puking 2002's

I bought four corns from a major producer this winter. All were beautiful, ate well, and seemed healthy at first. One began puking and died shortly. I was sent a replacement, which was much larger than the rest. It ate like a horse for weeks and then began puking too. Now each small one has thrown up at least twice. My tiniest one (sunglow male) looks like a two month old. He's still on pinkie heads, and sometimes pukes them up after several days. They are in a boaphile plastics rack, kept seperate, temps set around 82. Fed weekly, water constant, tried grapefriut seed extract. ''Flagyled'' them each twice.
Still happening. I have seen matter that almost looked like little eggs or bits of rice in mucous. They have waited as long as 4 days to regurge before. Any advice appreciated.

Hmmmm.

I suggest you get a necropsy done if another dies.

From what you have said its either

A. The source. The breeder is selling sick snakes or has something going around his collection.

B. The home. Something wrong with husbandry...but your description sounds great...so it could be something floating around your collection.

C. The mice, are you getting them from a reliable source?

In any case I would keep these corns away from all other snakes and reptiles, and try and get them to a qaulified reptile vet. If one does regurg, don't feed for another 10-14 days. I was going to give the normal regurg advice but in your situation I think something else is going on.

bmm

I would definatly have an experienced reptile vet examine thier fecals. Most vets will do a fecal exam without having to see your snake first. That is what I do, I have so many I could never take them all in, so whenever anyone is acting sick I bring down a fecal and get it examined for $13. If the vet sees any parasites or bacteria, then a visit will be needed to treat the snake. If your vet sees any coccidia, I would get an acid fast test done to screen for crypto. Actually, it is not a bad idea to get a few fecal examinations done on each snake you add to your collection regardless of if it is acting sick or not. Good Luck!
Carol

Sources

Mice are from Rodent Pro. I trust them, unless anyone else has advice to the contrary. I feel I shouldn't name the seller of the corns, he's done right by me and I wouldn't want my experience to tarnish his reputation.
I DID buy them late in the season and am pretty sure from the size of the snakes that I may have gotten some triple clutchers. I'll weigh the sunglow when it's (hopefully) digested and report the weight. It's smaller around than a pencil and can't keep down a day old pinkie. Even a head shows a noticeable bulge. My 2002 Okeetees (I bred) are on hoppers and coloring up.
I understand these designer corns are going to be a little more fragile, but I've lost two out of five, and each has regurged or gone on mini hunger strikes at some point. Admittedly, I DID house them together while I'd clean their cages, so if one had something...

hmmm well get fecals done.

And I agree Rodent Pro sells good feeders...

Honestly the designer morphs shouldn't be more fragila at all, they are as healthy, or non-healthy as their normal "brothers" so its something else going on that a vet will have to see.

bmm

Hey, what ever happened to your snakes Elrojo? I just happened to do a forum search on coccidia and found this post. Your symptoms sound very similar to the symptoms one of my snakes have, and today I did my own fecal and found tons of small twitching things which I posted about today.

Did any of your snakes have a soft lump in their belly that seemed to come and go? The poop description fits mine exactly, it looks like a lump of pale grey, sometimes slightly purple (blood I think), sometimes brown nodules.

-13mur 6

Coccidia is rare in

captive bred snake collections. It is a problem one finds in lizards, like Beardies. If you have both snakes and lizards, then it can spread into your snake collection...or so says my vet. I believe him, since he is the Professor of Herpetological Medicine at UC-Davis.

However, if your snake does show a body swelling that isn't food related, and appears towards the first third of their body, and the snake is listless, it might have cryptosporidium.

Whatever the case, take your snakes to the vet and let him, or her, have an actual look at them. If knowledgable, the vet can 'milk' a stool sample for a microscopic examination.

Good Luck.

I don't think it's crypto. The swelling comes and goes and it's soft and it's right smack in the middle of his body (crypto gives a firm swelling in the stomach due to stomach inflamation). The snake is fairly active (makes bumping his hide around at night and making a ruckus as a hobby), and eats well, and doesn't regurge unless I've done something wrong (feed to much, too cold, etc). If it was crypto, the snake probably would've died by now, since he was at a near unrecoverable point not too long ago (was 28 inches long and only weighing 50 grams, now he weighs closer to 80). Plus I've seen these things with my own eyes, and I know what crypto cysts look like.

I've also heard coccidia can be spread from mice and water as well. I had to feed live occasionally to get him to eat, and those were with petstore bought mice (which may have been exposed to lizard or snake feces who had coccidia. Also they had beardies, which natually have a light coccidia load anyway). Or, the snake could've had the coccidia all along, and it didn't get bad till a while later (got this snake from a petstore, I just had to get him out of the hell hole they put him in, he was caged with a friggin cali king about twice his size!). Coccidia is also very resistant to freezing, so could've been the feeder mice I've been buying. Also, deer mice and white foots seem to carry coccidia naturally, maybe my male white foot is the cause of the infection. Well, anyway, the point is, there's a million places where this thing could've come from (there's coccidia cysts on the ground outside, everytime you step into your house from outside you could possibly be bringing in tons of cysts, as well as bacteria, etc, etc, but actual infection is rare I guess)

I don't trust just any vet anymore unless I meet them in person and see how they operate (I absolutely HATE vets who hide behind their techs and never show their face). If I've never seen that vet before, I'll assume he/she was as bad as the last three or four I've seen.

Yeah, I'm one paranoid mofo, but one fairly capable paranoid mofo once he has a hold of some info. Well NEways, we'll see how this resolves.

