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Blood!! Advice/ideas please? *GRAPHIC PIC*

bitsy

bitsy

Owned by Corns since 1991
Just found one of my females, Sunshine, sliding around in a puddle of blood. It's very fresh and appears to have a small glob of poop in it. Pic attached.

She's in with a male at the moment for mating. I tried them a few weeks ago but they didn't seem interested. There's been a similar lack of activity on this occasion as well. I guess there's a possiblity that she's gravid if they managed a sneaky one the first time when I wasn't looking.

I've wiped her down with a damp cloth and can't find any injury on her, and I've seen/heard none of the usual scuffling/shuffling that would indicate they've been mating (they may just have been quiet though). The blood smears seem concentrated around her cloaca, so I think she's passed the blood - and very recently. She eats in a feeding tank, so I'm very confident that it's not internal damage caused by accidentally swallowing substrate. She's seven years old and this will be her fourth breeding season. She's never had a problem with mating, laying or post-laying recovery.

I'm sure the blood isn't from the male. He was under a hide at the opposite end of the tank when I found Sunshine and has no blood anywhere on him.

With impeccable timing, this has happened just after my usual vet closed for the evening. I've rung the emergency service who consulted their exotics expert. He says it sounds like cloaca trauma (that male must've moved faster than he has in the last couple of hours). He advised that she'd need antibiotics and fluids, but that as long as she was behaving normally (but don't they just love to do that), he wouldn't class it as an emergency. So I'm waiting for my usual vet's surgery to open first thing tomorrow morning.

She's now back in her disinfected viv alone (male is back in his own viv). I figured the best thing is to leave her in peace in familiar surroundings.

Does anyone else have ideas/insights whilst I'm waiting? Does the cloaca trauma theory sound about right? Has anyone experienced it? Thanks for any views. Blimey I've been keeping Corns for twenty years now and it's still enough to throw me into a complete tizz.
 

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Wow Bitsy that would scare me pretty good too.

What kind of substrate is she on in her viv now? I would be really tempted to keep her on paper towels/newspaper overnight to monitor for any more blood or oozing.

I've seen bloody breeding pics before, just not that amount.

I think monitoring overnight and a trip to the vet in the morning is the best plan.
 
I've seen some blood after my snakes have mated before. Both snakes middle aged (9 to 11 years old) so it wasn't because they were first timers. Blood was not present before in any other of her poos, so I think it was just because of the mating process.
 
Check out my "Bloody Evidence" thread. I think yours looks like about the same amount, just spread out more/diluted with semen more. I don't know if anyone has been able to determine which snake was the source. In my case I went ahead and bred the snakes three more times, at three day intervals, and it never happened again. (It happened on their second breeding). I'm glad I knew in theory at least that it could happen, and had seen pictures, or I would have flipped.
 
Thanks Nanci - that does look very similar, with both the liquid and solid parts. It's certainly put my mind at rest a bit. I guess even a tiny tear in just the wrong place could produce a disproportionate amount of blood. Archie must be a bit of a "sneak thief" this year - when I lifted the hide off him to check, he looked like butter wouldn't melt in his mouth!

I'll get Sunshine to the vet tomorrow anyway - just to be on the safe side - but I think I'll be sleeping a little easier.
 
bitsy said:
Blimey I've been keeping Corns for twenty years now and it's still enough to throw me into a complete tizz.
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The fact that you care about your animals so much is part of what makes you such a good pet owner. I'm sorry to hear about this; please keep us updated!
 
GROSS HUMAN MEDICAL PROCEDURE ALERT!!!

I do a procedure at work where a kind of sharp clamp is used to grasp a woman's cervix, putting two "bite marks" into it. Think small prongs. Then 20 ml of x-ray contrast is injected into the uterus. If those pinpricks bleed, and the tiny drops of blood from that mix in with the 20 ml of contrast, and it drains back out onto a washcloth or into the toilet- it looks like a slaughter house. It's an incredible amount of red liquid that resembles blood, but really there are only a few drops of real blood mixing with a fluid and making it look like a lot of blood.
 
yeah Nanci thanks for the flashbacks. the clamping is very painful (but only for a moment, thankfully).

Bitsy, that does look scary! Hope everything is ok with your girl.
 
Vet appointment's in 3 hours. Sunshine's looking absolutely fine and completely bemused by all the fuss.
 
I'll be interested to hear how the vet evaluates this, or even how he (or you) determine which snake it came from!
 
Fair point Nanci, but the circumstantial evidence was significant. There was a lot of fresh blood and Sunshine was liberally smeared with it, especially around her cloaca. When I found the blood, she was just next to it. Archie was under a hide at the other end of the viv and had no blood on him at all. If it had emanated from him, or he'd been anywhere in the vicinity of it, I'm sure there would have been some on him somewhere.

The vet visit wasn't as helpful as I'd hoped, as there wasn't an exotics specialist available (at least I didn't get charged). I'm booked in again on Monday evening for a further check with someone who's seen my Corns before, that I know I can trust.

In the meantime, Sunshine seems in rude health (not necessarily a good sign, I'll grant you) and gave the vet a run for his money when he examined her. He commented on her "excellent muscle tone" as she tried to strangle his hand. He couldn't find any external damage or injuries. No more blood has appeared since yesterday's excitements, so I'm cautiously hopeful. She's now back under her favourite hide.
 
bitsy said:
In the meantime, Sunshine seems in rude health (not necessarily a good sign, I'll grant you) and gave the vet a run for his money when he examined her. He commented on her "excellent muscle tone" as she tried to strangle his hand. He couldn't find any external damage or injuries. No more blood has appeared since yesterday's excitements, so I'm cautiously hopeful. She's now back under her favourite hide.
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Lol!
"excellent muscle tone"!
 
Just a quick update from this evening's visit to the exotics vet.

He managed to look a good few centimetres up Sunchine's cloaca (made my eyes water!) and examined the inside of her mouth and throat. He could see absolutely no sign of any internal injury at all. No external damage either. I showed him the photo of the blood and he agreed that it was highly unlikely to have originated from Archie, given the amount of it and the fact there was none on or anywhere near Archie.

There are options if there's further cause for concern. He spoke about getting someone else to look further inside her with a small-scale endoscope, but is wary of doing this unless it seems absolutely necessary as she's been mated and may be gravid. A ruptured egg or follicle might be worse than the problem being investigated. It's possible that the bleeding emanated from a tumour given her age (7), but he said with blood that fresh, he'd either expect to be able to see it at the depth that he was looking, or to feel something unusual through her belly or flanks. But all feels normal.

So the verdict for the minute is "watchful waiting". Both Archie and Sunshine are behaving absolutely normally, with no more evidence of bleeding since that single event. At the moment, I'm just on wait-and-see duty, but happier that there's nothing obviously wrong to someone who knows what they're looking for.
 
Hopefully all is normal.

It is good that the vet didnt see a tumor!

Maybe it was just a small abrasion that bled a lot? Let's hope so.
 
I'm no vet, but my first thought was it came from the male when they separated. While I agree it looks alarming, I've seen it on a male here with no adverse affects to the animal and the eggs went on to go full term.

Good luck...
 
While I agree it looks alarming, I've seen it on a male here with no adverse affects to the animal
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Certainly Nanci's link to her thread on a similar subject, looked like the same sort of thing. Fingers crossed it's just been a narrow escape!
 
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