Feeding Issue

My anery female corn, about 2 yrs old, has stopped eating for about the past 6 weeks. I have had her almost a year, so I'm still a relatively new snake owner. She is slightly over 4 feet long and had been eating thawed adult mice (not too large for her size.) Two weeks ago I took her to the herp vet with a stool sample and he found that her levels of coccidia were very high. We did a 10 day course of dewormer treatment and I offered her another thawed mouse last week. She wouldn't take that either.

I haven't seen a shed in a while and I know ahead of that, she usually skips a meal. Could other explanations for not eating include: eggs or brumation?

I poked around the forum a bit on feeding problems and saw something about using Ivory dish soap for scent, but not a lot of further information on what to do with the dish soap.

I was considering feeding live and maybe something smaller, but didn't know if that was advisable after feeding frozen/thawed. Would I be able to go back to frozen again? Thanks in advance for any advice.

Ive never had an issue going back to f/t after a live but I try to avoid live unless it's for a hatchling. There is no harm in offering something smaller than normal.

First I'd double check all the housing parameters; temperature, light cycle, placement within the household, etc. Have any of these things changed? Did you recently add a new corn snake to your collection? If so, did the vet confirm that the animal in question was indeed female? It is possible that if the animal is a male he might be distracted by the sex pheromones of a nearby female snake and thus go off feeding temporarily. I doubt that this is the issue but it's worth considering.
Did the vet do a follow up fecal after the treatment to determine that the coccidia was under control? Plus I'm wondering what caused the uptick in gut parasite load in the first place. There might be an underlying pathology causing the issue. Treating symptoms without fixing the cause won't necessarily solve the problem. Did the vet recommend tube feeding something like a slurry of Critical Care? If the animal is of a good weight it probably isn't necessary. I'd probably start with a small prey item like a big peach fuzzy or hopper mouse. Think of it the same way you would approach food yourself after having a stomach virus; small easy to digest meals.
Good Luck,
Terri

Thank you. I actually got a bigger tank (from 20 to 40 gallon) and added a little more heat to bring up the temp a bit on the hot side. So perhaps the change made some difference.

We definitely did not add another snake to the mix, yet, I didn't specifically ask the vet to sex the snake.

Thank you for pointing out that perhaps the vet is not addressing the underlying cause for the increase in bacterial load. He surmised that it was likely from a previously eaten mouse...What else could cause this that I should be asking him? Beyond the dewormer, the vet did not recommend supplemental feed. The snake seems to be a good weight for her length.

I think I will try a hopper and go from there. Thank you for your advice!

This may sound ridiculous BUT I have animals that I have moved back into their previous smaller home because they didn't thrive in the new habitat. It's seems odd to us that such an "improvement" would cause such stress but regardless of the reason the resulting failure to thrive is the same. We as keepers need to do what works best for the animal and sometimes that means going "backward".
Terri

Are you sure she's female?

Ok, good to know. After I moved her to the bigger tank, she did still eat for a couple weeks. I still have the 20 gallon tank and I can definitely try her back there maybe after trying to feed live one week.

And regarding sex, I'm not 100% sure "she" is not a "he." I have read about the possible ways to sex a snake and I don't have two to compare. I'm definitely not going to attempt to pop a hemipene or probe it. I'll take a look at the tail again.

If you can take a picture of the bottom side of the tail from the vent to the end we could make an educated guess. If that helps you out any.:shrugs:
Terri

I agree, if you want to take a clear picture of the underside of the tail, we could take a stab at it. You can also do a subcaudal scale count - over 70 pairs is usually male, under 70 is usually female.

AneryCornMom said:

10 day course of dewormer treatment

Click to expand...

Could you tell us some more about this. Drug, dosage, how administered. Thank you.

Thank You

Thank you all for your responses to my feeding inquiry. While I haven't been able to snap a photo of the tail to determine gender, I'm fairly sure she is a female, as her tail is uniformly long and thin.

I have good news to report that she ate last Friday. We had a hard time sourcing a live hopper, so we got a frozen one and used a different thawing method. Rather than letting the mouse warm up to room temp, we put it into a bag and submerged it first in luke warm water and then repeated the process with warmer water to bring the temp up. The snake ate it almost immediately. So while we changed two variables, both size of mouse and temp, I'm not sure which factor contributed to the success. Either way, we're glad she's eating again!

How is your snake doing now? Hopefully it's continuing to improve.

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Doing Ok

Hi Caryl,

She is doing better. She took previously frozen hoppers for about 4 weeks; however, I think it's time to put her back on full sized mice. I was trying to use what I had left and yesterday when I fed her, she refused it.

I may bathe her today and see if she poops, which could be what's preventing her from eating this time.

Thanks for checking in.

I'm glad your snake is continuing to improve. I would not worry too much about a single refusal. I know, it's easy to worry after having feeding challenges! Maybe this recent refusal was just something like being in the early stage of a shed cycle. Some of them just refuse now and then for no reason that's obvious to we mere humans. I hope things keep going well.

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