Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I have a large female pastel that is impacted. Are there any home remedies that will help this big girl relieve herself.

Thanks in advance for your help.
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Brian Gundy

www.for-goodness-snakes.com

That has happened twice here with big boas during the last stages of pregnancy. In those cases it has always been a fairly small (hard) blockage at or near the cloaca. The problem seems to be that the intestinal tract is pushed out of line somehow so that upon inspection you see a membrane or intestinal wall instead of the open tract. When that has happened I get out the sterile lube, reach in there and feel for the obstruction... things progress rather quickly when I find it.
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Impaction is quite rare I think, overall, especially in otherwise healthy boas with adequate sized cages. Many people obsess unneccessarily over their boa not 'doing it' regularly. I assume that you're not one of those people.. anyway there is supposedly a veterinary procedure as well as treatments to relieve these proplems.
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Good luck.

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Gus
A. Rentfro
RioBravoReptiles.com
www.riobravoreptiles.com

"Quality is not an accident. Perfectly healthy animals are a minimum requirement.. everything else is just salesmanship" gus

i had an albino boa die from this. he was impacted and i tried all the home remedies and waited to take him to the vet. nothing worked so i finally took him to a vet and he ended up dying while at the vet from a ruptured bowel. Dont wait to get this problem fixed is my advice.

We had a girl a couple of years ago that had this happen and she ended up having surgery. She is fine now, in fact we believe her to be gravid. The vet could not offer any explanation other than "stuff happens" sometimes. I got to help with the surgery which was facinating. He removed two tennis ball size impactions and then closed her back up.

His only real recommendations before we ended up doing the surgery was to soak her, soak her, and soak her some more.
Her impactions were more mid body and not low enough to attempt an enema, which we had disscussed, however I never would have attempted something like that without his assistance if he had thought that was an option.

We had another that went 6 months without having a movement, but when x-rayed was not actually impacted. You can see on the x-ray where the stool becomes dry and cracked. In that case, he recommened injecting her rat with mineral oil, soaking her and getting her out for exercise regularly. Which worked just fine.
We now have an exercise tree that everybody gets to play on regularly to keep this from happening ever again.(if that is possible) Some of our larger boas , even though they have plenty of room, and don't get over fed,(I don't like fat pin-headed snakes) don't move about their enclousures a whole lot. Hence, the exercise tree! It's good for them and they seem to really enjoy it,.... at least they don't want to let go of the darn thing when it is time to go back home.

Hope some of this might help. I think alot of it depends on where the impaction is and how severe it is, that would help determine what the best treatment would be.

Kathy

A picture of the exercise tree in action.

A rat injected with mineral oil. It worked after many, many soakings wouldn't.