CornSnakes.com Forums - View Single Post

09-09-2018, 04:43 AM

Update: nothing good, but nothing like, super bad

Well, I kept meaning to update this last week but I have even more news now so sorry in advance for the lengthy update, haha

So I've tried feeding her twice (...I think) since my last update where, through slap-teasing, I got her to eat a fuzzy. She hasn't eaten since that day, and I feed her once a week, so it's been two weeks now that she's refused her food. I've also noticed that she's definitely loosing weight. However it's not at an alarming rate or anything; on a scale from 1 - 10 (1 being deadly thin and 10 being deadly overweight, with 5 being just right) she's probably about a 4, slowly creeping upon a 3. She's not a very big snake mind you, so missing meals and being spotty for so long makes sense that she's lost weight. After all, she was supposed to be eating two, not one. She's not in brumation or anything (idek if corn snakes go through that, but they shouldn't here in SoCal - I like it cold and all but it still only gets to high 60s at night in the room she's in, and that's during the winter - no way in heck we can do that during the summer!) because I've been handling her and she's active, too, so....yeah.

I tried slap-teasing her as much as I could last week to no avail, and she didn't eat it over night. I did the same thing this week but with a twist (the end result of which made me finally get the motivation to post again)

So, we had been planning to look into bigger food for a while now, but when we went to petsmart to check (they have transparent packages in the boxes, and the boxes are easily opened, so it's easier to check - if im not supposed to check inside the boxes, don't tell the employees who work there pls :P) but they didn't have any frozen mice at all. Like, none. It was weird. We went there again a few days later since we were in the area (the reason we didn't check for so long originally is that I got sick, and then my mom hurt her toe, so....we've been busy lol) and they still had none. Oh well. We went to petco and decided to get both an adult mouse and a hopper mouse. I still don't understand why there's no size between a hopper mouse and an adult mouse, but I tried picking out a big hopper mouse (by feel) and when I checked it out after opening the packaging it looked like a decent size for Peppermint. I tried feeding it to her and....no immediate strike. But she didn't seem quite as quick to repulsion as she had been before, so okay, maybe she'd go for it? I tried some slap tease, putting it right in front of her, ect - I couldn't tell if she was somewhat interested but too lazy to strike, or if she was just groggy from the nap I had just woke her up from and was too lazy to turn away. I slapped her pretty good with it - that alone made me feel bad for her, LOL. And she refused to strike it, and just wasn't interested. I knew she could smell it - she acted like she would make a chomp a few times - but she wouldn't do it. I got frustrated and decided to try and force feed her. Fun fact: snakes have really good gag reflexes! Even with the taste in her mouth, she still had no interest - hell, she had even less interest. She even pooped on me (which I don't blame her for, but she got it all over my carpet, smh) and still nothing. I tried giving her some water beforehand and she didn't seem interested, although I will be changing her water dish once I finish writing this and before I go to bed. But anyways, I'm not strong enough to force that hopper all the way down, and she'd likely regurgitate it anyways - she's too healthy of a snake to be doing that to yet.

I think there's one more thing I should mention though. Earlier today, we moved Peppermint to a different part of our house - we switched her cage with our new hamster enclosure (yknow how we went to pet smart? well....LOL) because Peppermint is less distracting in my work room (where she's currently located). I definitely see how that would be a stressor, so if this was a one-time occurrence or she ate fine last week I'd give her a break - unfortunately it isn't, she didn't, and she acted about the same today as she has for weeks now. She's also been in my work room before, just never caged there. If it was a different stressor causing similar symptoms, I'd thank the lord (besides my lost money on the hopper anyways) - but I don't know if that's the case.

I've thought about trying to get the hamster's scent on me to see if Peppermint has any interest in live (I WOULD NEVER LET THEM ACTUALLY INTERACT BTW I mean I think the hamster would be more likely to try and eat Peppermint at this point, but uhhhh No those are two animals that you don't even want to introduce outside of their enclosures) but that would require a bite to the hand and I don't want to feed her live anyways. Like, unless I scent all my frozen mice from now on with my hamster's scent (which I would rather not freak out my already incredibly skittish hamster by rubbing dead mice on her - and idk how else id do it) that won't help anything except know how I can technically feed her. I don't want to rehome her but I can't feed live, so I'd have to talk to the vet about how to best go about that anyways. So for now I don't think it's worth it.

