Cold Maceration

[rizzo856]

Need a little help. I want cold macerate a squrrile skull can someone help me with tne steps to take. Last time i tryed it the skull came apart.

[Sea Wolf]

No such thing. If the skull came apart then it was probably a young one. Any young animal skull will come apart. It was not the fault of the maceration process. Get a head from a fully matured animal and it will be fine.

If you sit the skull in cold water it will mostly just sit there and do little or nothing. For something as thin as the bones of a squirrel, chemicals will dissolve them so there won't be any parts to put back together.

[Voltrax]

X2
As Sea Wolf said. there's no such thing as cold or hot maceration.
Even in cold water(but not freezing cold) Maceration will progress but really slowly.
you can try to macerate even young squirrel, but it WILL fall apart so you will have to articulate it.
Whiten it in low % peroxide.

[rizzo856]

Thanks

[bmxkid313]

I'm macerating 2 squirrels right now in 89 degree water. The only falling apart there is are the 2 jaw halves coming apart and a few teeth coming out.

[Voltrax]

Bmxkid. Every young mammal skull will fall apart.
And probably every reptile skull too.
Their sutures are not fused.
So if your squirrels don't fall apart, you have dead adult squirrels

[bmxkid313]

Bmxkid. Every young mammal skull will fall apart.
And probably every reptile skull too.
Their sutures are not fused.
So if your squirrels don't fall apart, you have dead adult squirrels

I would hope they are dead, yes mine were both fairly large adults. I took them out of maceration a few hours ago and put them in my degreasing tank. The first skull had one of those two bones over the nasal cavities come off, the other had a zygomatic arch come off.

[Baccus]

I use maceration, but refer to it as cold water maceration simply because I do not heat it.  It does exactly the same thing as the heated thanks, but does not use any energy and takes a lot longer. 

Put your skinned and mostly defleshed animal in a jar that can be sealed.  I then bury them or simply put them in the yard in places that will not be molested.  The more flesh you take off, the faster it will be cleaned.  Once it looks good, pour everything off and whiten with hydrogen peroxide. 

[Ginger2000]

Cold maceration will take months. Especially if you're located in a colder area.

On squirrels sometimes just the lower jaw will come in half, and the teeth always fall out, no biggie.
Other times, the Zygomatic bones and/or the nasal bones will come off, again no biggie. Rebuilding them is like building a jigsaw, minus the cardboard drawing.

[Sea Wolf]

Putting something into unheated water to rot can, and will, also cause the formation of adipocere from the fats in the specimen. This is a wax and, once formed, will not be removed by the normal degreasing methods.

Not going into detail on this. Look up the word and have fun.

[grf68]

Seawolf I just Googled adipocere. Warning to anyone with a weak stomach.. LOL..interesting stuff but some graphic images.

[bmxkid313]

Seawolf I just Googled adipocere. Warning to anyone with a weak stomach.. LOL..interesting stuff but some graphic images.

You should listen to him, I googled it too. If do decide to google it anyway, just stay away from the image tab...

[Sea Wolf]

Interesting stuff as well as how it forms. And if you get it on specimens it can be a real bear to remove. That is why you heat the water. The job is done before this stuff forms. Even still, I get patches of it here and there. If you've done bigger skulls, it's those annoying whitish, waxy spots of stuff that you have to scrub off with a brush. Detergent doesn't move it and I haven't found anything yet that just dissolves it away. Now imagine your skull that you let sit in cold water for 8 months or more waiting for it to do something. That wax will be on the skull, in the crevices and packed in a lot of areas that you can't get at. In addition to that, this stuff smells .. really bad.

[PLTannery]

Ahh Gravewax... That crap is a whole nuther ball game.

Passive Maceration (No outside heat source) Does work, but yes you are more likely to have coffin or grave wax develope.. But removing the brain and other big gobs helps... Also checking the skull frequently and removing any loose bits always helps.

I have found it is better to let the maggots have the specimen before maceration.  The enzymes in the maggot excretions helps break down the fats into soluable substances...