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To feed or not to feed? Breaking the 10 day regurge rule?

Hmm... Don't think I want to force anything into him since he's eating fine, but you might be onto something... a cooked mouse, or a "tenderized" mouse (there's the stuff you can sprinkle onto your meats, some sort of protease) might sort of ease digestion (or stave of decay for a little more so he can digest the food), but I wonder how safe that would be.

Maybe I'll try a smaller section(s), and feed him probiotics with the food for now and if it doesn't work I'll try more drastic things (hopefully he won't regurge the next couple meals).

Is there any way to give probiotics through the water besides using snake feces (fresh poop isn't available everyday)? (i.e. would it be prudent to spill out the contents of an acidophillus capsule or a squirt of benebac into the water?). He seems to drink quite often, atleast once a day. But I do remember a point when this snake has been at this stage (pooping pale stinky puddles) and using probiotics "cured" him, sorta.

-Lemur 6
 
Young Iguanas also eat adult crap like someone mentioned another animal doing above.

I do not know how the best way to get that into the snake would be myself though it sounds like a good idea.

I really hope you can figure this one out. It sounds like the little thing will need food that is already easy to digest or on it's way to digesting, however you can make that happen. I understand not wanting to tube feed him as he is eating on his own.

You know some snakes will take those snake sausages....maybe you can make your own with easily digested ingredients, or maybe the actual snake sausages WOULD help your little guy since they are mouse parts grinded up, minus intestines and hair and what not.

bmm
 
Rather than trying to force another snake's poo down your snake's throat, I can suggest another possibility. This is taken from iguana care, rather than corn snakes, but it occurred to me after reading bmm's last post that it could be worth a try.

You can get Acidophilus tablets in a natural foods or health store. You can then take a small part of a tablet and grind it into a powder. Maybe dip a pinkie butt in the powder, like you would with vitamins, and feed to your snake. The Acidophilus are a kind of gut fauna and (in humans and igs, at least) can help get thigns back to normal in the digestive track. It's also safer than using poop, and I first heard of its use when someone suggested using it instead of poop for an iguana. If you can't find the tablets, or don't want to buy a whole bottle just for this, yogurt usually has the same kind of stuff in it. However, since reptile digestive systems are not designed for dairy products, be careful with it...
 
Thanks exactly what I did the last time he had undigested poo, and is what I plan to do this time too, except I used the capsules instead of tablets. But thanks for the tip Kenalotia.

-Lemur 6
 
I see all has been quiet for a while on this thread, but it sounded like what I've been going through with one of my corns and thought I'd share a little of my experience.

I got E T last year as a hatchling. For several months he never missed a meal and never puked... then my nightmare began. At first he regurged only once in a while, but it increased as time passed till it got so bad that he never held one down. It got to where I felt guilty waiting 10 days to feed him after each puke because he acted as if he was starving. So I'd only wait about 3 days. Finally, one day when he puked only AN HOUR after feeding so I said to heck with it... and turned right around and fed him again. This time with a new born pink. He kept it down. The next day he was begging for more, so I waited a day and gave him another new born. He kept it down. So I kept giving him a new born every two or three days because he kept begging. Then I tried a little larger size and he kept it down too. But as soon as I tried a very small fuzzy that was the same size as the pinks he was now keeping down.... he regurged it. I guess hair is too much for him.

It seems so odd to be feeding a yearling such small pinks... but if he's keeping them down, I'll do it. But by what I've been reading I have a feeling that there is something that is keeping these snakes from digesting normally and their furture doesn't sound very exciting. Oh, I didn't give mine antibiotics, just GSE just before I changed the size of his food. I wonder if it's genetic, or the temperature of the eggs when incubated that is causing his innerds not to work right. I wish I knew.

I thank you all for all your words. This has been very trying for me and my LITTLE E T, and often wonder if I should just go a head and put him down.

I LOVE these forums
MissHisssss
 
Hi everyone,

Conundrum wasn't doing too well at all. I caught him pooping and close inspection of the fresh poo indicated something was seriously wrong. The strange purplish hue pointed to internal bleeding. I put him down last week after he refused 3 meals and by that time he wasn't even strong enough to really support his own body (he kept searching for a place to rest his head when I picked him up and he sorta hung limply. One he got his head rested he stopped moving).

I guess I forgot to tell everyone because I was so busy with the necropsy.

Necropsy revealed some interesting things. He had a very spotty liver and the liver was very pale compared to a normal liver (a very faded pink color compared to a good healthy maroon color), the spots were whitish/greyish and slices of the liver showed the spots were distributed throughout the inside and not just on the surface. Looks like some sort of cancer. Gall bladder also worried me, since it was more a yellow than a green.

His stomach had what looked like an ulcer lower down where it turns into the intestine. It was small, and looked like one of those annoying sores you get on the inside of your lip when your fatigued (white raised lump with a red depression in the middle). Probably got this from eating a chopped in half mouse, since those bones were sort protruding and may have poked him. But the rest of his GI tract was unremarkable.

Everything else seemed semi-normal for a snake in his condition; heart seemed okay, lungs were okay color, kidneys were sort of okay, brain looked fine for the most part (took me a while to tease his skull apart), no strange artifacts anywhere in the body, no obstructions.

I don't have a digital camera (or any camera for that matter), so sorry I couldn't post a pic better explaining what I found.

I'm a little less interested in the stomach ulcer than I am in the liver spots, they remind me of liver metastasis seen in human beings and especially the discoloration of the liver points to something being off (not enough blood flow, low nutrient content). Also it's really wierd that a snake only about a year old started getting liver mets, since 99% of the time in humans it's the older people who have them, but I'm not 100% certain that they are without doing sections. I know it's not uncommon for mice to get tumors since I had to cull a colony after some of the females starting growing lumps (breast cancer), and I'm not the only person I know who had mice that had tumors.

I wish I had a microtome, and a decent microscope, those sections might tell a good story. For now, I'm fixing some samples in 90% ethyl alcohol, hopefully I'll have access to a microtome and a microscope somewhere soon.

I guess this entire time (for a year now), I've been treating the wrong thing assuming it was a stomach problem. Without knowing the exact details I could've actually been accelerating his degradation with all the GSE and accidophillus and Baytril. The Baytril especially worries me...

-Lemur 6
 
I'm so sorry for your loss, and thanks so much for your necropsy report. It must have been difficult to perform.

MissHisssss
 
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