My sand boa, for some reason, didn’t eat the pinky mouse (f/t) I left in the enclosure last night. I’m not sure why but I had handled him (to weigh and spot clean) so he might have been a bit stressed, I’m not really worried about him. What I’m wondering is what I can do with the uneaten pinky mouse. It was in the enclosure at room temp for 10 hours. I don’t want to feed him a mouse that might be bad, but I also don’t want to just throw the mouse away. I put it back in the freezer away from the other ones for now. The only other reptiles I have that could eat that are leopard geckos and I don’t really want to feed them mice (just because insects are working fine and I don’t want to risk mice), and especially not one that might be bad. I have dairy cow isopods and I was considering just feeding parts of the mice at a time to them. Does anybody have any other suggestions what I could do with it or should I just throw it away?
I dont think you would like my idea haha, it works, but its certainly not pretty. I have a tote i keep in my reptile room that i keep moist, inside i have springtails, predator mites, and whatever fungus gnats breed in it. If i get a non eater, i throw the carcas in that bin. The fungus gnats and springtails slowly eat the edible parts, and in turn continue to reproduce and become food for the predator mites. From there, the springtails and predator mites migrate to all my bioactive enclosures in the room. The bin has just enough air holes to give the bugs air, but it is not overly pleasant to open when i need to add water. But it has worked for me.
Im a bit weird with this haha, perhaps at some point ill add a dairy cow colony into the bin for faster disposal.
From what i have read they shouldn’t be refrozen. Being new to snakes i have no practical knowledge of this. Id probably go with your gut and not feed it i did throw out a mouse that was refused, it sucks but babies health is more important than a couple dollars.
That’s a good idea. I just don’t think it’s something I would use, but maybe I would if I had predator mites. I think I’ll probably end up giving pieces of it to the dairy cows.
@rmleone I definitely wouldn’t refeed it to a reptile. I was just wondering what other options there were for utilizing it (like feeding it to certain bugs).
I think you should invest in a tank of piranhas. I’m sure they’ll happiy take care of any uneaten rodents
Im sure there are scavenger species that would surely eat them
You can refreeze a feeder item one time before it gets compromised
After that, it is either trashcan or Dermestid beetle time
I usually toss mine into the yard and let nature take it’s course. It works for pinks/fuzzys but anything larger will get a bit problematic. There also happens to be a heavily wooded area at close the back of my home and we get a lot of scavengers coming through.
Although I have briefly considered getting some chickens for this very purpose lol. Then I though it about it some more and decided against it. I have quite a few garbage disposal snakes and I don’t usually wind up with uneaten rodents.
Not sure you would want to re use a rodent that that has been sitting at room temp for 10 hrs as they start decaying and smelling ripe fairly fast. As for un eaten feeders, if i catch it within a few hrs one of my numerous garbage disposals will take it off my hands. If i leave a rodent over night and is not eaten my Ackie LizLiz loves stinky mice!
After I got my second or third ball python I went out and got a gopher snake for this very reason. I now have him, a corn snake, and a hognose that will pretty much take care of any leftovers that I have if they haven’t been sitting out too long. Otherwise they get tossed outside.
I missed that in my speed read… Definitely toss anything that has been sitting out that long
Time to invest in another noodle to use as a garbage disposal! 
The up side of having multiples is, any feeder I have just goes to one of my voracious eaters. Other than that, if you garden, you can bury the mouse by plant roots for a nutrient boost or just throw any uneaten feeders into the yard, as @wulfsign said.
Yeah I just go by food safety rules as if it were chicken. if it’s been lying out waiting to be eaten for more than a couple of hours, it gets thrown out. Too much chance of bacteria and rot that will sicken most animals.
I suppose if one kept like… dermestid beetle colonies (the bone cleaner beetles) that’d be the only safe feeding I can think of. Most animals we keep probably shouldn’t eat meat that is rotting.
There are numerous cases of snakes consuming carrion/roadkill, so you might be surprised by what they will eat
Oh LOL, true, I know my Dachshund would happily scarf anything she finds, and snakes will take any calories available in the wild, I’d bet. Still, in our care, better safe than sorry, I figure.
You could start a colony of true fire ants. I was thinking of doing this a few year ago due to them being able to be found in Florida. Obviously huge colonies can devour lager prey but a pinky is no big deal lol .
Oh do not do this. Fire ants are the absolute worst, they will go out of their way to bite you and horribly invasive/impossible to get rid of
Yes, that is very true. They are kept wildly in the ants community as a more advanced species. While I am sure there are more passive and less aggressive types of ants, fire ants are the usual suggestion.
As a personal note, I decided not to go with them due to the pain and reaction that I get despite me not being allergic. I like the common black pavement ants instead. I don’t keep any thought.
After having many unfortunate incidents with fire ants (one of the many reasons Houston is the literal worst), I can’t imagine why anyone would intentionally keep them. They’re so aggressive and even common anti-histamines and allergy meds/creams don’t seem to work well on the bites/stings
That is part of why lol . Also, the whole thing when you were a kid hearing stories of fire ants consuming a person in the rain forest, kind of creates a stigma that people like.