Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Today while doing our Sunday feeding, we found one our boys dead. He was stretched out on his belly, head turned to the side, mouth wide open, full of Sani-chips.
We had not noticed any problems with him. He hadn't fed in almost a month, but this was not uncommon for him, and he was 55g. We have had him since Jan of this year, but when we bought him we were told he was a 2009.
We just switched to Sani-chips on Friday.
Has this happened to anyone? Could it have been the Sani-chips?

Sorry to hear about your loss. Unfortunately, these things do happen even for the most knowledgeable keepers out there.

I doubt it was the Sani-chips that led to his demise. He was probably gasping and writhing while dying and inadvertently shoved those into his mouth. I had that happen to a Tri-Color female of mine years ago, her mouth was full of rabbit pellets when she was found dead and the general consensus amongst my peers at the time.

The "clue" that this snake might not have been well to begin with is the fact that this male was 3 years old and only 55 grams; that's fairly small for a 2009, about half the size of a typical male for that age. While he could have been a slow starter, kept on a maintenance diet or something else benign, it also could be a factor in determining whether something else was wrong with him which caused him to be undersized for his age.

We lost a female Pink Pastel female that was a terrible eater her whole life and was about 3 years old when she abruptly died while weighing only about 80 grams. When I performed an autopsy on her, I found a tumor inside of her that was half the size of my thumb.

I'm willing to bet that he died of natural causes and not by anything that you did.
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Troy Rexroth
Rextiles

Thank you Troy, that makes us feel much better. Still so hard to lose one! Our collection is not huge, so each one is so special. We really appreciate your response!

You are very welcome.

I guess the worst part of it is when you have no understanding of what went wrong so that you might be able to prevent it from happening again, if possible. Unfortunately, some animals are just not meant to live no matter how well you take care of them.

The only consolation I can offer you is to know that it happens to all of us at one time or another and that it's just an unfortunate part of the hobby.
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Troy Rexroth
Rextiles

I completely agree with Troy. I have also had a seemingly healthy hognose die on me for no obvious reason. Unfortunately each snake you have raises the risk of having to deal with one of these fluke things.
Best of luck!
Ross