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Can fed-ex or any shipping company ship live rats?

E

edf01

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Hello,
Title says it all. I know you have to become certified to ship out snakes but just wondering if rodents you can do...


So, here it is: Can I ship live rodents through fedex once I am certified?

thankyou for any help you can provide.

Janet
 
Short answer: no.
Long answer: Rodents are classified like any mammal, and have to be shipped as if they are a dog or cat, but with special boxing so they cannot escape. Generally you would have to have a vet health certificate for each rodent, and ship them using a plane type shipping(just like a dog). I am not sure if there is some sort of loophole for labortorys, but I believe most get the rodents trucked in(as per my friend who works in a rodent lab at a university).
Hope this helps.
 
I was kinda thinking that. I was looking at information provided by googling 'can i ship rats' and found a webpage that stated the airplane proceedure and crap. Not only would it be a hassle to get all the required vet papers and all, it would cost a pretty penny...

I was just checking if there was any other possibilities.

Thankyou very much, you were a great help! I appreciate it!
Janet
 
I think the health certificate depends on where the animals are going. Certain states require them, certain states don't. Shipping animals really doesn't cost that much more via air, and in some cases is actually cheaper. Contact the individual airlines to get details. I've had great success with Delta (not shipping rodents though), and their customer service was always up to par.
 
Magical,
Perhaps I was mislead by the web page I saw, but I swore i read the 'ticket' needed to ship the animal was about 150 -200 bucks... Now, who knows how true the website was, but it was from a rat breeder...

I guess I'll have to figure out what requirements are for shipping rats to texas. I can ask my friend to find that out. I'll check into airlines, but if its gonna be expensive, prolly won't be worth it.

We pretty much chalked it up as a no-go at this point.

Thankyou for your input, I greatly appreciate it.
Janet
 
That price would likely include an airline approved shipping container + one of the preferred services (ie Delta Dash, or comparable). It won't be "cheap", that much is certain. Also, depending on when you were planning on shipping, there are temperature requirements for shipping mammals which are strictly adhered to (they vary somewhat by species & breed).
 
Agreed, Harald. I've shipped several animals through Delta and it's always been between $90-$125. The way I think of it, not really that much more than a typical overnight package even if you could ship them that way, and the animal gets there much faster. The extra fee is most likely plus the approved carrier, which I believe I saw somewhere has to be metal for rodents(?), plus a fee for their time just because they can.

If I could find someone willing to ship a quantity of good quality live rodents to me, I'd definitely do it despite the extra added cost just because I'm tired of having to buy my breeding stock at the pet stores.
 
I don't think that price does include the container. That's just the shipping charge I believe.
About 10 years ago I looked into buying some founding stock for a rodent colony and having them shipped. I was told then that the base rate was $150. That was the charge from Delta, the shipper was responsible for the container. This was when Dash shipping for herps was still $60.
The reason was being mammals they are transported in the climate controlled area of the cargo hold whereas herps were not.
For this reason I ended up finding a breeder within driving distance.

The shipping practices may have changed since then, but the only change in the cost would be an increase.
 
Wouldn't it be nice, when time goes by, the prices went down instead of up?

But everyone, thank you for your input. I will pass this info to my friend, and start calling airlines this weekend. I will have to find out what they need to be shipped in (besides something they cannot escape from...lol, that is obvious), if I need a health cert, see what the final cost is to make sure its reasonable, and just plain see what has to be done to do it.

But I now know what I need to check into. Thankyou all for the replies and the information, I greatly appreciate it!

Janet
 
Shipping animals really doesn't cost that much more via air, and in some cases is actually cheaper.
Click to expand...

Shipping reptiles or tropical fish via airlines is not as much as mammals - I recently shipped some mammals via air - 2 Taconic boxes (the white plastic rodent boxes) strapped together so they count as one package - with 4 rat sized mammals inside and the cost was $247 this did not include the cost of the containers or the required health certificates (the health certificates are required for all mammal shipments regardless of where they are going, probably to insure that the airline employees and any other animals on the plane are not exposed to disease. There are often temperature restricitions on mammal shipments as well. Overall it is a real hassle.
 
Depends on the airlines, Delta is only one of the airlines that will ship mammals, I think if you have an account and are a "known shipper" you can use regular "air freight" service depending of course on airline, weather, destination etc.

And the price will depend on crate size and weight, around $150 would be the minimum ....

There is a service similar to Fed Ex called World Courier that ships live mice door to door for labs but thats not available for regular folks (and probably costs a lot too)

BTW You can ship live birds - from baby chicks to a full grown Swan or Adult turkey via the U.S. mail , but unfortunately no mammals can be shipped that way.
 
Sometimes there are regional carriers that you can get to ship live rodents - in the midwest, there's "Spee-Dee Delivery" (seriously, lol) that will transoprt them, but it isn't cheap, and you must have approved shipping containers. Depending on origin and destination, some of the smaller carriers might be something to look into.
 
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