Snake Throwing up Food

[slitherned]

Hi,

I need a little guidance here. We recently purchased two baby cornsnakes.
The one that concerns me is about 15" long. The first day she ate two live
baby hamsters, this was on Dec.13th.

This past weekend, there were no live "pinkies" available. Twice she ate two
thawed & warmed dead pinkies and twice she threw them up. One two days later
and the other the next day.

I will try to secure live pinkies tomorrow, but it has been almost two weeks
since she has kept anything down and I was getting concerned. Should I be?
Is there anything else I should try?

Please advise ASAP. My E-mail address is eagle62@optonline.net.

Thank you for your time and consideration. Your advice will be much
appreciated!

Phil & Nikki

[Ken Harbart]

A few questions...

1) How long did you wait after the first regurgitation to feed the snake again? From the tenor of your post, I can all but guarantee that it was entirely too soon. After a regurgitation, you should wait 10-14 days before attempting to feed the snake again. This give the gut flora time to replenish, as well as the esophagus time to heal.

2) What temperature is your corn being maintained at? One of the most common causes of regurgitation in captive snakes is a suboptimal body temperature.

3) Out of curiositywhy go through the trouble of trying to secure live pinkies when your snake readily accepts thawed? Unless there was some frozen tissue left in the pinky, this would not have caused it to regurge. However, feedig live does increase he odds of your snake picking up some internal nasties.

Once again, I can not state this enough- do not attempt to feed your snake tomorrow. Doing so will only perpetuate the problem. Give it ample time to recover.

[sue frederick]

Are you keeping these snakes together? If so, separate them NOW! If the one snake is sick, it will infect the other snake. And stress of living with another snake can cause regurging.

What are your temps in your cage? They need to be measured on the substrate of both the hot side and cool side. I feel that the hot side should be about 82-85 and the cool side should be between 72-78. Wrong temps can make a snake regurge. What substrate are you keeping the snake on? If it is pine or cedar, put it on something else, such as aspen or carpet, paper towels or newspaper works well, also. Cedar or pine can give off harmful fumes to a snake. After the snake eats, do you leave it totally alone for 48 hours so it has a chance to digest its food? Do you have two appropriate sized hide boxes in there for the snake? Stress can make a snake regurge, and not having hiding places is stressful for a snake. Are you feeding in a container that has no substrate? If not, the snake can ingest some of the substrate and that can mess it up.

Once a snake regurges once, you need to give it some time to recover before handling or feeding again. Some people recommend 7-10 days off before feeding a very small meal (you can even cut the head off a dead pinky to feed it). Then leave it totally alone for another week. If it regurges again, leave it totally alone for 10-14 days, then try to feed a very small meal again. After the second regurge, I would recommend visiting the vet.

Just another question. Why did you feed it hamster babies?
sue frederick

[slitherned]

Wow!

Thanks for the tips. The cold side of the enclosure is mid 70's the warm side is b/w 82 & 84.

After reading your responses, and revisiting what transpired, I think that I know what the problem lies. The guy at the petshop gave me the two pinkie hamsters because there were no live mice and I fed them to the snake in the tank. They may have been a little large . The one snake ate both. Since then, I put them in a separate feeding enclosure.

The other snake ate only dead mice and was fed in the feeding enclosure. He ate twice. No problems.

I think the issue may be two-fold.
1) Slither, the regurgitator, may have sustained some internal damages either from the hamsters &/or the chips in the bottom of the tank.

2) The other may lie in me trying to feed her again too soon. I will wait another 10 to 14 days before trying to do so again.

Thank you very much!

[klvan]

From what I have read, I don't recommend feeding the snake
where there is any substrate material. They can easily ingest and block their intestines with the substrate. Better to remove the snake into a separate feeding area or put the mouse in a dixie cup or brown bag so when the snake goes to chomp down, he isn't getting a bite of anything else.