Corn Problems: Need Some Input

[stevesemerko]

My roomate just bought a pair of corns on boxing day. These are his first snakes so I have been helping him out getting things set-up. I went with him to pick out the snakes and told him what to look for in a healthy snake. He ended up getting a male ghost and a female snow, both looked healthy and we were told they had been eating fine. We brought them home and checked them over thoroughly again and set them up in their temporary home. We let them settle in and then attempted to feed them, they took the food no problem. The next day when my roomate checked on them he found that the snow had regurgitated and when he went to clean the cage he saw a mite on her, he came and got me and I checked out the ghost and sure enough he had mites as well. I told him to soak the snakes in tepid water and thoroughly clean and disinfect the cages and accesories. When he put the snakes back in their cages about 10 minutes later the ghost regurgitated and defecated, the stool was greenish and sort of watery. I referenced the corn snake manual he had bought and the symptoms point to a digestive disorder and I told him to try and leave the snakes alone for a week or so and try and feed them something a little smaller. The temperature of the cages is around 28-30C so I don't think that is the problem. As for the mites...Does anyone know where I can find Vapon pest strips or can somone recommend a good mite spray or something similar. Any other suggestions about how to treat the digestion problem would also be greatly appreciated. Sorry for the long post but I just wanted to try and make it as clear as possible.:)

Thanks in advance

Steve

[sapphire_moon]

Ok,
Did you ask the person whom your friend got them from the last day it was fed, the size it was fed, and what kind of schedule it was kept on?

Why didn't you wait a week or two to let the snake get adjusted?
(stress could have caused it to regurge, besides the digestive problem)

You said that your friend seen regurge, pick it up cleaned out the tank and then it regurged again. Did you feed it again?

Don't feed for atleast 10-14 days to let the digestive tract heal.

are there two hides?

What are the cool side temps?

Also just because the book said one thing, there could be internal parasites....I would take it to a vet...

As for mites, if these snakes were guranteed healthy, and parasite free then you have every right (as long as it's not husbandry problems) to take the corns back and get your money back or different corns.

For mites with my bp I just used a little vegtable oil. put a little on a paper plate and let the snake go through it, take and rub it on it's back and other area's that didn't get any oil on it, you can even take a q-tip and dab oil on and around the eyes, and around the nose and mouth, being careful not to get any in the nose or mouth.

The put back in the quarantine cage on paper towel or news print, white paper towel would probably work best as there is no black lining to confuse the mites with. put in a extreme low traffic area and leave alone for atleast 10 days. Only get in there to refresh water every couple of days and spot clean. otherwise, just leave it alone.

Oh make sure each snake has a seperate enclosure!

Goodluck and keep us updated! Hope everything gets better.

[Invictus]

In the nose and mouth is where mites love to lay their eggs. I seriously do not think that vegetable oil will cut it.

Steve, you need to go to a pharmacy and get a mite shampoo called NIX. It's super cheap - my local pharmacy has the 50ml bottles for about 7 bucks. Mix it 10% nix / 90% water, and spray EVERYTHING. Make sure you even spray the corn's face. They will HATE you for it, but it has to be done. As I said, mites love the eye sockets and nasal cavities (and heat pits in the case of pythons.)

For the regurge, most definitely wait at least 10 days before trying again (especially if you stress them out with a nix blast to the face), but as recommended above, it could still be an internal parasite. Never buy a herp (especially from a pet store) unless you have money set aside for a vet visit.

[sapphire_moon]

Thank you invictus. I was trying to think of the mite remover that everyone talks about, I couldn't remember the name, and silly me, I forgot to say.........clean absolutely everything. If you use the nix just use it to wipe down the cage.
If you have wooden hides bake them for a while, (use plastic hides while mite infested, just easier to clean), maybe use a bleach solution. But someone else would have to tell you what percent of bleach to how many gallons of water.

The veggi oil worked awesome on my bp. It might not work on a corn, just another suggestion though....whatever works best for you, keep using it..

Goodluck with your snakes. If I missed anything or am wrong I'm sure someone will correct me!

I'm still learning everything I can to!!!!!

[MouseKilla]

I don't have much to say about the regurge that hasn't been said but I have some experience with the mite issue. God they're horrible little bastards! I took my infested snakes and put them in a water/dishsoap solution, about an inch deep in a rubbermaid overnight.

Just mix it a little thicker than you would for dishes, say 1 part dishsoap to 10 parts water (not an exact science, you just don't want it to be so soapy it bothers the snake or so weak it doesn't coat and kill the buggers). So you put them in their little bug bath and like I said throw the lid on and leave them over night (remember the air holes if it's a new container, duh!lol! so far there is no treatment for suffocation). While they soak, mix up a bleach and water solution (1:20) to clean the enclosures, clean the whole thing, inside and out with special attention given to any nooks and crannies where the little black jerks can stick and hide. Give the same treatment to anything else that is going back in the enclosure (should be a short list for the sake of keeping it simple, water bowl, hide and nothing else). Rinse the hell out of everything.

Last thing is to vaccuum the room the enclosures were in as best you can and get rid of any snake related garbage in the room and get it as far away from your snakes as you possibly can.

Twenty four hours later you can put the enclosures back together, rinse your poor soapy snakes off (you should find a bunch of dead mites at the bottom of the soapy water) and let them go back to their squeaky clean homes.

The last thing is that you must watch very closely for mites for the next 2 weeks, if you see a single one start this whole ugly routine over again. If at the end of the 2 weeks you don't see any clean the enclosure again anyway.

I imagine the vegetable oil idea would work also, it doesn't matter what you use, as long as it's not harmfull to the snake and it can coat the whole surface of it's body. All you're doing is drowning or suffocating the bugs, after that all you need to do is rid the enclosure of them.