Answers to trouble in the enclosure.

[mattfish]

what isnt, the sparrow or the rat? rats wiped out alot of people with diseases over human history. private breeders dont get vet checks for the rats. how do you know how healthy a frozen rat was unless you personally breed your own food sources for the frog? all it takes is an outside flee jumping in a rat breeders room and wa-la you have some funky stuff going from rat to rat. all feeder critters are a risk.

[Truffs1178]

what isnt, the sparrow or the rat? rats wiped out alot of people with diseases over human history. private breeders dont get vet checks for the rats. how do you know how healthy a frozen rat was unless you personally breed your own food sources for the frog? all it takes is an outside flee jumping in a rat breeders room and wa-la you have some funky stuff going from rat to rat. all feeder critters are a risk.

Why would a flea be jumping on a rat kept indoors? A disease doesn't just appear on the rats just because their rats. Dragons Den and animal tracks(the pet stores I use) isn't full of a bunch of idiots and all of them keep exotics. One guy has 101 lizards alone and that's not including other animals its just his lizards. They get their frozen feeders from reliable breeders not huge filthy, industrial breeding facility's. Not all rat breeding facilities are horrible, cramped or disease ridden place. Their rats are healthy now can we just drop this argument and I think you need to realize that wild caught sparrows are a worse choice of diet than captive bred frozen mice and rats.

[mattfish]

why would a flea be jumping on a rat kept indoors? are you serious? a flea or fly can get into any area that has alot of animals in it. flies carry many diseases also. so i dont know where this mystical perfect sancuary is that these prestine feeder rats you get come from but maybe you should take a day trip to check out this magical facility your petstore gets rats from. rat breeder facilities are NOT usda appoved, nor have to be, by law.
a wild sparrow and a petstore rat both have risks. i always deep freeze any animal i feed to my frog for at least a week, including petstore feeders.

[Truffs1178]

rat breeder facilities are NOT usda appoved,

Well I don't live in the US sooo....... Also by the way the U.S. has alot more diseases than Britain so less chance of rats being infected. For example there is no rabies here anymore. The UK is clean of alot of diease because we are so small compared to America and we have eliminated so many diseases because they are easy to find on a tiny island. And your point about rats killing humans can't be applied to this argument because frogs and people are very different creatures. Frogs can eat salmonella ridden feeder rats but if we did we would get food poisoning. Freezing doesn't kill all disease just makes them dormant. As soon as its defrosted then they start to reproduce again.

[Truffs1178]

Can someone close this thread? It's turned from helping my frog into a debate about the cleanliness of Sparrows and rats.

[JeffreH]

I'm locking this thread per request of the OP - getting off topic.