Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I had a young southern die unexpectedly yesterday. He was taking meals and seemed to be doing well. I had noticed about two days prior he looked a bit thin, but he had been eating and I just figured I would get some more meals to make sure he put on any lost weight. I went to feed him yesterday and he was dead. I keep feeling guilty, wondering what I could have done, what went wrong,and I really don't know. In years of keeping snakes this is the third snake I've had die, and it always hits me really hard. I've got 30 right now so I mean it isn't that one is dropping dead often. I guess this comes with keeping reptiles. How many have you have died since you have been keeping snakes? Any ideas as to what could have happend? temps were fine, it was eating, it had water. I guess some snakes just don't make it?

From my experience, if was eating, but appearently loosing weight, my guess would be parasites. The parasites suck up all the nutrients, so the animal literally starves to death while eating. I have run across a tapeworm type parasite in WC that is resistant to panacur. It is contracted from green tree frogs, so if they were used for scenting or to feed.....

Really sorry to hear about loosing the little one.
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Jenea
Guardian Reptiles

"When your memories are bigger than your dreams, you're headed for the grave" Author unknown

I noticed today that the sibling I have with this particular snake that died, has a weird looking, dumpy, loose, skin near its tail. It appears to be almost liquidy in this. It sort of looks extremely loose, as if it was stretched, but not quite like skin that didn't come off in a shed. It just ate saturday and then I noticed this today. The only "x" factor I could think of is that I have been scenting with starkist tuna to make sure they eat. Anyone have any idea what this could be? I'll get a pic on here soon.

here is a pic.

i had something similar happen to me a few years ago with a hypo albino bull snake. the back third seemed to rot but the snake was still alive. the only thing i could come up with as to why this happened was i was overfeeding him and the heat wasnt high enough for him to digest properly. ck your temps and heat tape in the rack you are using because as they get older hot and cool spots can develope. good luck

just a question, were the two southerns housed together. it looks like an infection from a bite. silvadene cream is the only thing i can think of to put on him

no they were housed seperately. its just so odd that both of them seem to have problems out of the blue.

That weird little thing at the end scared me, but it turned out to be a clump of a bad shed. Odd thing is, it never showed signs of a shed. I always get some more humidity and spray them once they start to show shed. I guess I was just scared that something was wrong with this pair, like they had a parasite or mutual infections or something. Boy am I relieved!