Reptile & Amphibian Forums

This is my first time posting a message here (I'm ususally found on the Kingsnake & Indigo forums - I have mostly Kingsnakes, BUT: My son has a yearling cornsnake (Kathy Love stock). It is behaving very strange. Never seen this in my 30 plus years of keeping snakes (Yes I do have lots of experience, but don't know everything). The snake is very limp and moves only slightly. The first time I noticed this was three days ago. I thought maybe the snake didn't find its water bowl and was severely dehydrated. I put the half dead snake in the water and it eventually drank some water. It then left its' bowl and crawled only a few inches and just layed there. I repeated this procedure for three days to ensure that it wasn't dehydrated. To this day, there is no improvement. The snake twitches its body and tries to crawl away but it seems like it is having a lot of trouble doing so. The only conclusion I have at this time is the snake got too dehydrated and has possible brain damage (a lot of twitching movements at the front part and neck of its body) - OR (I hope this isn't the case): My son is not telling me everything , maybe the snake WAS injured recently and I wasn't told about it? But I have ensured my son no consequences if he tells me all. So, therefore I think it is something else. Any advice????
Thanks for reading

Zee

In my 2 cases of this

1) was a runover corn , that had 5 broken ribs, it makes them twitch when they move because of teh pain, the dont like to drink because moving their lungs to punp water hurts.

2) the other case was a severly dehydrated baby corn that a friend found in his garage.

NO OFFENSE to you or your son, but I think he may be lieing, and could have dropped the snake, or shut the lid on him. The are very fragile as babies. Again I'm not accusing you or your son of ANYTHING, its just a common scenario with younger children ( i've got MY personal experience, it happened to me, I shut the lid and hurt the babies neck, it still lived though). Just hydrate the snake, dont handle him much, offer food and hope for the best. If all else fails and he dies , get another one. good luck

Thanks for the advice (yes I know kids, lol!). Come to think of it. . . my son probably dropped the lid on it and didn't even know he did so, because he likes to show off another (in his opinion, pretttier) corn snake that shares it's cage!

Zee

Has it lost weight?Regurged?Or just suddenly became ill?I once dropped a slab of granite and killed 3 baby bearded dragons.Accidents happen to everyone.If your corn doesnt look brutalized it could be a million different things wrong with it and a costly necropsy is the only way to find out.If it looks like it isnt going to survive put the little bugger down.Just wouldnt use it to feed a king unless I froze it first.