back in nyc i had access to liquid nitrogen that is what i used to freeze rock solid and either lumber yard muncher turned in fertilizer .. out here i would use dry ice and freeze it good and then call local taxedermist and see if they wanted if not i found local friend that collects skeletons.. so that where they go once frozen .. he doesnt have reptiles ...never thought of burning as good friend has fire pit in back yard ..

also knew guy in brooklyn that used acid (solfuric)  to get rid of the dead never saw first hand .. but there were stories 

I'm saving mine. Eventually they will either be shipped to you under the guise of Bacon, or John Romano will finally have a dead snake party at his school.

Do you still play poker with yours?

If the animal in question dies of old age, we bury it. It looks a bit like Stephen King's Pet Cemetery in a certain part of our property. (My mother is a borderline animal hoarder, in that if one pet dies she has to immediately replace it and she's never had less than 5 dogs IN the house and no less than 2 cats IN the house.)

If the animal was sick before it died we do as you did and burn it. My Great Dane passed away last November, due to pneumonia brought on by a severely damaged immune system. She was a rescue and came to me with horrible skin issues. While my parents thought I had lost my mind, I had the DH build a bonfire over her body, because I didn't want to risk any of my other animals contracting what she had. (She weighed 175 lbs. when she died so I think the hubby was kinda glad I made the decision I did. He would have been the one to dig the hole.)

Oh and when my 40+ year old horse dies, there is no way I'm gonna dig THAT hole. We'll build her a nice funeral pyre in the pasture.

I have cremated  a boa that I had  received  that was questionable  and never made it out of QT ... Viking funeral baby !!

Charbroiling? when I first read that, I honestly thought you were going to talk about BBQing it next.. ha. anyway, we freeze ours. Once completely frozen, we take them to my (soon to be) brother in law who is a taxadermist. He uses them to practice different techniques for preservation and mounting the bones. We have the option of keeping them once they are finished or he sells them. Cats/dogs/etc get buried at my dads in my pet cemetary from when I was a kid..

My boyfriend works and Ft. Detrick in MD as a scientist and apparently they just bury anthrax and small pox there, we don't drink the house water just so you know.

at*

I take mine to have them stuffed. My 16 month old would be heartbroken if any of them disappeared so I have them stuffed so she can still see them. 

Cremation...

how / where?

Cremation is probably the most suitable way to dispose of a dead animal. If you ask your local vet, they can usually put you in touch with whatever company they use to cremate their patients.

I put my vote in for dermestid beetles. Would you like a colony? No, okay then I would stick to your "cremation" method. I double bagged mine then froze them and them put them in the ground when I lived in my apartment. 

compost

It was kind of wierd the first time to open the freezer looking for ice cream and see a dead corn snake in a deli cup. But if I lost any of mine I would probably freeze them too.

Keeping reptiles and amphibiams over 30 years I have used various methods, and:

• Some species I fed to our mealworms. 
• Some were given a burial in my backyard.
• Some reptiles kept in my freezer for ages. 
• Some were actually flushed down the toilet.
• Some of the more valuable animals were given a necropsy and disposed of by the vet, and 
• Recently we sold a dead reptile to a taxidermist.

Although results may vary, it is never easy to loose any animal and people will handle things different.

In my humble opinion, working with larger collection, I recommend having the necropsy as the best method (and most likely they are cremated).

Ive only had hatchlings die due to nonfeeding.  They usually just get tossed in the trash.  Id probably do the same thing if one of my adults died.  Im sure there are worse things in our landfills...

When i was a freshman in colege... my roomate came home drunk one night and decided to show off for some tart he met out at a bar.... so he was enticing my 12 foot retic to strike at the glass to make her jump..... well... the snake hit the glass so hard he broke his neck....   k after sneaking her into the hospital I worked and bribing the graveyard shift rasiology tech to take some pics of my ailing snake.... we determined with the help of the ER physician that my snake had three fractured cervical vertebra.....  they were pretty much shattered.... and there was nothing that could be done.... anyway....  WE had to gas her with CO2......   Didnt have room in my freezer.... following post mortem disection of her neck bones I saw they were a mass and one bone fracture had actually embedded and severed the ant and post spinocerebellar tracts, the lateral and ant corticospinal pyramidal tracts and  both spinothalmic tracts......  so she wouldve never made it.......   We skinned her... and her dried skin actually appeared in the fiming of a hollywood movie background in a bar in New Orleans.....    and we trimmed fillets and made a jungle style thai green curry with the python meat.... I ate python and king cobra in thailand before......  It has a great texure......

