Hey Gexers,
Man this list is quiet! Thought I would tell you all about my shipment of Leopards to Pelican, Alaska last week! Pelican is 70 air miles north of Sitka and 70 miles west of Juneau. That is waaaay up there! I was very careful researching the shipping on this one, to say the least! UPS could not guarantee arrival in less than five days, and that would cost a small mint. So, I went postal! LOL! The main Express Mail counter is about 30 miles from me in Sacramento, I drove the geckos there myself. From there the geckos went to Seattle, then to Juneau, then to Pelican. It was a three day ship with a short third day (customer saw mail plane coming in around 11:00am that day!). Postal shipments are usually kept inside warm buildings at night. Even considering they might be exposed to night time temps, the range they were in was in the 40s, very doable with leos (30F is lowest I will ship).
Materials:
I used a RLD Enterprises 60 hour heat pack and it was still warm when the geckos arrived. Geckos were on the cool side on arrival. The top two were active and the bottom guy took a while to be as active, I am assuming he was coldest. I put three leos individually in 38oz 6.75" diameter deli cups and used a 12"x12"x10" Superior Enterprise box with 1/2" foam inserts. I have used spongy foam for cold weather shipments and have found that does not work as well as layering of styro insulation materials, which is what I did here. I use a combo of bubble wrap and styrofoam popcorns. I put a single layer of bubble wrap on the bottom of the box, then a layer of about single popcorns, then another layer of bubble wrap on top of that covering the bottom portion. I then put in the leos in their stack of three.
I put bubble wrap on three sides of the box, then filled in with popcorns. One side I left open for the heat pack. Usually I put these on top, however, there would not be room and I wanted each leopard to be close to the heat pack. I opened the heat pack and made sure it fired up warm, then I taped it in. A bit more popcorn, made an airhole near the top of the box on the side where the heat pack was.
The USPS did good!
Julie Bergman www.geckoranch.com GGA lifetime member
_______________________________________________ Global Gecko Association http://www.gekkota.com Classifieds http://www.gekkota.com/cgi-gekkota/classifieds.cgi gecko mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.gekkota.com/mailman/listinfo/gecko