LATE ADDITION TO THIS SECTION, was about to post this when I just remembered - about a week ago I witnessed her rubbing her head on the rock-like decorations she has in her cage (her water dish namely) as though she was trying to shed. I still haven't noticed her go to blue yet though, and I haven't seen her do it very much lately. While I was slap-teasing her today, I thought I saw a flake of skin on her head, but it could've just been water from the mouse (it hadn't dried off yet after defrosting) and I didn't see it later. Still, if she does go ahead and just shed and finally get her appetite back, I'll be super happy - but ho boy will I be dreading the next time she starts getting ready to shed again ;-;

Plans:

By that second-to-last sentence you're probably guessing I'm looking into visiting a reptile vet, and well, you're right. I'm getting legitimately worried at this point. I didn't want to visit a vet but at least visiting a vet will give us some Peppermint-centric tips and tricks as well as rule out anything legitimately dangerous. I need to do some more research into reptile vets around here though because I only want a specialist, and I need to work out how I plan to pay my parents for the vet visit because yikes. Dw, like I said before they'll still take her when she needs it - but I need to put money aside to gradually pay them back.

I'll also post some pictures of Peppermint's enclosure in a little bit on here to see if anyone here notices anything that I missed. Hopefully it's not too obvious - but at this point I've already forced a hopper into my snake's mouth (multiple times) only to have her not end up eating it, so my pride really can't be any more beaten and I just want her to start eating again lol. She has open glass on all sides which could be a problem, but that doesn't explain why she doesn't like eating in her postal box (which is very tight and dark) .... does it need to be even darker than one side exposed? I dunno, I'll let you all decide once I get some good pictures.

My mom pointed out that Peppermint seemed to stop eating around the last time that we cleaned her cage. Idk how true this is if im gonna be honest with you, but we decided we may as well clean out her cage tomorrow and see if that helps for next week. I know, poor Peppermint is gonna go through a lot this weekend...but we're trying everything we can at this point.

I'm also planning to set up a journal to monitor her humidity and temperature. As much as I hate to do that 1. because I'm lazy and don't check it very often, except when we make adjustments to her heating to make sure its working right - once it is, i dont keep an eye on it anymore, and 2. I have a sensory processing disorder that makes it really hard for me to write on paper because I hate the touch of it (ik, its weird) so....I'll either deal with it, or find a way to make it online, not sure which yet.

I'll throw in some pics of Peppermint so you guys can get an idea of what she looks like/how big she is too! I'll be back in a bit to link those! (I'll link those to my stash in my deviantart account because I'm not good at posting photos into forums lol)