Honestly.... I see using the every part of the animals carcass treats it with more reverence than throwing in the garbage.....   It wasnt sick.... just injured beyond reapair

Since the animal was not sick, there was nothing wrong with that at all. using all parts of an animal is what i agree with and that's why i save stillborns and non-feeders and feed them to something else. Sick animals though, I will not use. For obvious reasons.

I put  ther boa on a pile of wood in my chimenea

hmmm, as a fellow germ-phobe who's been a microbiologist in her checkered past, I think burning is best. don't breathe the fumes. cremation is the cleanest/surests and any old mammal vet should be willing to accomodate you, but I'd imagine the fees could get ridiculous. if you toss it in the fire and get all the bio-stuff burnt (except for bones) the chances of ANYTHING being carried on are pretty slim.  

I like the idea of composting, but the thought of adding boogers to the ecosystem is not so great.  and as far as burying....that's always been my preferred method, but I may change. when I moved into this house 6 months ago, I found several cat corpses inside plastic bags in various states of decomp when I pulled up some weeds along the fence to put in a flower bed. ugh.

the geek in me wanted to take pictures, dissect, etc...but I was worried about the effects on my dog and cat so I re-bagged and threw in the trash.

If composting is done properly and the temperatures inside are sustained, it can actually be very effective at removing any sort of infectious agent. Composting is the preferred method of disposal for mortality in the poultry industry (unless they die of something insane), and once the compost has been turned it's often sold as fertilizer without public health concerns. So composting is actually pretty safe.

@ Tawny and it's enviromentally friendly. In relation to physics energy cannot be created or destroyed only transfered. So when cremation occurs most of the energy gets released as heat, there is a lot of smoke, and the smell. Plus you have a mess to clean up. In nature all living things when finished with their lifecycle are pulled towards the earth with gravity. Their remains are utilized by other life cycles and what's left becomes nutrients for plants that are themselves life cycles. Plants provide clean air and nutrition for other life cycles. Keep the cycle going!

I work at a veterinary clinic and I put any deceased animals in our freezer at work to cremate. I know at our clinic at least we don't charge to cremate (smallish) exotics and it's $20 to cremate anything larger.

no, I totally get all the reasons to compost. I have both a heap compost going and a food composter. however, I still wouldn't trust it to kill crypto

Well if its small enough your toilet is always a good easy way, if not rather then charbroiling and stinking up your house, freeze it then take a nice sharp knife and slice it up until you have pieces small enough to go down the toilet, of coarse you dont have to freeze it to do that but its a lot cleaner if you do.

for those of you who said cremation, how much did it cost you for what size animal? and where did you get it done?

I regularly cremate teaching specimens at work, so if you'd like, you're welcome to package the animal with dry ice and send it over here. Just send me a pm for shipping info.

I had my rescue adult beardie cremated when she passed.  I was given two options:  single cremation, where they just cremate the one animal, or group cremation, where your animal gets thrown in with a pile of others.  I wanna say it was $30 for the group and somewhere around $60-90 for the single.  I opted for the single, because she was very dear to me and I wanted to keep her ashes.  

Oh, and the vet sent her to the crematorium after her necropsy.  I picked her ashes up from the vet's office.  I'll bet a call to any local vet could give you the location of a pet crematorium, or they might ship the desceased off for you.

Cremation would be the safest way to dispose of any animal, in my opinion. Cremation burns everything down to ash, including bones. If you have concerns about a potential virus spreading to other critters, that is the way to go. Since most veterinary clinics are open during normal hours, there should be an after hours emergency clinic that can refer you to a cremation service in your area. Keep in mind most vet clinics make a profit for cremations, so you could contact that cremation service directly to keep costs down. There are typically two types of cremations; general cremations are mass cremations that would mean you wouldn't get the remains back. Private cremations mean only your pet cremated, and then returned in an urn.

Oh, about the costs; I think that varies greatly. General cremations are obviously way cheaper, since there isn't an urn involved and they aren't running the crematorium just for your pet. Typically it all depends on weight. I've used a cremation service where below 25# was under $25 bucks I think. But it's been a while.

My back garden is a full on pet cemetary - cats, a kitten, several rabbits and a rabbit litter the mother killed, lizards, mice, hamsters, a rat and even some goldfish that were given a royal burial.

