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Bad luck with baby females

C

carnivale

New member
Hey everyone,

Sadly, I'm brought here by some very bad luck, and I wanted to go over things and maybe get some advice from fellow corn caretakers.

I purchased a couple babies last year from www.vmsherp.com (A whiteout boy and strawberry snow girl).

I had them both set up in the exact same conditions. 10 gallon breeders, under-cage heating, exact same hides, water bowls, shaved aspen substrate, etc.
Both temperatures at the hot end of their tanks were always either in the high 70s or mid 80s depending on time of day. All pretty normal and sustained conditions, both tanks and their contents exactly the same.

My male has been thriving. He never refuses a feeding, has had perfect intact sheds, and is a pretty mellow snake.

My female, however, was extremely skittish, and refused every single feeding, no matter what I did. I tried every trick in the book, from braining, soaking in chicken broth, cutting the pinky in half to make it smaller, and finally had to resort to going to the vet for a tube feeding. Even after that, when I tried to feed her normally again, she refused her food, and never calmed down (I know it's natural for baby snakes to be a bit nervous, so I figured maybe that was more normal and my male is just an exception).

She eventually escaped her tank (I still haven't figured out how), and I never was able to find her, so I can only guess she either made it outside or into a vent and died somewhere in the walls. :C

So, I took a chance and purchased another female from the same breeder, this time an Okeetee. She was also skittish and a reluctant feeder, but so long as I put her in a small box with a cover, she was comfortable enough to eat her pinkies.

Last week, for the first time, she refused to feed. I know this isn't totally abnormal, so I left her alone to try again this week. However, when I went to get her from the tank, I found her in her middle-hide, dead. :confused:

So my question is, should I take this as a sign to seek a different breeder for future purchases? Does anyone have any idea what could have caused this? It's just so confusing that within exactly the same conditions, one snake thrives, and two others don't.
 
Also, as an aside, I did look up reviews of VMSherp before buying, and I only ever found positive reviews. So I don't know if it's a breeder problem or if I somehow did something wrong, or if this was just plain bad luck striking twice.
 
I have purchased several animals over the years from Sean at VMS and have had good success. So I don't think it's a breeder problem necessarily. Did you let him know the problems you had with the first snake before you purchased the second?
Sometimes just talking it over with some one with more experience, who can ask the right questions helps to pinpoint possible irregularities in husbandry. Little things like the breeder feeds in opaque deli cups and you are using clear can make all the difference in the world. Many breeders who raise their own feeders, use live pinks because it's easier to feed large numbers of hatchlings without a lot of waste. Transition to F/T is usually easy to do but if you don't know the previous feeding ritual, the failure rate can be much higher. It could also be something as simple as position of the enclosure in the house. Again large breeders usually have a separate building for their animals. So when a hatchling that only saw people once or twice a week for feeding and cleaning gets moved to a busy home environment they might go off feed and become skittish. Every animal has it's own unique personality which affects how it eats, grows and reacts to interactions.
I'm sorry you had such bad luck with your animals. You can always try another breeder but I'd probably talk to Sean first and make sure everything is as it should be with regard to your set-up, etc..
Good Luck,
Terri
 
I doubt that this issue is the breeder, Your females came from different snakes , I would worry if you'd gotten another strawberry snow and it, too, failed to thrive. (then I would wonder if there could be something going on with the genetics in the snake, since it could likely come from the same bloodlines)

Crackerhead may be on to something there, with the environmental changes upsetting the babies, though maybe you should double check the tank setups again, especially the heat sources... (I'd maybe kick up the warm end a little more 70s sounds a little cool.. (it's only under 1/3 the tank, right? plenty of room for them to move back and forth)
If you want to take the risk, you might try moving the male to the other tank and see if his behavior changes.... Your description keeps making me think it's something with the cage.... I keep thinking temperature, Is the other cage closer to a heat vent, or window? Drafts or heat sources? Are you sure your heat is working properly? Is it separate mats, or one shared mat?