-13mur 6

two outta five alive and well

Well, my hopes of starting a colony of sunglows is at least a ways down the road, but the amel motleys' are doing well. They have just gotten up to the proper food size/amount (for their size, not age) in the last three weeks. But all seems well, other than their growth and shedding frequency.
I never got a necropsy, but the one fecal I brought in (from a survivor) showed nothing. I keep these snakes SOOOOO far from the others in my collection though, you'd think they have black plague. I don't even handle them. I even clean their cages on a different day and sanitize ridiculously. But I have faith they will survive and be okay in the long run, and fortunately they aren't part of my breeding plans with my other lines.

Oh, yeah, sometimes I get negative fecals when my snakes definately have something. Coccidia I think arent' shed every poo, I think you need 3 in a row to be all negative to be sorta sure (not even a definate sure) that your snake doesn't have it. Dija get them treated for anything? Doses of flagyl or albon?

-13mur 6

yeah

As I mentioned in the first (?) post, I dosed them with Flagyl. Really, the problem is water under the bridge now (knock on wood) since the two survivors are faring well and the others passed on some time ago. I think I'll stick to breeding Okees. Kinda surprised this post became active again after two months!?
Anyway, Imur, I wish you the best of luck with your specimens, and I agree; too few vets really give a rat's @%# about reptile husbandry. I took an c/b Okeetee to a vet a few years ago I feared was egg-binding and he told me "Let it go and just find another corn snake." Little did he know I missed over a week of work, traveled across two states, snake-hunted, road-cruised, tresspassed on hunt club property, got bitten by two dozen snakes and two hundred mosquitos, cut by barbed wire, thorns... just to come back with three stinkin' corns that were worth adding to my colony, and DAMMITT, this was one of their best offspring! Even if it were a normal corn from the area (c/b no less), would you just let it go? The nerve. Uhhh. I'd almost forgotten about that...

Re: yeah

he told me "Let it go and just find another corn snake."

Click to expand...

Ouch, he said that? That's like saying "You're friend's gonna die, go find another one". That would've warranted a punch in the face from me.

Also, I have this feeling that most vets knowledge about reptile husbandry is fairly outdated. I asked my vet what I could do to help my corn out and she suggested raising the temps (which I agreed was a good idea), but 95 deg F? The entire tank? This isn't some python out of a jungle. And I do have to laugh, but she got mad at me, like she started yelling at me, when I told her I raised the temps only to 89 deg F warm side 78 F cool side and put her off food for the time being till she finishes her course of antibiotics.

K, enough vet bashing. Interesting sliver of info I found about coccidia was that some of them are self limiting and they stop reproducing asexually after a certain time (main method of reproduction in the host). Maybe those two snakes that survived toughed it out (plus your meticulous cleaning to prevent reinfection), while those that didn't make it were too weak and died before the coccidia reached the self limiting stage. Also another interesting sliver of info I found, coccidia oocysts are very sensitive to UV radiation (sunlight), dying within minutes of exposure (they need shade apparently to devolope into the infectious stage, which takes a few days), course I'll need to test this myself before I believe it. I'm also being rather meticulous about cage cleaning with this particular snake (bleaching his tank and everything in it for half an hour every time he poops).

And it's LEMUR-6, I guess not many people speak 1337 here (that's LEET, or elite in a programmer's slang).

And then there was one

Well, the final original snake died yesterday. He has been a sporadic feeder, and constanly seemed dehydrated. I began bringing him to his water bowl every three days when I changed it and he would drink as if he hadn't had water in a month. I've frozen him and am looking to have a necropsy done.
The replacement snake is still doing fair, although smaller than my own hatchlings of that age. If the necropsy shows anything severe, I'll destroy her, their bowls, cages, everything. I'm tempted to anyway.
I'll keep you all posted....

Ack, well like another person on this forum, you killed your necropsy too by freezing the animal. Do not freeze animals you intend to necropsy.

I'm sorry to hear about your loss, I hope you contain whatever it is that's causing all this sickness. My snake seems to be doing well, eating much more and feeding response is scary (bit me once already and almost bit me a couple other times while feeding).

-Lemur 6

%&@!! I was afraid of that!

Died on a Sunday, vet. was closed. Figured it was better than letting it decompose until then. Should I just bury it or can a necropsy show anything at this point?

Well I guess it'd still be okay for gross tissue examination, but pathology will be totally shot. So the vet can say, yeah there was an inflammation here and a necrosis there and an absces here, but won't be able to tell you what caused it since all the lil buggers are dead (in your case we're interested in possible bacterial/protozoan agent).

I guess she can also do some tissue slides of the gut see if there's micro-damage there (how healthy are the villi etc etc), but freezing breaks down and destroys normal cells as well.

Next time just the refridgerator should do fine for a couple days.

-Lemur 6

Let's hope there's not a next time

But I'll be sure and use the 'fridge if the last of these five animals goes down. Thanks.

uh oh...

My Okeetee female is starting to have the symptoms of ur snakes...Poop is white/yellowish with 2 black/purple balls...I was thinking maybe they were eyeballs or sumthing but no? I hope my snake doesnt die... What should I do...I have no idea where the closest reptile vet is...I have done searches and have come up with nothing...I live in Western PA...

Hey 8Corn*Freak8, any other strange symptoms? How's her eating, weight, muscle tone, etc. Your poo doesn't quite sound like my poo, Elrojo described it very accurately in the initial post. Mine looks like... organs... a tan/brown/white color and occurs in lumps. I took my snake off of acidophillus to see if that would fix anything. We'll see in the next couple weeks if it does or not.

-Lemur 6