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I've been out of town for the past 3 weeks and my husband has been caring for the snakes while I was away. Got in at 10pm and doing my check on the creatures discovered one of my Mandarin Rat snakes (small female 2002) desicated and very dead with an empty water bowl. I know my husband feels awful about it. He said he thought I only had 12 snakes and now unfortunately he's right. He totally missed her cage since it was separate from the rack where most of the other snakes are. He's not a bad guy- just made a mistake- but I'm still upset about it. I hate losing an animal to illness but this is worse. A totally preventable death.

Lora

That is a sad and unfortunate for the snake. My sister and I will be going out of town in May for a few days. Does anyone know how long a snake can go with out water and still be ok? We'll only be gone 5-6 days so I figure if I fill the bowls up, I have 4 snakes, and they go dry they should be ok for a couple days. We haven't decided if we want to get a house sitter or not. My corn, Janome:

I would imagine you'd be okay if you filled them up before leaving. I also wonder if by feeding them right before you leave it this will help - as they get a lot of the water they need from their food. Of course you then might come home to feces - guess it depends on how often your snakes go.
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It depends heavily on the kind of snake... anywhere from a few days to never.
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One of the things I appreciate about keeping snakes is that I can go on vacation for a week and they are fine when I get back.
As long as they don't have wimpy little water bowls that dry up in a few days, they will be AOK. Duffy

Snakes are relatively low maintenance but I'd be more concerned about leaving your animals unattended than about water evaporating in 6 days. I had a snake that NEVER defecated in its water bowl. One time, I went for a vacation and, you guessed it, she crapped in the bowl. Fortunately, I had someone checking on the snakes and they cleaned things up, so I didn't come home to a sick animal.

You could always put in more than one water bowl. That would most likely cut down on that prob. Now, if it was a monitor....

...are a notoriously "death prone" snake. w/c are a disaster and c/b are still among the most fragile of snakes. A "healthy" Mandarin can die overnight, even if watered and/or misted daily. So don't be too hard on him. Mandarins (and Moellendorfs) are just real hard to keep alive under the best circumstances.

Frank
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This was a juvenile CB Mandarin that I've kept for nearly a year, not a recently acquired WC and she would have most likely been fine if she'd had water available to drink. I agree that Mandarins are more delicate than your typical N.A. rat snake (I have 3 others, one of which is WC and has survived over a year), but even a juvenile black rat would have died with no water for 3 weeks. It was a sad mistake on both our parts. Lesson learned- next time there will be a detailed check list for both my husband's and my peace of mind.
Lora

I'm actually surprised the snake died from not having water for three weeks. Doesn't seem that long to me.
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