So I told myself, “OK I’m not ordering from somewhere that doesn’t produce their own feeders”… then I looked at the prices and quietly went back to rodentpro and hit buy. I know the rodents elsewhere are probably a little better quality but these things are frozen feeders. Surely I can’t be the only one who finds it tough to justify the price difference?
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Prices for feeders increasing have a lot to do with demand now as the hobby has grown exponentially in the past 7 years. The past 5 especially because of C19. And inflation will affect Breeder’s supply and food prices for the animals.
The other part… Might have to do with the tariffs for recent price hikes.
There actually was a thread posted here a while back where is sure does look like a lot of frozen rodent suppliers are getting animals from overseas. Iirc RodentPro included but to a lesser degree than some others who have claimed to breed their own.
As far as RodentPro itself… I’ve ordered from them before. But it was a while back and I didn’t have an issue. A few others have had some suspicious looking rodents and I have heard of a few animals having issues too.
But I don’t know how much of an issue this is with other vendors. I know there was a big issue with Artic Mice a long time ago …and they’re owned by a well known breeder couple.
Totally don’t blame you though! Overall there’s not much difference between most of the big feeder sources. I feel like most have an up or down side or good and bad reviews.
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Rodentpro is pretty good. I grumble about their large adult mice sizes, but other than that I’m usually satisfied.
My grumble is that in a bag of 50 large adult mice, there shouldn’t be 40 under 19g.
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Right there. Thats why prices have gone up…
I order from RodentPro and have been since 2019 and haven’t had any complaints about them, I’ll also occasionally order from Layne Labs but I’ll take RodentPro over them because of price differences.
But I also now produce my own feeder rodents anyway so even buying from frozen rodent suppliers is rare.
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I used rodent pro for a while a few years back, but I had a couple weird mice (green plastic like stuff in stomach, etc.), inconsistent quality/sizing, rodents were dirty at times, and I started hearing similar concerns from others so I switched away from them. Overall there isn’t a massive difference and their diversity of feeder species is nice, but I have preferred the quality and consistency of other sources along with what I breed myself. Definitely not a bad choice though.
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I feel like Big Cheese has competitive prices and I am starting to be quite loyal to them. Their mice are inevitably cleaner (beaten only by Layne Labs), they are more consistent on gram weights, and they come vacuum packed in smaller bunches, so they last longer in the freezer. In fact, my last RodentPro order had freezer burn on the pinkies before I even got them out of the delivery box because there was so much air in the bag. When I took the time to measure their adult mice against Big Cheese’s mice, that was my deciding factor. My adult snakes need the calories and RodentPro just isn’t cutting it.
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I did use rodentpro for a while but I have a friend who got some feeders from them and the rodents made like half of their snakes sick - stopped eating, lost weight, looked off-color for months and if I remember correctly one of their animals actually passed. So because of that, I don’t buy RP anymore. I use polar rodents personally and haven’t had any issues with them.
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RodentPro is both good and bad. Pricing they’re pretty hard to beat, but many people have had issues with their feeders (myself included) ranging from poor sizing to feeders causing deaths. Honestly many people still use them, including zoos and wildlife rehab facilities, so they’re not “bad” per se. Any company operating at that volume will have QC issues.
That’d be this thread, myself and @ballornothing looked into the origins of frozen feeders:
Essentially several of the big names, specifically RodentPro, Big Cheese, Layne Labs, and ARS have bulk bought rodents from the same handful of overseas companies. These mice are either prepackaged or repackaged and then distributed to customers. While I don’t know what the other companies’ packaging looks like, if you look at RodentPro bags they now specify that it is a distributed product:
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That makes me incredibly nervous to read about.
Again I’ve personally never had issues feeding my snakes rodents RodentPro but its definitely making me reconsider… or at least to have much more caution about feeding.
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Sadly it can be an issue with almost anyone. Just a random issue that is missed in QC in hundreds of orders. Rare, but when it happens, people remember.
Monkfield nutrition in the UK had a massive feeder rodent recall in 2021 for salmonella affecting humans
Artic Mice (owner by hobby power couple Mark and Kim Bell) had an outbreak of 41 people with feeders contaminated with salmonella. 16% of the infected were hospitalized around 2012 iirc
That’s not even including the reptiles that that had gotten sick.
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I’ve used Rodentpro over the years but I stopped buying from them a year or two ago after just too many issues. Weights being way under for a huge proportion of bags was super annoying. Then I got a shipment of “pinky” mice which were clearly malnourished peach fuzzies and fuzzies. They had fur but they were tiny for anything with fur at 2-3 g , and very skinny. Their little ribs were showing. They also smelled very strongly, even frozen. Terribly sad for the mice who should be cared for humanely. Terribly bad nutrition- wise for the snakes. With all of the issues around health and safety others have had, that was it for me. I am willing to pay more for the health of my animals.
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I was just telling someone that sometimes their fuzzies are like very plump large pinkies and sometimes they’re like skinny hoppers. Consistency in product quality and size are definitely issues.
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I just realized that I didn’t give a shout-out to suppliers whose feeders make me happy. My favorite is Perfect Prey, but they don’t always have what I need when I need it. I have also been happy with ColdBlooded Cafe and with Big Cheese.
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No problems with ARS…….
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Just going to point this out again. Because they are all mostly the same supplier for them all so saying one company is better may not be true if it’s the same base source for rodents.
My experiences were from 2022, I haven’t bought bulk frozen except on a whim for my current hatchlings at Repticon last month from Layne Labs. So my experiences are probably outdated because I stopped buying when the hobby was starting to hit critical mass
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A little more background on four of the bigger names, since I did a lot of digging on this topic in the last year:
ARS, RodentPro, Big Cheese, and Layne Labs all buy from one or more of the three largest Chinese rodent suppliers; Daren Fucheng, Yukylin, and Honfer. As for any US production, Layne Labs has a USDA inspected facility, and are the only one of the four with such. RodentPro allegedly has several rodent producers locally they work with, but I can’t find information on them. I haven’t been able to find any info on US production for Big Cheese. As for ARS, all sources I’ve found point to them being solely an importer/distributor.
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