Humane euthanasia

[andynic07]

Just had a bizarre & slightly disturbing experience with some wild rats - nothing to do with reptile food. I just caught one in a cage trap overnight & it had given birth to a litter of baby rats. I put them all in a container hooked up to the soda stream together - mum died quickly, as usually happens, but the babys just would not die - seemed to lose consciousness & started taking agonal breaths, but would then revive quickly when the CO2 supply was stopped.

The most plausible explanation that I can come up with is that the baby rats fetal hemoglobin allowed them to extract sufficient O2 & that my killing chamber isn't sufficiently airtight for infant rats. Next time I'll stick to blunt force, but I guess this is a problem for anyone feeding pinkys to small snakes.

I have read that CO2 is not a suitable method for euthanising baby animals due to them not breathing deeply I think. I think pinkies are usually just frozen.

 

[saximus]

I have read that CO2 is not a suitable method for euthanising baby animals due to them not breathing deeply I think. I think pinkies are usually just frozen.

Freezing isn't cool even for pinkies. Blunt force trauma is preferable. At least it is instant

 

[andynic07]

Freezing isn't cool even for pinkies. Blunt force trauma is preferable. At least it is instant

I have never killed pinkies but I heard that is how people do it. All of the pinkies that I have ever bought have not looked like they have had blunt force trauma, do you know if there is another method?

 

[saximus]

I have never killed pinkies but I heard that is how people do it. All of the pinkies that I have ever bought have not looked like they have had blunt force trauma, do you know if there is another method?

I'm not sure how professionals do it but my method is to throw them at the ground. There are no outward signs of the trauma and they die instantly.

 

[andynic07]

I only started breeding rats after all my snakes were past eating pinkies.

 

[Tsubakai]

Just had a bizarre & slightly disturbing experience with some wild rats - nothing to do with reptile food. I just caught one in a cage trap overnight & it had given birth to a litter of baby rats. I put them all in a container hooked up to the soda stream together - mum died quickly, as usually happens, but the babys just would not die - seemed to lose consciousness & started taking agonal breaths, but would then revive quickly when the CO2 supply was stopped.

The most plausible explanation that I can come up with is that the baby rats fetal hemoglobin allowed them to extract sufficient O2 & that my killing chamber isn't sufficiently airtight for infant rats. Next time I'll stick to blunt force, but I guess this is a problem for anyone feeding pinkys to small snakes.

Yep foetal haemoglobin has a left-shifted Hb-O2 dissociation curve. Effectively this means that O2 delivery can still effectively occur in the acidotic state that is induced by CO2 chambers so it is very hard to CO2 euthanise pinkies. However a nitrogen chamber (effectively causing an oxygen poor environment) would work quite well as the physiological response to a pure nitrogen environment would result in a very quick death although blunt force trauma is much simpler.

 

[mikey_mike]

Sorry for splitting hairs with physiological minutiae, but I think co2 chambers work primarily via hypoxia not acidosis. Carbonic acid production requires carbonic anhydrase which is found in tissue and blood cells, so co2 has to get in to the cells. Lack of 02 causes a very speedy demise. It doesn't matter what the gas is as long as it displaces O2.

I think a leaky N2 chamber would be just as ineffective as my leaky CO2 chamber.

 

[Tsubakai]

Sorry for splitting hairs with physiological minutiae, but I think co2 chambers work primarily via hypoxia not acidosis. Carbonic acid production requires carbonic anhydrase which is found in tissue and blood cells, so co2 has to get in to the cells. Lack of 02 causes a very speedy demise. It doesn't matter what the gas is as long as it displaces O2.

I think a leaky N2 chamber would be just as ineffective as my leaky CO2 chamber.

CO2 crosses all cell membranes very readily then dissolves and combines with water to form carbonic acid via an intermediate H2CO3. Carbonic anhydrase is the enzyme which drives the process back the other way by converting H2CO3 back into CO2 and H20.

CO2 narcosis resulting in respiratory arrest and death will occur at much lower levels of partial pressure of CO2 than that required to induce hypoxia, particularly in homemade CO2 chambers. If it was pure hypoxia as the mechanism of death, then pinkies would die quicker than older rodents as younger animals (ie higher basal metabolic rates) are more sensitive to hypoxic insults.

Irrespective, my point about nitrogen chambers is still that - in an ideal setting (ie a well designed chamber that doesn't leak) - they would induce rapid death without the excitatory phenomenon associated with high inspired concentration of CO2.

Anyway might be getting a little off thread now so think I'll go mow the lawn.

 

[andynic07]

CO2 crosses all cell membranes very readily then dissolves and combines with water to form carbonic acid via an intermediate H2CO3. Carbonic anhydrase is the enzyme which drives the process back the other way by converting H2CO3 back into CO2 and H20.

CO2 narcosis resulting in respiratory arrest and death will occur at much lower levels of partial pressure of CO2 than that required to induce hypoxia, particularly in homemade CO2 chambers. If it was pure hypoxia as the mechanism of death, then pinkies would die quicker than older rodents as younger animals (ie higher basal metabolic rates) are more sensitive to hypoxic insults.

Irrespective, my point about nitrogen chambers is still that - in an ideal setting (ie a well designed chamber that doesn't leak) - they would induce rapid death without the excitatory phenomenon associated with high inspired concentration of CO2.

Anyway might be getting a little off thread now so think I'll go mow the lawn.

This is exactly what the thread is about and all input is valuable.