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Old 08-27-2018, 06:32 PM   #5
shutmon
sorry, I posted that reply before I saw yours, karl mcknight! That one would be for nanci haha

1. it's very helpful to know that this isn't too uncommon of an issue! Considering this has been going on and off for a while, that may very well be what Peppermint will start doing. It's a shame because he was such a good eater as a baby, but as long as he doesn't starve himself (which I'm not as worried about as I am that he's in pain and I can't help him) I'll survive haha. Or he'll survive. I may or may not die of a heart attack every time he goes on feeding strike. But since he's only two years old, he's only just sexually maturing now; so the timing makes sense and, assuming he starts eating regularly....eventually, he should be fine in that case. That's basically what another person told me as well but I was concerned that this wasn't happening just in spring, so it's good to know that other seasons can be an issue as well!

2. Yeah, that's what I'm trying to tell myself haha, but I guess because I'm such a big believer in "thriving, not just surviving" I'm a bit paranoid about his wellbeing. I'm not too worried about him starving to death, I just want to make sure I'm doing the best I can and that I'm not overlooking something!

3. Ah I see. We do try to keep the temperature and humidity to a fairly consistent degree but that could still be an issue. I'll have to start monitoring that a little bit closer, just in case that could be the issue. "Consistent" to me and "consistent" to Peppermint may not be the same thing; we live on totally different planes since our perceptions are so different, haha.

4. Are there any other symptoms besides feeding strike that can indicate these health issues? Because if Peppermint has even the slightest indication of another symptom, I'll take her - but most diseases I thought had other symptoms that Peppermint doesn't really have. He's a very chill, sleepy snake but he's always been that way, even when he was a good eater, so I don't think he's lethargic.

5a. That could be a possibility! But it does kind of worry me since he's had a bad appetite for so long. His bad appetite started in spring, but like I said it did clear up since then, but he never fully got back to his old eating habits. He did shed at least once since spring, maybe twice but I'm not sure. Unless he had two separate, benign things causing two different feeding strikes that just barely overlapped, which may be possible.

5b. I'm feeding him fuzzie mice currently! So baby ones. Because he's not quite big enough in my opinion to be eating regular mice, but one fuzzie is too small. That's actually one thing I'm worried could be the problem, AKA the fuzzies are so small that Peppermint doesn't recognize them as food/thinks that they're too much work for too little nutrients. But the Jumpers at our local store don't seem any bigger, although we're going to look into it a bit more soon. I've done research on obesity in snakes to make sure I wasn't overfeeding Peppermint (because I am totally capable of doing that LOL that's why, back when he was eating better, I made sure to stick to a rigid schedule and consult the internet based on size/age/ect) and I don't believe he was ever overweight. I can tell since his current feeding strike that he's lost some weight, but I don't believe that he's underweight yet. You can just barely see a little bit of a backbone (I dont really wanna say spine bc you can't see that it's a spine, its just a lil ridge) now and before that wasn't very pronounced, however his body before never bulged out on the side or anything. He was probably on the fatter side before and on the thinner/normal side now, but I'm not sure because different people show different things as a corn snake being overweight/underweight xD all I know is I never saw any overweight snakes that matched him or any underweight ones that match him currently.