schönes licht wohnzimmer

hello and welcome to a new technical episode of reptiltv although toady's episode is not so very technical. what is the best way to defrost, in this case, frozen mice?that is really not so very technical. today we want to find out the best way to defrost frozen food. this is often discussed on the net. what is the best way to defrost, in this case, frozen mice? i have just taken 6 mice from the freezer. it is now 1500 hours; the mice are rock-hard, straight from the freezer. we now want to thaw them using 6 different methods. of course i have forgotten my pen.

i number them 1-6. alex, can you find me a marker pen, please? i hope the marker pen arrives, and then i'll number them 1-6. i place number 1 on heating quite normally, on a heater or heating mat. we want to thaw number 2 in a pouch in hot water. the third simply in cold water, without a pouch, to see what happens. we put number 4 in our terrarium room, at about 30 degrees. we'll just put it here and see how it defrosts there.

number 5 we place outside in the sun, it is more or less high summer at the moment. the sun is blazing down, we’ll simply put it there and see what happens. we also put number 6 in the sun, but wrapped in newspaper, so that it receives no direct light. we want to try this out with all 6 mice, wait a few hours and then see how they have thawed. it is now 2.5 hours later. here are my mice; i have numbered them with an marker pen, so that we know which was which. to repeat, 1 was heating. 2 was hot water in a pouch.

3 was cold water, simply dropped into cold water. 4 was placed in the terrarium room at 30 degrees. we laid 5 outside in the sun. and we placed number 6 in the sun, but covered. it has to be said that you notice the flies already. placing it in the sun without wrapping is of course a way to attract flies. number 1 on the heating mat, was also an attraction for the flies. we could not have continued, if numbers 1 and 6 had been subject to heat any longer, then they would not look as good as they do now.

the first summary and you can see that in front of the camera, they all look fine; i almost have the impression, no i can't say that, so i'll say it does not matter how you thaw them. if they are good mice the result is fine. number 3 is simply still somewhat wet from lying in the water, so the pouch method is better. now i'll measure the temperature of the animals. the first one - 28 degrees; it was on the heating mat.

number 2 - 26 degrees; it was in boiling water. number 3 - 22 degrees; it is the coldest, but it is wet and is losing heat through evaporation. number 4 - 23 degrees: it lay in the warm room at 30 degrees. i think that 2.5 hours is too short a time, although, when i touch them they feel ok. number 5, placed outside in the sun, 27.5 degrees now. number 6, outside but wrapped up, is 23.6 degrees. we can see that they all are at slightly different temperatures.

i think the ideal for feeding is a warm animal at 30 degrees. a 22 degree animal is too cold for the reptile, even if a good eater would eat it anyway. so, in your place, i would bring the animal up to 30 degrees. that means leaving it correspondingly longer in water or warm water. they have all thawed in the 2.5 hours. when i touch it i notice that the wet one is cold. what i also find interesting after 2.5 hours is a smelling test: i would like to smell each one. this one smells rather strong. this one also smells a little, this one hardly has any smell.

the wet one smells only of damp. 2 also does not have any smell. also 1 and interestingly 5 and 6, which were placed outside seem to me to smell the strongest. perhaps i got used to the smell with each mouse. so: none of them smelled rotten. they all smelled more of mouse. so, no serious difference, even for those, which lay in the sun. they have not spoiled in 2.5 hours, so that is ok

for drawing a final conclusion: once more: all the methods we have used are fine for thawing. the water methods seem relatively fast. placing them in the sun, we can do that now; it is 30 degrees outside, but for 11 out of 12 months the weather is not like that in germany. therefore the "place in the sun" method is mostly excluded. placing on the heating mat is definitely a good method. this one is at 30 degrees and i can feed it straight away; i don't need to do anything ore.

the ones from the water, i would have to use hot water. i would use hot water at 40 degrees from the tap. i would place it in a pouch; this one lay loose in the water. next time i would put them in a pouch and place them in 40 degree hot water to heat them up a bit so that they reach more than 30 degrees. but that would then definitely be a good method. we simply let number 4 lie in the terrarium room. that is possibly the most long-winded method, possibly not the best, i have to leave them there for 7-8 hours.

then it would thaw too slowly and at some stage start to rot. personally i would choose number 1, 1, 2 and 3 or 1 and 3 as favourites. the boiling water method is also tedious and it has not thawed any better. the fact that this one is colder is only because it is now wet, because the water was at the same temperature at the end for both of them. they would certainly be the same temperature if this one were not wet. my final summary: method 1, the heating mat

or "place in water" until they thaw method but in conclusion, i would not use boiling water, but simply put them in water until they thaw. it takes about 2 hours for them to thaw. when they have thawed use hot water, about 40-50 degrees to raise their temperature; that is a good method. from the climate viewpoint numbers 4, 5 and 6 won't work and number 4 takes too long. from that i conclude: the most important point is the feed animals must be of good quality.

if they had started to rot when frozen, then they will be just as rotten or even more rotten when thawed. so it is important that feed animals are naturally good and fresh and if they thaw to an equally good quality, you have good food for your terrarium animals. we do not want to waste the mice, so we'll let an expert give an opinion. i shall put the tray of 6 in with a rhinoceros iguana. let's see, whether he goes for these thawed mice and which type of thawing he favours or eats first. you see, he liked them all; he simply started with 1 and went on to 2.

if we were to wait, he would progress from 3 to 4 to 5 to 6. so they were all good, they tasted good.

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