frozen minnows

[krystalirelan@southslope.]

At the bait shop I can buy a dozen minnows at a time. They ussually give you ALOT more than a dozen though. I give my garters 3 minnows every 3rd day. I tried freezing them to see if my garters would eat them after I thawed them and they did. my problem is, is there a better way to freeze them. I put them on a cookie sheet lined with baking paper so they would not freeze in a big lump and they flopped all over every where. am afraid they will flop into my freezer before they are to cold to stop. plus some of them flopped together and then i had to peel them apart. A snake can pee on me and I'm like "thats mother nature" but I really don't want to touch dead fish if i can help it:)

[Stefan-A]

Then you're going to have to freeze them one at a time. :p Or just get used to touching dead fish.

[poissonguppy]

You could kill them before putting them into the freezer, but then you would have to touch dead fish anyways...

Another thing you can do is buy an ice cube tray with a lid (or you can make one out of aluminum foil). Place one fish in each cube and freeze.

[KITKAT]

Hi there!

First, I can solve your freezing into a lump problem.

Put the live minnows in a plastic zip lock bag, and spread them out in the bag inside the freezer.

Set your oven timer for ten minutes.

When the timer goes off, open the freezer and take out the bag. The minnows will be dead and partly frozen, but not frozen solid. Push them around in the bag from the outside until they are seperated, then refreeze them hard.

As for not touching them... you can always use feeding forceps (tweezers) to take them out of the bag and insert them into a jar of warm water for thawing. I have had a number of garters that know I am feeding when I come with the forceps, and several of them over the years got so that they would actually take the minnow right out of the forceps!
:D

At the bait shop I can buy a dozen minnows at a time. They ussually give you ALOT more than a dozen though. I give my garters 3 minnows every 3rd day. I tried freezing them to see if my garters would eat them after I thawed them and they did. my problem is, is there a better way to freeze them. I put them on a cookie sheet lined with baking paper so they would not freeze in a big lump and they flopped all over every where. am afraid they will flop into my freezer before they are to cold to stop. plus some of them flopped together and then i had to peel them apart. A snake can pee on me and I'm like "thats mother nature" but I really don't want to touch dead fish if i can help it:)

[Kurly1]

I just started feeding my snake frozen minnows. Saturday was the first day and I only fed him one small minnow. I just fed him one minnow today (after thawing it of course)and he pounced on it when I put it in his terr. I don't think one is enough so I am going to give him another one. I was just curious as to how many minnows do you all feed your snake during one feeding?

[krystalirelan@southslope.]

usually 3. if they are really big 2

[Josh]

kinda of topic are you talking about rosie reds?

[Kurly1]

Thanks. I gave him 2 medium size croppie (sp?) minnows this time. He seemed pretty happy when I placed the 2nd one on the floor next to him cause he gobbled that one up almost as fast as the first one. Next time I might try to give him 3.

[GarterGirl]

Another thing you can do is buy an ice cube tray with a lid. Place one fish in each cube and freeze.
That's what I do!

[drache]

we don't actually have ice cube trays with lids - I just set another tray that's already frozen on top
sometimes I end up with more than one minnow in a cube . . .