Guin, female Picasso stripe

[Albert Clark]

Fantastic looking reptile. I know she is going to be loads of fun. Enjoy.

[bigsnakegirl785]

A photo from a little under 24 hours after her last meal.



And photos from today. She didn't get as defensive as usual when I took her out, but she was still a bit unsure and tense during handling. After 20 minutes or so she stopped tracking my face and started to actually explore, apparently having figured out I wasn't going to eat her or harm her.





A crying face on her side. BRBs have some of the most interesting patterns, it's fun finding faces and objects in their patterns.

[bigsnakegirl785]

So her last meal had me a bit worried because of how big it was, and it seems it really was a bit too large. She regurged a bit of the mouse, and the rest of it came out a bit underdigested. I think I was right thinking about bumping her down to fuzzies for now. Her first meal was fuzzy-sized and she digested it perfectly, no regurges and her stool was normal.

I'll be giving her 1-2 weeks off food and I'll bump her heat by a degree or two, and completely stop handling her. Then next week or so I'll order her some fuzzie mice. Hopefully this will be a one-time thing.

[Snakesitter]

BigSnakeGirl--

Regurgs are serious business, and how you deal with them can make or break a snake.

One, wait double her usual feeding time to feed again, in order to give her time to recover from stress and rebuild her digestive resources.

Two, when you do feed again, offer one size down from her *normal* prey size. If she was feeding fuzzies before this larger meal, drop her down to pinks (even two of them). The idea is to present smaller, less demanding food items.

If she keeps down the smaller meal, wait another double period and offer the same meal again.

If she keeps this down too, increase *one* of the two variables (food frequency or food size) back to normal, and feed again. If she keeps this down too, repeat once more, and then go back to normal meals.

You temp and handling plans will also be helpful, at least for the first two week test period. Also check to make sure a random heating failure (temp spike/fall) did not cause this.

Good luck, and please keep us posted!

[bigsnakegirl785]

Originally Posted by Snakesitter

BigSnakeGirl--

Regurgs are serious business, and how you deal with them can make or break a snake.

One, wait double her usual feeding time to feed again, in order to give her time to recover from stress and rebuild her digestive resources.

Two, when you do feed again, offer one size down from her *normal* prey size. If she was feeding fuzzies before this larger meal, drop her down to pinks (even two of them). The idea is to present smaller, less demanding food items.

If she keeps down the smaller meal, wait another double period and offer the same meal again.

If she keeps this down too, increase *one* of the two variables (food frequency or food size) back to normal, and feed again. If she keeps this down too, repeat once more, and then go back to normal meals.

You temp and handling plans will also be helpful, at least for the first two week test period. Also check to make sure a random heating failure (temp spike/fall) did not cause this.

Good luck, and please keep us posted!

Her last meal was an average-size hopper mouse, quite a bit bigger than the first hopper mouse she got, which was fuzzy-sized and all curled up it just about fit on my thumbnail. It was tiny. She passed that a-ok.

I do have a space heater heating the room, so I have also moved her farther away in case it was making her too hot, but I will still treat it as if it was too large a meal as she did seem to be digesting the meal rather long. The regurge was 3 days after her meal, and the poo was roughly 7 days after her meal. Since it was also underdigested I'll be bumping her temps just in case she needed more belly heat, but it won't be major, just a degree or two, from 79-80F to right around 81F.

Her heat tape is all in line, if it was a temp spike I can only guess she was receiving too much heat from space heater as the room is rather warm on cool nights when the space heater runs constantly.

As far as the meal size, I will still be ordering fuzzies for her normal meal size, but I may go ahead and offer a mouse pink until I'm sure she'll keep her food down. I am going to wait 2 weeks to offer any more food, since her normal schedule will be every 7 days.

I will update everyone on her condition once she gets her next meal, and hopefully with the reduction in prey size she'll be ok after this.

(Also another thing that makes me think it was the meal size was that I found the regurge later that night after my handling session with her. It had been ~3 days since her meal, so she should have digested it enough that a regurge issue should have been minimal. She had not been even touched once before I handled her that day.)

[Snakesitter]

A three-day post-meal handle delay should normally be fine. I use two days and rarely have an issue...but will wait longer with especially large meals. Please keep us posted!