I actually had the same thing happen to me about 5 years ago. What happened in my scenario was I had the 3 ball pythons in a very large enclosure together. They were all very good feeders 2 very long term captive females (15 years) and one CBmale. One day I went in and one female was dead and within a week the other female was dead. The male on the other hand I still have and is doing very well. There were no signs of respiratory illness or other illness. One of the pythons laid eggs a month prior to her demise but the other female showed no signs of being gravid so I threw that possibility away. It was a complete mystery to me.

Anyways with your snakes do you see any symptoms (saliva/mucous from the mouth) of illness. I am suspicious of the possibility of a bad rodent. If it is a bad rodent a possible scenario is that maybe the rodent/rodents got loose from their cage at the pet store and ate some rat poison and then was recaptured and simply thrown back into the cage. This seems like an unlikely scenario due to the fact that it was a live mouse you purchased although sometimes they can take several days before dying as a result of rodenticide. I would suggest you take the live snake to the vet and have them run a CBC and maybe a chemical profile on your snake just to be sure. If it is rodenticide the platelets will be low and it is likely you will have to treat him with vitamin K. Even if you dont think it is rodentide poisoning the CBC may still show other things such as signs of infection (elevated white blood cells). Hopefully the blood tests will come out normal. Also make sure your veterinarian has references for normal values for ball pythons or at least for snakes as they will be very different than for dogs and cats obviously and you dont want a misdiagnosis. Good Luck hope your male does well.

[ Show Entire Thread ]