I've not had the displeasure of having to say goodbye to a snake yet, but if it was fully grown and non-diseased I'd be torn between the flesh-eating beetle option to preserve the skeleton, and feeling that it's kind of disrespectful to a snake that I've loved and cared for for so long and burying it.  If it was diseased then I'd give it a firey send off, seems right and hygenic.

So very Monty Python in here burn her bury her or eat her lol. We haven't had many die maily just some fish which we throw into a stock pond with catfish makes them happy if they die of some other reason like infection they get burned when we aren't in a burn ban. Most of our creatures get picked on to death by our cichlids which sucks but it is what it is

Depends on size and what I think they died from, but I'd definitely take something to the vet for cremation if it was large and I suspected communicable.  Small stuff that I don't think is communicable (old age, failure to thrive, etc) goes in a biodegradable plastic bag and buried out in the yard.

My vet cremates cats for $60. Less if I just bring in the parts. Herps go in the fire pit then buried. Gimme points.

Since we have all of our animals necropsied, we just have them cremated with the vet. Honestly, that's the best solution we could come up with.

Would it be considered wrong if you checked out your local obits to see who is getting cremated.  You could go visit the deceased and leave them a parting gift.  Just make sure they were a animal lover.  I'm sure that would be glad to help if they were still alive.

seriously, what?!? 

some may hate me for it - but I feed them off to the gator or varanids. Natural selection as theyd pick off the weak/sickly ones anyway. Often they get frozen first...but its the most natural way to do it...and ya, Im all weird when it comes to that - the more natural the better for me. (though yes some snakes that die are not from the same area but the idea is there)

I see using the every part of the animals carcass treats it with more reverence than throwing in the garbage

I agree. But if it was one of my friends who killed my snake, well I'd end up with 2 corpses instead of one. -__-; I do wonder how is it that your roommate is still alive... ;)

I too think in cyclical terms, so unless my snake dies of strange dangerous disease, I think a nice burial would be nice. Make him decompose and go back to the cycle, maybe he'll become a tree? (I mean, the atoms from his body, of course) That's what I'd like for myself, anyway :P

Depends. Dead babies I produced become food for other snakes/lizards. If I get my dermistid beetles going, I'll do that so I can keep the skeletons. In the past, I've buried the small to mid sized ones and taken the large ones to vets to get cremated.

I deep freeaze mine, even if sick. Deep freezing kills just about any virus then they will be cremated. Of course my dogs and most special ones will get there own little funeral

OK, I did a GTS and found many options for animal disposal.  No matter the species an animal that is cared for IS cared for.  The become part of you life and are saddened and mourn the loss of a family member.  I suggest doing the same this way you are covered bu all your local codes and prevent any liability from authorities.  Always do right by your animals.  They deserve it.  I hope this helps.

GTS=Google That $#1t!  San Diego Animal Disposal

on the contrary, CA, freezing doesn't even come close to killing all viruses; many types of viruses (and some bacteria as well) are preserved by freezing. it depends on what sort of virus they are (enveloped vs non-enveloped, etc). if you think your animal might be sick, freezing is not a good way to make the carcass "safe".

Aimee, I am going on what two well known herp vets. told me. And not sticking them in a regular  freezer. The freezer connected to your fridge gets no where near cold enough.

and is stated "just about" not as in all. Like no it does not kill the salmonella, and even what it doesn't kill it will quickley prevent it from spreading.

I strongly disagree. When I'm in front of a keyboard I can prove it.  

You may disagree, and feel free to post whatever you want. I will choose to continue following my vets advice, no offense, but you are a stranger on a website who can if they choose research and post whatever they feel fits their belief. As could I, however,  I have been keeping snakes quite successfully for awhile now, with only one major issue, and that was with basically an abandoned snake.

I stand by what I said, many viruses (as can internal parasites) can be killed and controlled with deep freezing. The ones that don't die,generally,  go dormant.

This will be my last post regarding this because I refuse to hijack a thread for an arguement, because I absolutely hate it when it happens on other sites and forums.

I'm going to listen to Aimee since she is the only Research Scientist with a degree in Molecular Biology and Biochemstry that I personally know.

thanks, George. I've been on phone-only the past couple of days and haven't had the time to sift all those little screens to answer this properly.

CA, if you want to pick up your marbles and go home that's your decision, if you think that's the best way to contribute to this discussion. I don't think this is OT at all. Aaron, please let me know if I'm off-base here; it's your blog but it seems to me this question has been raised as an important correlate to the original.

