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Dead corn snake, prey too big ?

V

Vestid

New member
I bought an albino corn snake 5 days ago with 10 pinkies. The person I bought him from said that's what they've been feeding him. Last night I fed him and he took to the pinky like no other, way faster then my ball python but then again ball pythons are picky eaters I thought..

Took my little man a good hour and even then he had the pinkies tail sticking out of his mouth so instead of putting him back in his tank I put a UTH on half of the feeding Tupperware and even a little hide for him to last the night to properly finish his food with less stress.

I wake up this morning to put him back and i find him dead. I am mortified but I have no clue how this happened aren't snakes supposed to reject food that's too big for them ? Any thoughts on what could've happened ? What are the appropriate prey sizes for baby corn snakes ?
 
most of us weigh our snakes and weigh the meals, especially when they are babies. A pinky can be too big for some snakes. It just depends. I've heard of people cutting a pinky in half and just feeding half of it to a small snake. You really don't know unless you weigh the snake and the food item. There are feeding charts available online, even right here on this website, that specify what the weight of the prey should be along with the weight of the snake.

Sorry for your loss. You can always try again. You might want to print a copy of a feeding chart for future reference.

Also, it could have just been a sick snake from the beginning. Pet shops are not usually the best place to acquire snakes. Sometimes you run into a good pet shop, but my experience has been that I know more about keeping snakes than most pet stores I've been to do.
 
when you say you put a uth on half of the feeding Tupperware.. Tell me more about that. Did you put it on top or on the side or underneath? Did you have the UTH hooked up to a thermostat? How big is was the feeding Tupperware you had your snake in?

Without a thermostat UTH's can get as hot as 170 degrees. If the Tupperware was small enough I'm willing to bet that the UTH heated up the inside of the Tupperware until it got so hot that it killed your baby snake (it really wouldn't need to be very got to kill the snake. Maybe 90-100 degrees). Snakes can stand hot air, like if you take them outside for a quick picture, but having to sit in it all night without a place to escape the heat could easily kill your snake. Especially because it was a baby.


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I'm sorry...It shouldn't take a hatchling cornsnake longer than say 5 minutes to swallow an appropriately sized pink. So that would be one problem. But usually they will choke it back up if it won't go down. More concerning is putting the UTH under him- even with a thermostat, it could have been too hot.
 
So sorry for your loss :(

We would really need to know the weight of the snake and pinkie to know for sure that it was to big to swallow. Snakes can swallow seemingly too large of prey items with no issues but over an hour to do it is out of the ordinary for sure.
Had he completely swallowed the pinkie?
Was it mid way down in his belly?
My first thought also was overheating. It takes very little heat output to overheat an enclosed tub.
Was this YOUR first feeding ? If was yes then I got to wonder if there was something going on prior to your purchase. Not knowing a few facts about the snake like it's hatch date makes me wonder?? A snake on pinkies this time of year could of just hatched or more likely was a late 2015 season hatchling which should have no issues eating pinkies.
To know if something else was going on besides overheating we would need to know length and weight of the snake. Weight of the pinkie and hatch date.

Again sorry :(
 
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