I breed my own rat and sell the excess to a local mom and pop pet shop at wholesale price. They told me they can no longer accept larger rats because they have more then they need at the moment and have to start freezing theirs at this point.
This is fine but now I’m forced to do the same ahead of when I was plaining to do so as I don’t have a customer base for them yet.
I want to stock up and sell them at shows but I’m getting conflicting answers on how long they will last. I figured I can vacuum seal them if that will make them last longer and divide em up at shows into freezer bags for people that don’t want a lot of them.
Basically I’m trying to figure out the shelf life of frozen rats and how close to a show should they be frozen? Or how long can they be frozen before I should no longer offer said rats to customers?
Excellent question. I cant give an exact time as i havent tested tissue breakdown over time when frozen. What i can say is there isnt going to be 1 answer. There are many variables. Vaccuum sealing being 1, it will increase the hold time. There is also the question of how cold is it being frozen at, the colder it is, the slower it breaks down. Any refreezeing will shorten that lifespan by alot.
Now when should you no longer sell it? That matters too. If its bulk, you want it to be closer to that freshly frozen date. If it is going to be fed right away, then it doesnt overly matter so long as it hasnt deteriorated too far.
Keep in mind people usually want a shelf life after the sale, so just because it was safe when you sold it to them, doesnt mean they will be happy if it expires 2 months later and they bought 6 months of food.
Sorry i dont have exacts, i will try to do some research to see if there is any solid info at how long at what temp it will hold to give a better idea.
The general word is 6 months, however if it really needed to be stretched, you could probably get away with a year if everything is done properly. It compares it to human food in that the longer it is frozen the more the quality goes down and freezer burn sets in. That being said, i wouldnt sell it if its been longer than 2-3 months sitting in your freezer as the shelf life would be pretty short by this point and for furless animals freezerburn would start showing up around this point which would look bad to buyers even if there is still a reasonable shelf life on it.
Not sure of the exact science of how they came to the decision, but this is the answer to the question pulled directly from RodentPro’s website.
lol I was literally just reading that off their website.
I feel like vacuum sealing em 6 months out and letting people know they should be good at least for the next 6 months would be acceptable.
That doesn’t sound like a bad idea. I would try and cull and freeze in as close proximity of time as possible if you have a big event or expo planned in advance though to extend that shelf life for the customer. And take into account that the pinkies/fuzzies likely won’t have as long of a frozen shelf life as the larger furrier ones.
If you have a deep freezer and vacuum sealer, I think your best option would be to vacuum seal set quantities - whatever number you think people would be most likely to buy (like maybe 20 or 25?). Then you wouldn’t have to worry about opening up the freezer bags to sell them.
I think that’s what I’ll end up doing but have different amounts and just have it cheaper the more you buy since I’ll be using less packaging for bulk amounts.