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Cleft Lip in Corn Snakes?

hypnoctopus

hypnoctopus

Olivia Barron
Staff member
I have three non-feeders in my clutch this year. I've been trying not to handle or disturb them at all to hopefully improve their chances of eating voluntarily, but I have noticed that two of the three have a weird thing going on with their lip. Or perhaps a better term would be cleft nostril. On each of them, on the same side, the scale beneath the nostril is either missing or it never fused together.

Bougainvillea, right after her first shed. I noticed that the side of her face had a bit of a lump.

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And some pictures today. Normal side:

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Cleft side. You can actually see the tip of her tongue coming out of her open nostril.

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Sahara - this picture was taken before her first shed, but you can see the weird nostril if you look closely.

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Today:

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They both have had it since hatching, so it's not an injury that they've gotten. I wonder if it's part of the reason that they won't eat? I have force fed them both a section of mouse tails, and they can swallow and digest just fine.

Has anyone seen this before?
 
Definitely a cleft lip, or whatever the equivalent is called in snakes. They may have anomalies internal to the roof of their mouths as well. Clefting comes in many degrees and often involves more than just the lips. The feeding problems may very well be related in my non-professional opinion. Human babies with similar congenital clefts often have trouble feeding.

Is there a vet you can consult with? They can give you a professional opinion rather than my lay knowledge of clefting in humans.
 
I wonder what the inside of their mouths look like?
Definitely an interesting deformity for sure :(

( If you had just posted a "cute baby pic" post everybody would of screamed hybrids! The "cleft lip" is giving the head an odd shape like king snake influence. Just saying what the visual looks like and not questioning their purity :) )
 
Yeah, I noticed that it makes their heads look more round, kinda king-snakey, as well.

I'll try to see if I can get a picture of the inside of their mouths.
 
Alright, terrible photo because I had to have my twelve year old sister operate the camera while I held the mouth open with a folded notecard, but hopefully you can see what I'm seeing. I checked inside both of the snakes' mouths, and they both have the same thing going on. It looks like the cleft part continues in a ways, maybe like 2-3 mm right in front of the row of teeth. The inside of the mouth looks slightly asymmetrical and it looks like it has a small hole in the roof of the mouth on the cleft side.

I may end up just euthanizing these two, but I'll give them a bit more time to see if they decide to start eating.

GpGmkBch.jpg
 
As I suspected. I hope they decide to eat; but if not and this is incompatible with life, well my heart is with you.
 
Seeing the pic and your description of what you see I am now wondering in the cleft is disrupting the function of the vomeronasal (Jacobsons) organ causing them not to "smell" their food and not eat..
 
That's probably possible. They otherwise act normally. They flicker their tongues just like normal snakes, but I suppose that could be an involuntary action and they don't actually get any information that way. The Jacobson's organ does lie fairly close to the front of their snout, so I suppose the cleft could be impacting that.

They also always inspect the pinkies (or pinkie parts) when I place food in with them. I'll be trying lizard scenting tonight.
 
Not Ivory, but yes to the other two. I usually offer boiled (sometimes along with some other scent - tuna, chicken, soap, and now I'll be trying lizard) overnight, and then I'll give them a mouse part (piece of a tail, leg, pinkie head) in the morning when they haven't eaten. I've also tried feeding them in a separate container and in their enclosures. All three of them act 'hungry' just like the good eaters. They start cruising around in the evening like they're hunting. I've only been offering them food every 5 to 7 days.

I also checked inside the mouth of the third non-feeder today and his looks totally normal.
 
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