#feeder animals

[mirrordraco]

Fun little encounter last night that works as an example of what its like to live with me.

It was almost 11pm and I was getting creative with defrosting a frozen rat for my pet snake when my roommate suddenly appeared to witness my crimes. I did clean the bottle after! No medicine made direct contact with dead rodents i promise!

[fourteen--steps]

I just wanna plug my favorite place to get frozen feeders for Mr. Nuka man, Perfect Prey. I just got my yearly-ish order of m.ice for him and I’m always so happy and impressed with them compared to other places I’ve shopped. 

They carry m.ice, r.ats, african soft furs, ch.icks, and some bugs. A core part of their philosophy is that animals raised for food deserve the same quality of care as any animal in captivity. Their r.odents are raised on site in clean, comfortable, uncrowded enclosures with as little stress as possible and treated with compassion through their whole lives. 

One thing I appreciate is they sell in reduced quantities for those of us without a huge collection of snakes. I didn’t need 100 pinkies when I got him, it was great to be able to get just 25 at a time. Saves me money, freezer space, and lets me size up properly as Nuka grows. 

Every shipment I’ve received has been sent quickly, well packaged and labeled, the m.ice are clean, healthy and plump, and uniformly sized. And they always include a little handwritten thank you and a cool pen with their logo which is a definite way to sucker me in :P

I’ll compare that to Reptilinks, who I also just received an order from. They would not sell less than $75 of product at once, not including shipping (I ended up splitting with a friend but I still have 60-80 links to use up when I really only wanted like 40 tops). I talked to a customer support person and supposedly it’s “not economically feasible” to ship less? Idk man the fact that I literally just bought $17 worth of small m.ice from elsewhere and got that shipped alone would suggest otherwise but okay sure jan. The order took a week longer ship after being placed, took twice as long to travel roughly the same distance, and when the box arrived it was not labeled perishable so I didn’t receive a call from my apt building letting me know I needed to pick it up. Everything was still frozen just fine even after 4 days in transit and I’m hoping Nuka likes the links; they’re a good product and nobody else sells anything comparable. But I was less than impressed with the overall purchasing experience.

Tl;dr, Perfect Prey is great and I like them and Nuka is a spoiled boi

[animalwelfarists]

Friendly reminder that feeder animals do not magically stop being living, breathing organisms just because you are raising them to feed another animal. If you fail to minimise the suffering of your feeder animals as much as possible during their lives with you, then you are a bad pet owner.

No, the fact that they’re “just food” doesn’t change that. The five freedoms of animal welfare were originally created with the welfare of livestock in particular in mind. 

No, you don’t get points for treating your “important” animals well while you willfully neglect or torment feeder animals in your care.

No, the fact that it’s how things are done in the wild doesn’t justify your actions. Trapping a prey animal in a small artificial enclosure with a predator is about as far from the wild as you can get.

I’m aware that sometimes live feeding can be necessary, and that some suffering on the part of feeder animals is unavoidable. That said, you are still obligated as the owner of those animals to minimise their pain as much as possible. 

[leopard-geeko]

Don’t👏🏻feed👏🏻your👏🏻pet👏🏻wild👏🏻caught👏🏻insects👏🏻

Or any other wild caught animal for that matter. They carry tons of parasites and it’s a good way to get your animals really sick.

[fbwzoo]

Warning: I’m about to post a picture that includes a frozen/thawed quail chick. I always tag posts with recognizable feeder animals with “animal death” and usually “feeder (animal)”, so blacklist those if it’ll bother you. I may be posting more pictures and/or videos later on, as the cats are going to get f/t quail chicks as well, to see if they’ll eat them.

[mildew-mop]

Had my friend pick up rats for me at Bensons. I do not blame her in the slightest but the fucking store gave her large rats labeled as medium????? They are way to big. Not her fault, again but like goddamnit I'm gonna need medium rats. I have one left but they are so hard to get these days for some reason.

*frozen rats btw. I have 2 pet ball pythons. At least the small ones were acutually small.

[enitnerolf]

My husband bought a box of cockroaches as feeder animals for his ants. I felt bad for the roaches in so I bought them a terrarium (I think it’s a travel terrarium to put your sick pets in when you bring them to the vet). I also added a feeding bowl (the lid of a small jar) and a little house (egg carton). The wood shaving bedding can double as food in a pinch.

I’ve been experimenting with various foods and found that they don’t like cheese, cat food and lettuce. They will happily eat bell peppers, apple and (boiled) beans. Pasta too, provided it’s still soft. As it dries out it hardens and then they don’t eat it anymore. Chicken gets carted of to the house within minutes so I’m guessing that’s a favorite.

Today I tried kiwi. They’ve been inspecting it but I haven’t really seen them eat it. I’ll give them a piece of apple instead.

[unsuspectingfish]

I’m part of a rodent group on Facebook, in which you’re REQUIRED to agree when you join that you’re OK with people who use and/or breed feeder animals being in the group, and yet every other post is a story about someone going to a pet store and “rescuing” some “feeder” mice (they’re usually referring to the pet mice, but seem to think anyone but them is buying them for feeders) from a terrible life, as if buying them from a chain store is actually a rescue and every single person using feeders is terrible and/or actually still live feeding.