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Finally, a Keeper!!!

Nice little hoggie! I wish you the best of luck with it. My husband found this southern hognose around Mother's Day and gave it to me. I tried everything to get it to eat...mice and rats of various appropriate and smaller sizes...live, F/T, brained, scented with everything imaginable, live lizards, frogs and toads, even various insects I found outside. Nothing. After almost 2 months and the poor snake starting to show weight loss, I let him go back to the wild.
 
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No luck yet with toad, anole, tuna, tree frog-scented, some brained, some not, FT. I am going to go through all that on lives starting next week. I like her so much- if I end up releasing her, I will probably buy one that is feeding on mice. On the Hognose forum, there are so many that are not eating right now, anyway. I have totally stopped handling her, and have moved her viv to a quiet place, and am offering her feedings in her viv and leaving her alone with the meal all day. No luck yet, but it's only been a couple weeks. She is very shy. I have not tried anything besides scented mice yet- not "real" prey.

Nanci
 
Finally!!

Suckered her in with a toad-scented live fuzzy! Success at last- at the three week mark.

Nanci
 
Tula_Montage said:
Easterns are NEVER likley to switch to mice readily, especially since its coming up to winter. But um best of luck....
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Nanci said:
Suckered her in with a toad-scented live fuzzy! Success at last- at the three week mark.

Nanci
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NEVER, Tula? May I ask what experience you have with feeding WC Easterns that qualifies you to make scareposts like that?

Nanci, congrats on getting the little thing to eat! She's a cutie :wavey:
 
Very cute!! Congrats on getting it to eat finally!

Since live toad-scented mice worked, what about using some sort of long feeding tongs (see pic below) and wiggle a toad-scented f/t around? It may fool your snake into thinking it's a live mouse. He may be too smart, but you never know.. it may or may not work but it might be worth a try. :shrugs:

I hope he/she continues to eat for you, and good luck on getting it converted over to f/t! :)

Lisa

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Silt said:
Very cute!! Congrats on getting it to eat finally!

Since live toad-scented mice worked, what about using some sort of long feeding tongs (see pic below) and wiggle a toad-scented f/t around? It may fool your snake into thinking it's a live mouse. He may be too smart, but you never know.. it may or may not work but it might be worth a try. :shrugs:

I hope he/she continues to eat for you, and good luck on getting it converted over to f/t! :)

Lisa

43.jpg
Click to expand...

Ugghhh... Am I ever stupid. :bang: I never even bothered to pay attention to the dates on all of these posts. Sorry for drudging up a two month old thread.

Lisa :sidestep:
 
That's ok. As it turned out, she did _not_ eat the fuzzy- it crawled away and died and rotted, and the next day when I got home from work it smelled like there was a human corpse in my bedroom, or maybe like the septic tank had backed up, emptying its entire contents into one room. I searched and found the fuzzy, and was very disappointed.

After that I think I tried a toad-guts-scented fuzzy, which did not work, (a toad that died- I didn't kill it for that) and then I decided, that's it, she's lost as much weight as I'm willing to accept, I'll try assist-feeding her. Which was sort of a cluster the first time I tried, but I got the pink down, and the next times were much easier, and I've been sticking to a five day schedule, and she's been gaining a gram here, a gram there. Finally last week I went to two pinks, and she now weighs more than when I caught her. On a good day, I press a pink up against her snout, she opens her mouth, I pop it in, and she swallows as I massage her throat. On a bad day, I get her to open her mouth by pressing the side with a chopstick, and we procede from there, with much writhing and musking. Even on a "bad" day the whole procedure takes only two minutes or less.

A couple days ago she crawled willingly into my hand for the first time- so I am reassured that she doesn't "hate" me for the sometimes unpleasantness of being assist-fed. At all other times, she is sweet and gentle and shy. Did you see her video in General Chit Chat, Addy The Cobra?

