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Pooping Corn Snake

K

KidsandSnakes

New member
Hi,

I have a recently aquired 4-year-old corn named Maximus. He is our first, and only, snake (at least right now). While he is a great snake he does have one little fall back...he WON'T poop in his tank. That means that he is ALWAYS pooping on US!

We've had him for 9 weeks and he's pooped on us five times. We left him alone for the first week and again, later, for about 3 weeks to see if he'd eventually go in his tank. Today was the first day we brought him out and there was NOTHING in his tank and wham...poop on us again!

Does anyone have any tips or suggestions? He's perfect otherwise, but he is my sons' snake and they are kind of scared to hold him now.

Thanks
 
How soon after you feed him do you handle him? I suggest waiting until he poops, one time, and see how long it takes. It should be in the 5-7 day range, at the most. Figure out his schedule.
 
Nanci,

We feed him an adult mouse every 7 days, but we've left him in his tank otherwise for the past 3 weeks to 'wait' him out. Nothing. Today was literally the first time he went in almost a month. And he's been eating every week. It was A LOT of STINKY poop.
 
Any idea how much he weighs? My four year olds eat every 14-21 days, depending on how much they weigh and how fast they gain. Did he have a blue period sometime in that three weeks? Because they won't poop when they are blue.
 
He's about 422g and he shed the night we got him (Aug 24) and nothing since then. He last ate Sun night and took it no problem. Am I over feeding him? Rebecca at Triple R had him on a two week schedule with a jumbo mouse but we can't get them here and he doesn't seem too interested in rats (we only tried the once though, a pup).
 
So you just have regular mice? ~22-25 grams? I can't say if you're overfeeding him, but I would be feeding him an adult mouse every 14 days, probably. Every seven days he barely has time to digest before you're feeding him again, and at 4 years/400g that's a pretty generous feeding regimen. He should be slowly gaining at this time in his life. Say 5-10 grams per feeding.

I would try that- feeding him every two weeks, seeing if you can out-wait him. If he hasn't pooped in a week, maybe let him swim in the bathtub till he poops, then handle him. Not in an attempt to help him poop, but to get him to poop first so he is more enjoyable to handle. He doesn't need help- he'll poop when he's ready.
 
If you can't get jumbo mice try the african soft furs (ASF) they can be a bit expensive depending on how available they are, if you can get them. As for pooping on you... all i could think about is the warmth from your hands triggering it.
 
Why would you want to feed some obscure, expensive, addictive rodent when you can just feed him regular adult mice???
 
For the original question, how long does it take him after being taken out of the vivarium? If there's time enough, you might try letting him slither around in a tub of luke warm water, if he'll go there. At least the substrate doesn't need as much spot cleaning and changing. Maybe he likes to keep his "house" clean!
 
It ususally takes him about 5-7 min after being taken out to poop. We've tried taking him out for less than 5 min and putting him back hoping that we 'got things going' enough that he'll poop in his viv...but nope. Hubby thinks that he likes to be all stretched out to go, but what I've read says his tank is plenty big enough.

Will try the water thing in a big tupperware container (pooping in my bathtub is NOT an option!!!).

Also...we completely clean out his cage once a month and disinfect everything. There has been no 'spot cleaning' as there's been no poop. Should we still do this once a month?

Thanks
 
My reg always poops outside his viv. He got me twice and since then I just put him on the floor and have some paper towel with me. Since he's a mover, I know when he stops I have about 10 seconds to slide the paper towel under his lower half. Then the tail slowly rises lol. Works everytime now for me. Mines younger and smaller and poops every 4 days after feeding.
 
Nanci said:
Sounds like it's the owners that are getting trained!!

I'll probably be sorry I said this, but I can't remember the last time a snake pooped on me...
Click to expand...

LOL I learned the hard way and it won't happen again :nope:
Forty years of handling snakes and have never been bit. :dancer:
 
We just bought a hatchling, and the day we bought it I picked it up and it pooped on me, a couple days later I took it out to show my son in law and it pooped on him, a week after that which was 3 days after its first feeding by me, it pooped on me again. Its strange. I have noticed that all my larger snakes go to the heated end of their aquariums to poop. Well today my new heating mat came in so I am going to heat one end and see if this will help. I had been heating one end with a heat lamp, maybe the mat will work better. I'll let you know.
 
mine used to to try to poop on me but now what i do is when i go to handle him, i'll handle him for about 5 mins, just enough time to wake him up and get him active, leave him in the viv for about another hour and sure enough i'll come back to some fresh feces. :D spot clean that stuff, sanitize, and start handling him again for as long as i want. seems to be working for me pretty well.
 
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