Reptile & Amphibian Forums

i ahve a surinam boa. he is about 2-2.5ft long, maybe almost 3. is eat f/t rats. well i fed him last friday a medium rat. it did look big to me but not as big as other ones i have fed him in the past.

well he ate it and it made a nice buldge in his body. not overly big at all. the next day the buldge def. grew in size. sorry i dont have pics.

this morning he threw up the rat. and since then he has been resting his head on the water is his bowl. his head isnt all the way in the water, its just touching the water and he's flicking his tongue.

any ideas? he seriously is just resting his head on the water

so i just went to check on him. i noticed his neck, right behind his head and about 3-5 inches up his body, the skin hanging very low. like something was weighing it down.

i decided to pick him up, i really didnt wanna. and as soon as i did, a lot of water/ saliva came out his mouth. it was a pretty good amount to.

after that, he started moving around the cage more, and the skin went back to normal.

i dont know whats goin on

If it were me, I would take him out and completely clean and disenfect the enclosure. Take a warm wet paper towel and completely wipe the snake down in it. Do it a few times using a few clean papertowels and do it until that nasty film is off of the snake. Keep fresh clean water and nice temps and don't feed him for two weeks or so. When you do, feed him a small food item and see if he holds it down. Best of luck. Mike Panichi
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honesty is my only policy

there could be a number of reasons why he regurgitated.

- enviromental conditions are not right.
- too big of a meal

to name a couple.

Don't feed him for 3 weeks...keep him warm and keep it humid. Feed him a weanling sized rat. If he holds it down, feed him again a week later the same sized meal.

It also sounded to me like he was drinking water which is why his head was resting on it...and would also explain the water in his throat.

Understand this is all just my opinion, but from what I am reading here is what I think.

Assuming your temperature is correct.

If your animal is three feet you should probably be feeding it weaned to small rats at this time, the goal is to feed a meal that makes a slight visible lump just after ingesting, the snake should be able to curl comfortably.

BCC can be sensitive to being fed to large a meal and being fed too often. I feed my animals every ten to fourteen days.

As far as the hanging skin that is more than likely due to the regurgitation, the liquid that came out was water.

I would recheck your temps, wait at least ten days before offering another meal and certainly feed a much smaller meals like a fuzzy rat or med mouse for the next couple of meals.

Hope this helps.

Good luck.
Joel Thomas

While too large of a prey item can cause a regurge, when a prey bulge in a snake rapidly increases in size over the first 24 hours after feeding, this is typically indicative of rapid decomposition. This is usually caused by too high of a cage temperature, and may or may not result in a regurge. What were the temps where this snake was hanging out?

Kelly

that is an awful big meal for a couple foot boa. boas are not retics, they need smaller meals in proportion to body and "the bulge" that is to be achieved with each meal. for example, my 2-3 foot retics i have (or had now, i guess) got a small to medium rat every 5-8 days. but my 2 foot salmon boa gets large adult mice and it leaves a pretty decent size bulge, and i feed every 5 -7 days. i would also be concerned about internal parasites. i saw a 3 foot boa that came into my hospital for throwing up, or regurgitation. and took xrays and did an ultrasound and found alot of gas and liquid in the intestinal tract. so a fecal was performed both a direct and float and found a signifcant amount intestinal parasites, consisting of roundworms and what looked like a sub-species of cocci. so something to think about depending on what type of food you feed, ie, live, p/k, frozen
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retic is king of kings

1.0 Tiger Retic
1.0 Albino Tiger Retic
0.1 Striped Tiger Retic (het albino)
0.1 Salmon Boa
1.0 Albino Boa
0.1 False Water Cobra