So anyway, thanks for the feeding tongs suggestion. She is, unfortunately, the biggest chicken in the universe. When I put a live tiny frog in with her, she didn't even notice it, and then as she'd accidentally get close, the frog would boing over to the other side of the feeding container, and Addy would recoil in horror, hissing and spreading her hood. Eventually the frog learned it had nothing to fear, and wouldn't even move if she touched it.

So I don't know when I'm going to try to feed her on her own again- but she's going to be at a nice safe weight. Maybe in the spring.

Nanci
 
To be honest I think that assist-feeding a wc that apparently did fine in the wild, is a step too far. I would have released it. I would not be able to honestly say the snake lives a more comfortable live in captivity with the stress of feeding then in the wild. But I agree she is a cutie!
 
Well, that's your opinion! Even captive-bred hoggies can be notoriously difficult to get started feeding on mice. This was a snake that was displaced by an electric utility crew at a time of year that her natural prey was brumating for the winter, as she should have been, so releasing her in another area really wasn't an option. I didn't go grabbing her out of the wild, and wouldn't have- already knowing that feeding would be difficult.

Nanci
 
I commend you Nanci for trying to save this snake from a certain death if not for you intervention....I also commend you for seeing the fact that if at the right time of year she isn't feeding correctly under your care you are willing to let her go into her natural habitat.........KUDOS!
 
Sometimes stuff just falls into your lap and the easy way out- releasing, isn't an option- take that Florida boxie with the URI that I got a few weeks ago, for example. If his habitat that he's been living in for what, 30 years, suddenly turns into a housing development, you can't just take him and dump him off in a nice wild area, because he won't know where food, water and his hibernaculum is, and he will endanger the existing wild population with his URI. A box turtle only has a 40% chance of survival if moved. At his age, I'm sure he's done his job and reproduced.

Nanci

(And boy is he glad to be done with his ten antibiotic shots!!)
 
Nice snake, Nanci. As common as they supposedly are in my state, I've never seen a wild one. I do understand, however, that Easterns can and will take f/t mice. However, when converted they are prone to fatty liver disease. My understanding is that only westerns can be kept on a steady diet of mice and not develope fatty liver disease.

As adults, Eastern hognosed snakes exist almost exclusively on amphibians in the wild. They have also been recorded as feeding on lizards, insects, spiders and millipedes. Although they may be trained to accept mice in captivity, H. platirhinos fed a strict diet of mice may suffer a premature death from complications arising from fatty liver disease. Plethodontid salamanders, toads, and frogs are the preferred food item for wild caught H. platirhinos and should be introduced as part of a varied diet for captive born individuals.
http://www.hognose.com/pages/care/east.htm
 
Actually, people suspect that all amphibian-feeding snakes may develop fatty liver disease if fed on mice, not just Easterns. The way people are trying to avoid it is keeping their adults slim and trim and feeding sparingly, not generously.

You're right- I see pics all the time of hoggies from VA. Especially cool red ones.

Nanci
 
I understand that the eastern has a solely amphibian diet, whereas the western takes amphibians and rodents. I've been thinking of getting a western and would like to think I won't be killing it by feeding it rodents.
 
Here's An Interesting Article

Hepalipidosis

The best cure is prevention

Douglas Mader DVM, Veterinarian Q&A, Reptiles Magazine, December 1999



Q: My vet said that my savannah monitor died from fatty liver. I asked him what caused it and he said that it is something that "just happens." What is fatty liver? What causes it? Can it be treated?

A: Fatty liver, or hepatic lipidosis, which is the medical term, refers to a condition where the patient's liver is infiltrated with excessive fat. There are many causes of fatty liver, and in most cases, the condition itself is not a cause of death. In fact, in most species, except for the cat, a patient can have fatty Ever with no untoward effects.

Fatty liver can be caused by a number of metabolic conditions such as diabetes, Cushing's disease, protein deficiencies, hypothyroidism and more.