09-09-2018, 04:43 AM	#8
shutmon	Update: nothing good, but nothing like, super bad Well, I kept meaning to update this last week but I have even more news now so sorry in advance for the lengthy update, haha So I've tried feeding her twice (...I think) since my last update where, through slap-teasing, I got her to eat a fuzzy. She hasn't eaten since that day, and I feed her once a week, so it's been two weeks now that she's refused her food. I've also noticed that she's definitely loosing weight. However it's not at an alarming rate or anything; on a scale from 1 - 10 (1 being deadly thin and 10 being deadly overweight, with 5 being just right) she's probably about a 4, slowly creeping upon a 3. She's not a very big snake mind you, so missing meals and being spotty for so long makes sense that she's lost weight. After all, she was supposed to be eating two, not one. She's not in brumation or anything (idek if corn snakes go through that, but they shouldn't here in SoCal - I like it cold and all but it still only gets to high 60s at night in the room she's in, and that's during the winter - no way in heck we can do that during the summer!) because I've been handling her and she's active, too, so....yeah. I tried slap-teasing her as much as I could last week to no avail, and she didn't eat it over night. I did the same thing this week but with a twist (the end result of which made me finally get the motivation to post again) So, we had been planning to look into bigger food for a while now, but when we went to petsmart to check (they have transparent packages in the boxes, and the boxes are easily opened, so it's easier to check - if im not supposed to check inside the boxes, don't tell the employees who work there pls :P) but they didn't have any frozen mice at all. Like, none. It was weird. We went there again a few days later since we were in the area (the reason we didn't check for so long originally is that I got sick, and then my mom hurt her toe, so....we've been busy lol) and they still had none. Oh well. We went to petco and decided to get both an adult mouse and a hopper mouse. I still don't understand why there's no size between a hopper mouse and an adult mouse, but I tried picking out a big hopper mouse (by feel) and when I checked it out after opening the packaging it looked like a decent size for Peppermint. I tried feeding it to her and....no immediate strike. But she didn't seem quite as quick to repulsion as she had been before, so okay, maybe she'd go for it? I tried some slap tease, putting it right in front of her, ect - I couldn't tell if she was somewhat interested but too lazy to strike, or if she was just groggy from the nap I had just woke her up from and was too lazy to turn away. I slapped her pretty good with it - that alone made me feel bad for her, LOL. And she refused to strike it, and just wasn't interested. I knew she could smell it - she acted like she would make a chomp a few times - but she wouldn't do it. I got frustrated and decided to try and force feed her. Fun fact: snakes have really good gag reflexes! Even with the taste in her mouth, she still had no interest - hell, she had even less interest. She even pooped on me (which I don't blame her for, but she got it all over my carpet, smh) and still nothing. I tried giving her some water beforehand and she didn't seem interested, although I will be changing her water dish once I finish writing this and before I go to bed. But anyways, I'm not strong enough to force that hopper all the way down, and she'd likely regurgitate it anyways - she's too healthy of a snake to be doing that to yet. I think there's one more thing I should mention though. Earlier today, we moved Peppermint to a different part of our house - we switched her cage with our new hamster enclosure (yknow how we went to pet smart? well....LOL) because Peppermint is less distracting in my work room (where she's currently located). I definitely see how that would be a stressor, so if this was a one-time occurrence or she ate fine last week I'd give her a break - unfortunately it isn't, she didn't, and she acted about the same today as she has for weeks now. She's also been in my work room before, just never caged there. If it was a different stressor causing similar symptoms, I'd thank the lord (besides my lost money on the hopper anyways) - but I don't know if that's the case. I've thought about trying to get the hamster's scent on me to see if Peppermint has any interest in live (I WOULD NEVER LET THEM ACTUALLY INTERACT BTW I mean I think the hamster would be more likely to try and eat Peppermint at this point, but uhhhh No those are two animals that you don't even want to introduce outside of their enclosures) but that would require a bite to the hand and I don't want to feed her live anyways. Like, unless I scent all my frozen mice from now on with my hamster's scent (which I would rather not freak out my already incredibly skittish hamster by rubbing dead mice on her - and idk how else id do it) that won't help anything except know how I can technically feed her. I don't want to rehome her but I can't feed live, so I'd have to talk to the vet about how to best go about that anyways. So for now I don't think it's worth it. LATE ADDITION TO THIS SECTION, was about to post this when I just remembered - about a week ago I witnessed her rubbing her head on the rock-like decorations she has in her cage (her water dish namely) as though she was trying to shed. I still haven't noticed her go to blue yet though, and I haven't seen her do it very much lately. While I was slap-teasing her today, I thought I saw a flake of skin on her head, but it could've just been water from the mouse (it hadn't dried off yet after defrosting) and I didn't see it later. Still, if she does go ahead and just shed and finally get her appetite back, I'll be super happy - but ho boy will I be dreading the next time she starts getting ready to shed again ;-; Plans: By that second-to-last sentence you're probably guessing I'm looking into visiting a reptile vet, and well, you're right. I'm getting legitimately worried at this point. I didn't want to visit a vet but at least visiting a vet will give us some Peppermint-centric tips and tricks as well as rule out anything legitimately dangerous. I need to do some more research into reptile vets around here though because I only want a specialist, and I need to work out how I plan to pay my parents for the vet visit because yikes. Dw, like I said before they'll still take her when she needs it - but I need to put money aside to gradually pay them back. I'll also post some pictures of Peppermint's enclosure in a little bit on here to see if anyone here notices anything that I missed. Hopefully it's not too obvious - but at this point I've already forced a hopper into my snake's mouth (multiple times) only to have her not end up eating it, so my pride really can't be any more beaten and I just want her to start eating again lol. She has open glass on all sides which could be a problem, but that doesn't explain why she doesn't like eating in her postal box (which is very tight and dark) .... does it need to be even darker than one side exposed? I dunno, I'll let you all decide once I get some good pictures. My mom pointed out that Peppermint seemed to stop eating around the last time that we cleaned her cage. Idk how true this is if im gonna be honest with you, but we decided we may as well clean out her cage tomorrow and see if that helps for next week. I know, poor Peppermint is gonna go through a lot this weekend...but we're trying everything we can at this point. I'm also planning to set up a journal to monitor her humidity and temperature. As much as I hate to do that 1. because I'm lazy and don't check it very often, except when we make adjustments to her heating to make sure its working right - once it is, i dont keep an eye on it anymore, and 2. I have a sensory processing disorder that makes it really hard for me to write on paper because I hate the touch of it (ik, its weird) so....I'll either deal with it, or find a way to make it online, not sure which yet. I'll throw in some pics of Peppermint so you guys can get an idea of what she looks like/how big she is too! I'll be back in a bit to link those! (I'll link those to my stash in my deviantart account because I'm not good at posting photos into forums lol)