mites

[adamant]

Will useing frozen mice/rat help to cut down mite.

[diablo]

Re: mites

im not to sure what you mean.but if your asking if useing f/t will cut down the chance of mites?is that what you wanted to know?

[Red]

Re: mites

Well no... But not feeding your snake pet store rats will drasiticly reduce the chance of you snake getting mites...
I hope this helps...
Eric aka...Red

[adamant]

Re: mites

Thank you for your help.
Red

[Doug]

Re: mites

HI,
 Most mite infection's come from new snakes that have beenhoused at the petstore in a mite infested substrate thats never changed.  The bad news mites can transmit other viruses to a snake in the store that can take months to actually show in the newly accquired  snake.
Frozen food prevents, Mites from rats, fleas, worms, protazoan infections being transfered from the rat to the snake. So feeding thawed is a really good thing.
 Isolate any new repitile to your collection at least 6 mos.
 If mites are disscovered or as a precaution treat that new animals cage once a month for mites with provent-a-mite. mites like fleas have life cycles where the female mite feeds and then hops off and lays eggs in the corners of the cage  the larva  hatch and molt a few times in the cage then the cycle repeats so just treating the snake will kill all the adult mites but guess what s back in a week or two. Pay real close attention to the instructions on the proevent-a-mite can always remove all substrate ( I use newspaper substrate when treating a cage) always remove the water dish,( never treat the water dish)  but treat all hides , toys and all the cracks and corners of the cage it requires a very light spray to treat the cage you don't have to drown them bugs.. . remove all snakes from the room while treating a cage. Once dry the prevent-a-mite is harmless to reptiles but leaves a powder like residue that kill insects for one month..
 I always treat the feed boxes and snake movers after  removing the snake.    Mites are trouble some but easily treated,  I find mineral oil and some of the the other methods a waste of time becuase your snake cage is infested to.
  PS you can get mites from your pet store in the substrate your buying.  hehe   love the pet strores  

ps the cheapest way to get provent-a-mite is at that
http://www.pro-products.com/miteandtemp.html   doug

[ReticEd]

Re: mites

And you can even bring mites home by carrying them on your own self after playing with pet store animals...

But I think that the original poster is a little confused on which parasites are introduced with foods.

Typically, the fresh or live or stunned prey, can introduce internal parasites. Mites are an ectoparasite, meaning they live outside of the hosts body.
Freezing the food will reduce the internal parasites to a negligible amount, good thing is also, that if there are any external parasites, they will die with freezing as well.