Usually, a predisposing factor is obesity. If a patient goes off food (called anorexia) the fat in the body is mobilized in the blood to the liver where it is to be used as energy for the body. But, for some reason, the liver is unable to utilize this rapid influx of fat, and the liver becomes "fatty."

This is common in wild caught herps. These animals usually come into captivity in good body condition but then due to some cause, whether it is improper housing, poor diet or some management disorder, they go off food.

In their struggle to begin eating, they mobilize their fat. Then when they die and are necropsied (an animal autopsy), the fatty liver is discovered.

To an inexperienced person this looks quite abnormal (the liver actually takes on swollen, yellow appearance), and it is assumed that it is the cause of death. As a result, the person doing the necropsy stops looking for the real cause.

I see fatty liver in savannah monitors commonly. These animals are routinely misfed in captivity-typically they are fed high amounts of dog food, live fatty mice or any other high calorie food. On top of this, they are kept in small cages and not allowed to roam and hunt (which is normal for them in the wild). As a result, they become couch potatoes and get fat.

Somewhere down the road, these fat savannahs develop disease (kidney, liver, etc.) and stop eating. Now this fat lizard is a prime candidate to develop a fatty liver. I can't tell you how many calls I get about fatty liver causing death in savannahs.
 
So, from what I can tell, fatty liver disease as THE cause of death in Easterns and others has not been proven- it has only been found coincidentally at necropsy. You always hear that it kills when an animal who has been off feed for a long period of time begins feeding again. But is it the cause of death, or just a finding in an animal that had serious underlying problems causing it to not eat?

Feeding frogs/toads/anoles isn't a miracle cure, either. They are loaded with parasites. They are not CB, usually, so large numbers being removed to feed captive snakes is detrimental to the wild population.

I believe, after reading about this (although I would like to see a scientific study) that fatty liver disease is not the cause of death in most, if any, hognose snakes- it is some aspect of improper husbandry and the snake just happens to have a fatty liver, which then gets blamed.

If you search this topic on kingsnakes.com forums, you can find a guy who has had a pair of Easterns, fed exclusively on mice, for over ten years.

I think, when you get your Western, you don't even need to worry about it at all. Just don't overfeed, and make sure he gets exercise.

Nanci
 
I wonder if it is possible to get a steady supply of frogs, cb. I mean, they DO sell live tadpoles as fish bait, and there ARE farms that raise bull frogs, because my grandma wanted to buy some to put in her pond. My friends caught an eastern (lovely, black and bright orange) and have been keeping it for a few months. They live in south GA and toads and frogs are readily available to catch around there, so that's what it eats. He found her at a house he was working on and one of the other guys almost stepped on it, then wanted to kill it. So he took it home with him. But I wonder if buying tadpoles and keeping them in a sort of turtle habitat would be economical to have food for hognoses. Or would they just eat the tadpoles? That would be the easiest. Something you could look into if you can't get him switched over to mice. Also, buying a net full of tadpoles is cheaper than a few mice (that is if you don't bulk order).

Edit: I also had a hognose that would recoil in horror at a tiny live pink as if it was going to eat him, he actually played dead and musked for it too. Maybe the tadpoles wouldn't be so intimidating. If she eats one willingly it's easier than assist feeding. You could just drop a few in a little shallow dish and see what happens. I'm going to suggest it to my friend, so they don't have to be out searching for frogs and toads all the time.
 
It's an idea...She's _so_ timid. While I was researching this, I read of a guy that had a CB pet bullfrog, who'd _never_ been in the wild, that he found was loaded with parasites when he took it to the vet. I actually was going to buy a bunch of feeder frogs for her down in south Florida, but then I decided that since she already wouldn't eat the tree frog I offered her (several times- poor frog- it was eventually released) that I would just assist feed her over the winter and see if her attitude changed in the spring. We've got our little routine down now- it's ok.

Nanci
 
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