Flees? On frozen rats

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Burgo89

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Thawed out some rats today and noticed a fair amount of tiny insects though out the fur. Any thoughts? Didn't use them would like to get opinions before I do or maybe change supplier.

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Technically since they are dead they wouldn't harm the snake in anyway. If the rat came from a large scale breeder fleas and such would be pretty common and I doubt they would use the resources to treat them since the rats will just end up being snake food. Overall, no harm could be done, but if you're worried about the health of the rats and cleanliness of them, it wouldn't hurt to change supplier.
 
Freezing won't kill 100% of parasites, so if you're worried that an abundance of fleas might correlate with the presence of other parasites then yeah go with the rats without too many fleas.

Of greater concern to me is the idea that the rats that had heaps of fleas probably had less than happy lives. You'd be doing a service to the rat breeder if you mentioned your concerns as I bet you're not the only one who's considering changing suppliers. Hope you find a source of happy, hygienic & suitably frosty rodents.
 
Thanks for the advice guys, any suggestions on a reputable supplier?
 
The first thing to do is get a decent magnifying glass or a small microscope and determine what sort of arthropod it is - flea or insect or whatever. If an insect, what type(order) and is it an adult with wings. Solid facts are much more useful than jumping to conclusions. Feed back what you find out to the supplier to at least give them the opportunity to rectify it. Whether it is advisable to switch supplier depends on the actual nature of the problem.
 
It is more usual to get mites on rodents than flees,and those insects look fairly large. There is always the delema as to whether to introduce chemicals to the system which may not be desirable for the end use of the rodent, or do you allow the environmental conditions to pass which normally results in the insects disappearing. Most wild animals and many domestic pets have external parasites so I doubt that they present a problem to the end user however there may be welfare considerations if the parasites get out of control.
 
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