Anyone ever tried Reptilinks?

[Rushthezeppelin]

All they need now is to make lizard reptilinks and they'll have a gold mine.

Ya corn snake owners would go bonkers if they make lizard links ^_^ BTW the frogs will be CB.

[BUSHSNAKE]

Reminds me of garter grub. Does anyone remember that product?

I do Lol

[joeysgreen]

One thing to note is that raw products like this can be a real risk for food poisoning. It'd be safer to feed frozen/thawed whole-body prey. It's a good idea, but I just don't personally see much of a benefit.

[Qwerty3159]

One thing to note is that raw products like this can be a real risk for food poisoning. It'd be safer to feed frozen/thawed whole-body prey. It's a good idea, but I just don't personally see much of a benefit.

Taken from the website: :P
"All links are tightly vacuum sealed, shipped frozen, and guaranteed to arrive below 40 F. The links can be safely refrozen and thawed as needed with a frozen shelf life of 3 months, and 1 year for products that don’t contain fruits and vegetables. The links can also be refrigerated for more immediate feeding with a refrigerated shelf life of one week. The links contain no preservatives. "

[joeysgreen]

Yes, but as with all raw food, the processing plant is a very real contamination hazard. They could very well be vacuum sealing your repti-link full of Clostridium, E-coli...ect as happens with human grade food all the time; except we cook our food prior to consumption, killing said microorganisms. Freezing stops reproduction, and likely reduces overall numbers, but does not eliminate the risk. To relate, I often store my culture swabs in the freezer, to thaw later and then grow for identification and sensitivity testing.

[Albert Clark]

Thanks Rush and Joeys, I have heard of them b4 but only recently was considering them for my collection. I have to reduce the numbers of conventional feeders I already have. Lol.

[Rushthezeppelin]

Yes, but as with all raw food, the processing plant is a very real contamination hazard. They could very well be vacuum sealing your repti-link full of Clostridium, E-coli...ect as happens with human grade food all the time; except we cook our food prior to consumption, killing said microorganisms. Freezing stops reproduction, and likely reduces overall numbers, but does not eliminate the risk. To relate, I often store my culture swabs in the freezer, to thaw later and then grow for identification and sensitivity testing.

Just curious but how would this be any different than using frozen fish or other frozen food besides something that is frozen alive and whole like pinks? What parameters or 3rd party certification would you look for to try and ensure safety of the food that would make you feel comfortable with these guys?

[joeysgreen]

I don't think anything should be frozen alive, it's been confirmed inhumane and is not supported by the AVMA, CALAS, or other regulator bodies on euthanasia.
However there is risk with any food; if it's freshly killed, then you're more worried about parasites, so make sure you know where your feeders come from. If you use frozen feeders, you want to be certain that they have been frozen immediately after euthanasia, and are used immediately after thawing. This offers the least amount of nutritional breakdown, and the least amount of time for bacterial overgrowth.

When whole prey are cut and ground up, the bacteria that is on the outside of the skin is carried into the rest of the tissue, the perfect medium for growth. Further, the time it takes to process this food allows for both bacterial growth and degradation by natural decomposition. Additionally, the equipment used for this processing is a giant vector for disease as it is difficult to keep clean, and sterility is an illusion. As alluded to earlier, this has been a problem in the human meat market, google Maple Leaf Foods Listeria outbreak for a somewhat recent example. I don't blame anyone for such things, because it's the nature of the products we consume. Again, we either buy it precooked, or cook it ourselves so the risks are minimal. This just isn't so with pet foods. Do you know how many vomiting and diarrhea cases vets are seeing nowadays with the raw-pet-food craze? Dogs are going to usurp reptiles in the salmonella scare if this trend continues (maybe that's a good thing, I guess it depends on where you stand).

As for what certification I'd look for, well, that's just not going to happen. If no one oversees nutraceuticals, vitamins, probiotics ect. what makes me think they'll oversee garter sausages? lol, don't get me wrong, I'm not dead set against the idea, but just want people to be informed as to what they are getting in to.

Ian

[AntTheDestroyer]

If freezing is in humane what is the best way to kill pinky mice? It is nearly impossible to asphyxiate them as they are designed to go with out air for a long time. I tried spinal dislocation once and it was incredibly hard and absolutely torture for the animal. I will never do that again, and still feel bad about it.

Snakes have evolved to eat some pretty rancid food in the wild. The real issue is not if the bacteria exists but if it is even harmful to the snake. I have not come across a single story of a pet snake getting food poisoning. Have you? Also any bacteria picked up during processing would definitely be killed by freezing.

[joeysgreen]

The best way that I have found for killing pinky mice is blunt force trauma. It is inconvenient, but I throw them one at a time, head first at the cement floor. For them, it's like getting hit by a truck, lights out immediately. Then I freeze them as a means of secondary euth. to ensure they don't ever wake up. This method replicates the "whacking" method used on larger adults but is unable to be done on such small, tail-less animals.

As per bacteria, no, freezing does not kill all bacteria. It can actually preserve it.

Bacteria, and pathogens of any type for that matter, create disease for two reasons.
1. Virulence. This is how much of the pathogen is necessary to cause disease. A highly virulent bacteria would only need small amounts to seed a culture, grow and cause problems.
2. Exposure. Even bland, every day bacteria like Staphylococcus can cause disease if the host is overwhelmed by it.

Where virulence and exposure intersect, you get disease.

Snakes have been documented eating roadkill. They have a pretty good stomach for grossness. But that's not a reason to ignore reasonable discussion on feeding practices. As per stories about food poisoning, we report diarrhea in reptiles all the time. We report regurgitation. Even on this website there is plenty of evidence that certain items can make your snake sick. We blame it on "mystery toxins" but the fact is it certainly could be a simple case of food poisoning. It's hard enough to convince people to get diagnostics done on a sick gartersnake, let alone additional ones to link it to the food they were given. If a human gets salmonellosis, it's "food poisoning". If a snake gets the same, it's because "they're carriers" - not so simple, see 1. and 2. again.

Again, I'm not trying to be super pessimistic about this product. I am just trying to offer an informative discussion.

Ian