Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Hello,
Has anyone experienced or knows why some of my baby boas will swell up some after eating a pink or rat pup. The area where the food sits seems to swell up larger then the meal that they ate. Also some of them have what looks like some puffiness even after the meal has been digested.Sort of like a fluid filled pocket under the skin. I have heard they are not tolerant to fatty meals. Could that be the cause? They are thriving otherwise,no regurgitation ever and their activity level is normal,appetite always good but that puffiness has me perplexed and wondering if it is symptomatic of anything I should be concerned about. Thanks!

We had some mouse pinks donated-- they were from someones 2 pet mice. about 24 hours old so they were the perfect size for the baby corn snakes we had.
We fed them and the next morning -- all 3 of the babies were swelled up twice the size of the pinky all around where the pinky was -- the next day (2 days after eating) one of them had exploded (for lack of better term).

not like bomb exploded- not all over the cage-- just split open and there was A LOT of acid/bile like substance around the snake.
It was horrible-- smelled like human vomit mixed with snake regurge --

Don't want to wig you out or anything--- the other 2 snakes were fine-- went to the vet anyway but were fine and still are...

don't know if it was related to that specific pinky or if it would have been something else...

Beth
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The rescue site: www.freewebs.com/okreptilerescue

A few things come to mind.
Some mice are very gassy. I thaw mine in warm water. They all float at first. After they thaw and you stir them a round a bit most of them sink. A good bit of the air is displaced from their fur and their blood is generally de-oxygenated. However the gassy ones never sink. The longer the rat producer leaves them out before freezing, the worse the problem. By the same token, the longer you leave a thawed or fresh killed rodent out before feeding, the worse the problem. Some rodent colonies just have more gas in their gut. In this case the bacterial activity in the gut of the food item continues to ferment/produce gas faster than digestion process of the snake can catch up to it. It has a head start after all.
Secondly, digestion requires a lot of energy. Maybe the snake is dehydrating while metabolizing the food item. The first thing my snakes do after a meal is take a drink. I always make sure the water has been replaced with fresh before feeding. Always make sure your snake has all the fresh water it wants when it's digesting a meal.
Or, maybe your snake has a gas producing bacterial flora residing within its own GI tract.
If your snake is too hot, sometimes that causes more gas.
Fatty rodents are more slowly digested and that may also be a problem, as you mentioned.
That's all I've got.
Good luck.
jsc
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"As hard as I've tried, just can't NOT do this"
John Crickmer

Thanks alot for the good info,much appreciated by me and the babies.