Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I fed my '03 western hognose male today and noticed something interesting... One of the pinkies I fed him was larger than his usual meal of two small pinkie mice and he went after it immediately. The wierd thing was, he chewed on the animal for a long time before moving around to the head to swallow. In the process of moving the prey around, he spread a lot of what looked like a kind of amber/brown colored substance over the small delicup i feed him in. I think it might have been excess venom, but I'm not sure. After he swallowed the first pinkie, instead of attacking the other one he simply smelled it and then turned away. I noticed that the brownish liquid had coagulated the blood in the bottom of the deli cup too.

I tossed the extra pinkie. was just wondering if anyone had seen anything like that before. The hog seems to be normal now... but he keeps crawling around his cage like he's looking for the other pinkie he never got. Anyway, i just thought it was kind of interesting... and it was the first time I'd seen that brownish looking stuff.

Well hogs are notorious for eating prey from the wrong side and many times mine eat the pinks or fuzzies from the middle and the meal actually folds in half. If your hog worked the mid section of the pink long enough it was probably the mouses blood mixed with milk out of the pinks stomach--Just a guess.

And especially in a pink, all their organs are pretty much mush. So if it was chewing on the head for a long time...well...I suppose you can fill in the rest.
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Andy Maddox
AIM: SurfAndSkimTx04
MSN: Poloboy32486@hotmail.com
Yahoo:surfandskimtx04
Houston Herp Key
The Reptizone

Burgundy baby, With your blue eyed soul, You play the hits and I'm on that roll, Capricorn sister, Freddie Mercury, Jupiter Child cry

A hognose would have clear venom, so although there might have been salivia in there, it wasn't the whole story.
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Eryx - All the fun of a boa in a convenient pocket size!

my hog does that too...i always thought it was poo (ive never bothered to smell it). never thought it was venom. that is interesting.

ya, next time have a nice whiff of it. I bet it stinks really bad.

W. Hognose allthough short and stocky are still colubrids. Mine has done this on NUMEROUS occasions. I belive that when they do this they are musking.
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1.1 Ball Python, 0.1 motley amel corn, 1.0 western hognose

What do you mean although "short and stocky" are still colubrids? Colubridae is a huge amount of snakes that are all sizes, shapes, colors, and girths just sort of randomly tossed together for lack of a better spot to put them. You can't really say stereotype them like that.
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Andy Maddox
AIM: SurfAndSkimTx04
MSN: Poloboy32486@hotmail.com
Yahoo:surfandskimtx04
Houston Herp Key
The Reptizone

Burgundy baby, With your blue eyed soul, You play the hits and I'm on that roll, Capricorn sister, Freddie Mercury, Jupiter Child cry

Did you feed it f/t pinkies? the other day i noticed brown liquid in the ziploc bag i was thawing the pink for my smallest hog. I also didnt bother to smell it though.