How To: Euthenize with dry ice - NO PICS

[Lisa]

I see a lot of people asking how to euthenize with dry ice. Here's how I do it. I'm not including any pics because it's quite graphic in nature.

You will need the following:
- A container with a lid such as a rubbermaid to hold your rodents. The more rodentss you have the bigger the container you should use. It should not be air tight, how ever you don't want to put any air holes in it either.
- A nontip container to hold hot tap water. It doesn't have to be all that big...
- Hot water to turn the dry ice into CO2 gas
- Rodents of your choice.
- Dry ice.

Step 1) Place your rodents in the container. leave enough room for your water container.
2) Fill your water container with hot water (hot tap water will do, it should NOT be hot enough to burn).
Step 3) Using a glove or scoop (dry ice is cold enough to burn) put a handful of dry ice in the hot water. Gently place your water container (that should be foaming wildly) into your container of rodents.
Step 4) Close lid and walk away, rodents will be ready in about 15 minutes.
Step 5) Freeze rats.

I get my dry ice from prax air. Some other places carry dry ice as well.

When I pick up a pound or two the dry ice is good for a good while as long as you take proper measures to keep it cool. I've picked up 2 pounds and had enough left the next day to do a few batches but you get better results with fresher ice.

[Dani33]

Great post, thanks for taking the time

[jjnnbns]

The second, smaller container should have a lid with holes in it to let the gas escape into the larger chamber... leaving it w/o a lid would allow the mice/rats to possibly get into the water/ice and as much as it would be a painful death, it would also be a chore to remove them from the water as it freezes around the dry ice!

[Lisa]

jjbbbns: I've never had the water freeze around the dry ice, the hot water has too much energy for that to happen, even using cold water it's not going to happen, there's too much energy released when the water "boils" from the rapid release of gas.
Also we've never had a rodent hop in, as they usually want to avoid the noise coming out of the container so that's not a problem either.