I respect your right to your own opinion and I'm not here to start a fight; I'm here to have reasonable discussion about an issue that affects us all. I'm also not going to leave what I consider to be bad/incorrect information if I can fix the problem. your initial post left very little detail, which you sort of back-pedaled to fill in later. however, without specific temperature guidelines I don't think it's right to make a blanket statement that freezing kills "just about any" virus and will prevent future spread of whatever it doesn't kill. I don't have to take my information from whatever crackpot source I happen to find to fit my "belief" or opinion.  no, I am NOT a vet. however, I'm an experienced scientist with a BS in Microbiology (George named my second BS, bless him) who has worked as a professional in that field and I'm not just talking out of my ass.

nor am I trying to be a jerk, get the last word, or ram any opinion down someone's throat. the reason I'm pursuing this is because telling people freezing their dead herp renders the carcass "safe" has the potential to do two things:

1. if you then bury said carcass or incompletely cremate it in the backyard and the neighborhood raccoons dig it up, you can adversely affect native populations. I think all of us are well aware how fragile a lot of herp populations are; do we really want to do anything to make that situation worse, even if the odds are reasonably low?

2. the reason I am against blanket statements without a lot detail is because people who are new, not experienced people, will go, "I can put Fluffy in the freezer next to my frodents and kill all the crypto before I decide what to do with him."  I can see all sorts of disaster potential here.  you didn't specify in your original post that a standard kitchen freezer or chest freezer wasn't enough. how cold do you mean, exactly? because frankly, you have to get down way WAY below normal freezing and somewhat beyond to even kill most germs.

I wanted to answer this conclusively and not just quote a bunch of yahoo answers, which tend to be wildly variable and just as wildly inaccurate.  I spent some time on the net, and it's been common knowledge for so long that it's really hard to find primary references. I spoke to a PhD virologist who happens to be an amazing herper (Justin Julander of Australian Addiction Reptiles). this is one comment that he made: "We store our virus stocks at -80°C and use them over time. They may lose titer over time, but that occurs very slowly... They find viable 1918 spanish flu in frozen corpses in Siberia, so even outside of lab settings there are examples." he also, and this is paraphrased, mentioned route of transmission, as in that a respiratory virus that needs airborne transmission should be fairly low-risk, however he thinks freezing wouldn't do much besides reduce the amount of some of the virus. he didn't think burying a herp who had died from viral infection and then been frozen posed a large risk, and I know you mentioned cremating yours, but the risk is still there.

I can also tell you that the same applies to bacteria. almost all of the genera that infect herp hosts are easily capable of withstanding normal freezer temperatures and even much cooler up to very long periods of time. sporulating bacteria and fungi, of course, will last even longer and under even more harsh conditions. crypto is also not going to be killed by freezing, unless you go very very cold and subject to multiple freeze/thaw cycles, or leave frozen for a very long time.

I really don't mean to be an ass here, but I don't want to see someone take misinformation away from this topic that could have the potential to hurt wild populations or even the rest of their own collection. it's not worth the risk.

if anyone wants to see some primary source material, here are some useful references;

wonderful book about Crypto with a ton of detail

summary of bacterial infection common in reptiles with reference to genera

interesting article where most of the bacteria from the above article have been found in frozen arctic tundra

great article outlining all families of viruses found in reptiles and the diseases they cause

I appreciate all of the input here. I agree that when you say freezing, and deep freezing, without temperatures and specifics, a lot of casual people who would encounter this thread would infer that their own freezers are "good enough." Fact of the matter is that freezing can suspend and not kill things, such as my human replicon tadpoles.

Thank you for keeping this discussion civil, disagreeing and discussing is what makes us better at what we do. We all learn when we discuss, that's the whole reason for this area of the site.

thank you, Aaron, for posting such an interesting topic.

So interesting it's been open for 2 years.........

Looks like someone is really REALLY bored.

Oddly, it had never actually occurred to me to burn a deceased animal before this post. 

Also, where are you all getting access to the machinery for deep freezing? (just curious, as I think a few people have mentioned it, and it doesn't seem like something that would be that commonly available). 

Ditto on that Blind ^ ... FRIEND DEAD.  And FED TO GATOR (DeadVenom ^).    On topic, have not had any pass yet but with my other pets (dogs, cats, etc) many a pet cemetary as well as places where they loved to go like the woods or a particular ball field in Florida where my Poms loved to go and run. 

I bury mine

The incinerator.

Close the god d*mn question Aaron.

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So old