As far as skittishness, some babies definitly can be touchier than others. I got a hatchling snow as a non-feeder, that was HIGHLY aggressive - serious little hateling - surprised that a baby could squeeze my fingers that tightly... Like yours, she wouldn't eat... and attempting to tease feed would get one strike, and then she'd refuse to strike.. I eventually figured out the trick to feeding her was to disturb her as little as possible, (fed in her cage, set the pinky outside the hide she was in and gently set it back on the shelf) I was really looking forward to her growing up to see how much her attitude would change, but she died after an issue with my thermostat (flakey, wasn't heating reliably = regurge :( )

Don't get discouraged, your boy is thriving, so I think you are doing things right, it's just that something else isn't.

Nancy
 
Thank you nancyg and crackerhead or your input! I've sent an e-mail to Sean to get any feedback on the situation from him, too.

To answer some questions, it can get cold during the nights, so that's when the temps dip to 78f or so, but during the day temps in both tanks are usually around 86f at the hot end.

Both tanks have their own UT heating sources, covering just 1/3, so yes, they have lots of room to go from the warm end to the cool end.

It's just me in my home, plus some cockatiels, blue tongue skinks, and my dog. My birds are pretty quiet, so overall this isn't a noisy home. When I took the strawberry female to the vet, she asked me about noise or visual disturbances, but I rarely have people over, and at most just the TV plays and the dog barks once in a while.

There is a window nearby the tanks, but my male's tank is the closest one to it, and I always keep the shades drawn so that they don't get direct sunlight coming in from outside, so that they don't get overheated during the day.

I have been feeding frozen/thawed. But again, my male has no trouble with them, and my second female accepted them fine until last week. I suppose the first female maybe was used to eating live, so that might have caused her refusals?
 
Wow. I don't know what happened, but I have purchased snakes from Sean over the years- I think my first mail-order snake came from Sean. I've never had a problem.

Usually a hatchling will switch from live pinks to FT with no problem. She could have been going blue- some snakes refuse to eat while blue. How many meals did the Okeetee eat for you?

It concerns me that your temperatures are varying so much. What thermostat/UTH are you using? Mid 80s is fine- upper 70s with a hatchling would make me very nervous. How/with what/where are you measuring the temps?

I definitely think you should talk to Sean about this. That should be the first step with a new(ish) snake if you have any sort of problem- let the breeder know. Sean is a good guy- he should be able to offer some insight.
 
Nanci, my UT heating sources are those sticky pads you get from pet stores. The thermometers are the little pill-looking things connected to a thin wire cord + the digital reader, so that the "pill" can be placed inside the tank right over the heat source. I have them covered by some substrate and placed inside the warm hide so I can get a more accurate read of what the temp is right where the snakes are usually placing themselves.

I did just now check on the temps in both tanks. It's 88f in the male's tank, and 81f in the empty female tank. I'm not totally sure on why there's a difference, other than maybe substrate amounts? When I first set the tanks up, before putting any snakes in them, I had to adjust how much substrate was inside to affect the readouts of the temps, providing more buffer between the direct heat on the bottom of the tank.
 
Thermometers measure temperature; thermoSTATS regulate it, and it may be something you'll want to look into getting. There are cheap ones that work really nicely on Amazon under the name Jump Start.

Also how do you have quiet cockatiels? :laugh: I mean they're not as bad as some, but mine are noisy! They live with my mom now because the cat would go insane trying to get to them all the time.
 
The most accurate way to measure temps is with a lazer temp gun. Know what you are reading; they don't measure through the glass, and they need to be close to the surface you are measuring. Imagine a cone that spreads out based on the distance of the gun to the surface. The info. that comes with the gun will tell you what the radius from the red dot is for your particular model.

Dial thermometers here are a poor option. You need to know what the temp is under the warm hide, where the snake is - NOT two inches above that. That difference can be large, exp. with a UTH.
 
Distaff, I don't have the readers 2 inches away, they are literally inside the warm hides, in the substrate, right where the snakes are. :)

Dragonling, thank you for the suggestion! I'll look into get one.
 
Good. Wasn't picking on you, more elaborating for other readers.

I see those useless sticky analogues in enclosures everywhere on line. People think they have the correct equipment, and are measuring the right thing.
 
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