Perhaps you are feeding it too big of items? You hadn’t mentioned this but does its tail look swollen, as though it is retaining feces? If so, I had good luck doing the following. I take it one step further than soaking the animal. I fill the tub (or the sink if it is small enough) with only lukewarm water (probably cooler than you’d want to bathe in), and then encourage the snake to swim around in it. The deeper you make the water, the more effective it will probably be. For me, the boa invariably loosens up and drops in the water. Don’t bathe with him! I used this technique a long time ago when I didn’t know better than to overfced or feed too large of items.

Linda and Mark, those are some interesting thoughts regarding supplementation and whatnot for boas. I have always been heavily interested in diet and nutritional supplements for longevity and athletics, but as they pertain to humans (not boas) of course, and I have done extensive research on these topics.

I’d speculate that perhaps some micronutrient (vitamins and minerals) enrichment could be good, but macronutrient (sugars, fats, proteins) additions, especially in the form of sugars, might be a bad thing. I am not a doctor or anything, but most of the food that a boa would naturally take will contain fat, proteins, and micronutrients, but only rarely would it contain more than small single gram amounts of sugars. As such, I’d guess that Carnation and similar products with sugars could be bad given with any regularity.

The greatest concern might be the artificial sweeteners. While boas might eat rodents with traces of fresh fruit in the guy (fructose or similar sugars), I’ll guarantee they don’t naturally consume saccharin, sucralose, or aspartame. I won’t bore you further w/details, but these sweeteners have some VERY BAD stuff associated with them in humans; it’s probably worse w/boas.

Personally, I’d be nervous about trying to administer an enema to a 6 month old boa, depending on its size. One has to determine whether the potential benefit of that enema will offset the stress induced to the animal and/or risk of injury in administering it.

Oh well, just my $0.02, I wasn’t cheap today.


MATTHEW

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