip up tissues when they form and I think you can manage the damage by slowing the cooling and thawing down.