Reptile & Amphibian Forums

HI. I'm having a spot of trouble with my 9 month old male albino. He always poops like a champ but I havent got a stool from him in a month at least. I looked in Phillipe's manual and it's not giving me whole lot of info. I exercise him almost daily(letting him wander my bedroom) for 30 min. to an hour. I feed him freshly killed rats that are a little older than rat pups. About 3-4 every feeding, or until he's not hungry anymore, once a week. He has a huge water bowl so hydration is not an issue. He is currently 4 1/2-5 feet, and lives in a 40 gallon high tank with a newspaper/carefresh bedding. Temps are 100 degrees on the hot spot and 80 on the cool side during the day. After a few days of digesting the "lumps" go away, but no stool is produced. I can only surmise that he has a gut impaction from the carefresh. I plan on taking him to a vet within the next two weeks if no poop comes. Any tips on helping him go number two would help. I know his cage will need to be enlarged soon. How much does surgery cost if it is a gut impaction? Anyone sell burm laxitives? J.K. THANKS ALL.

I'd hold off on the surgery for a while,LOL. Some pythons can refrain from defecating for inordinate time periods. As your snake matures, this may become the norm for him. Your focus on hydration and exercise is good and will help with regularity to be sure. You might want to record feeding and defecating events over time to get a better baseline and monitor changes in behavior as your snake matures. Also, you may want to consider withholding a meal if he produces nothing after say, three feeds. If youre feeding F/T, you can also inject the prey item with water, but it sounds like you have the hydration angle covered. Main thing is not to panic but as this is the only "symptom" at this point, just adopt a wait and see position.

You need to increase the size of his meals. If he is 5 feet and only eating three rat pups he is not getting enough food. Three rat pups (i'm assuming just beyond fuzzy and just prior to weanling) would only weigh a few ounces collectively. This would digest down to about an ounce of waste. He can store these tiny waste lumps for quite a while before having to vacate his colon. He needs to be getting a couple of large to jumbo rats weekly at this size. Or at least one 12 to 16 ounce rat weekly. And as he grows steadily increase the sizes of his meals. When he has enough food going in it will amount to enough waste for him to have to vacte regularly.

Hope this helps.
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David Beauchemin
High End Herps.Inc
http://HighEndHerps.com