Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Hi everyone,
I'm having a bit of a problem w/ one of my corns and hoping I can tap into the vast knowlegde of fellow Kingsnake users to find a solution.
I have an '02 amel corn that I have raised since she popped out of the egg. She has been doing fine, eating and eliminating regularly up until about a month and a half ago. Now everytime she eats, she regurgitates two days later.
I was keeping the temp at 85. I tried raising this for a couple weeks, same results. I lowered it to 82 for a couple of weeks, same results. I tried reducing the size of her food (from fuzzy to pinky), same results. When the temp was at 82 she would move as far away from the heat as she could get. When the temp was above that, she would either bury herself or soak in her water bowl. I've checked for parasites and found nothing.
This is one of the most baffling problems I've come across in my almost 10 years of keeping and breeding herps. I would truly appreciate any advice or suggestions that anyone has. Thank you!

Do you wait for 10 days before you try to feed her again? Are you handling her AT ALL during this period? If she has regurged more than 3 times, it is definitely time to get her to a qualified, experienced herp vet. You need to have her checked for parasites and get her stomach acids back up. Some more thoughts that come to mind follow, but definitely get her to a good vet first:

Have you tried switching mouse suppliers? It could be a bad batch of feeder mice. Do you feed live or dead? Has there been any contamination with any kind of pesticide, either with the mouse breeder or at your house? What kind of substrate is your snake on and what kind of substrate are the mice on? Pine or cedar can cause this regurging.

Is she being housed with any other snakes? Have you recently acquired any new animals who might have infected her with anything? Is she possibly under any kind of stress, perhaps you have kingsnakes too close to her cage?

Are you certain on your temps? What kind of thermometer are you using and where do you measure her temps? Is it possible the temps are fluctuating during some parts of the day?

Is she eggbound or perhaps has an impaction?

Hope some of this helps and/or makes sense.

sue
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sue

I was waiting about 3 days to feed her again. I will try waiting 10, thank you. I haven't handled her much other than to move her to clean the cage and a couple of inspections when I know she doesn't have food in her stomach.
All of my other snakes have been eating feeders from the same supplier and have not had a problem. They all eat live as my roomate is very understanding of my herps, but draws the line w/ rodents in the freezer.
She was in living in the same cage as her sister up until this started happening. If it was some kind of pesticide doing this, I would think it would effect them both, which it is not. Her sister is eating regularly, keeping it down and has gainded noticeable size on her. I have since separated them into their own housing. They're both on pine shavings. I tried green moss for a while, but that didn't work any better.
I had a pair of Cal Kings that were WC earlier in the season and have since been released. They were not housed anywhere near her. I also just aquired a new L.g.splendida last week, and since this has been going on for 6 or 7 weeks, I'm very certain it's not because of her.
I'm pretty certain of the temps. Whenever I clean out a cage, I turn off the heat source, remove all items, and leave it open, allowing it to adjust to room temp. I then compare the thermometer in the cage w/ the theremometer on the wall in the room and make sure they read w/in 2 degrees of each other. The temp does fluctuate during the day, but not by more than a few degrees.
I don't think eggbound is a possibility as she is less than a year old and I haven't notice any impaction when I do handle her.
Thank you for the reply!

I know that some people swear that pine doesn't cause problems, yet some people feel it can. So it is better to be safe than sorry. I would use aspen if you don't feed in the cage or paper towels if you do feed in the cage.

If the other snake eats food from the same food source with no problem, then it might be safe to say that it SHOULDN'T be the food source (although it could be and the other snake is able to withstand any reaction).

Where do you have the thermometer when you measure the temps? And is it a good thermometer, hopefully not one of those strip thermometers that they use on the side of fishtanks. Is it directly on the substrate over the heater or do you have it mounted on the glass? You need to get an accurate temp on the actual spot where your snake spends its time, so put it directly on the bottom of the tank on the actual substrate.

Whenever you have a snake who regurges, some people say to not handle it at all until it has held down at least two feedings in a row with no regurging. I still recommend taking the snake to a qualified vet for this, especially if it has been going on for more than three regurges (some people say after two in a row).

Hope this helps. I'm rooting for that snake!
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sue

Regurging more than once should be considered a serious problem. Some snakes, such as Pituophis are known to regurg if they are given food items that are too large or too many. Corn Snakes should not have this problem.

I can think of several possibilities, most of which Munchkins has already covered, but they bear attention.

1. Pine shavings. This is bad mojo for herps. Just because the snake doesn't heal after a couple of weeks on something else doessn't mean that wasn't causing the problem. The irritation caused by pine or cedar can take months to heal.

2. Accidental ingestion of pine shavings. If you feed in the cage, this is a possibility. Snakes cannot digest pine shavings and it wil irritate their stomach and intestines and cause regurging, plus there is a possibility of it causing an impaction. If you keep your snakes on wood shavings be very careful about feeding them in the cage.

3. Parasites. Regurging would be caused by several parasites common in snakes. Entamoeba invadens, severe coccidia infection (Eimeria sp.), among others. worst case would be severe Cryptosporidium infection. Luckily, problems with Crypto are still relatively rare compared to the others, but do occur from time to time. Crypro will spread from cage to cage like wildfire and can kill every herp in your collection. This is the reason for quarantining a new animal before allowing it near your established animals.

4. Temperature. If you cage temps are too high or too low, you can get regurgitating. You should provide a thermal gradient from one end of the cage to the other,

It sounds like you have some experience with herps, so with a little detective work, you should be able to figure out what the problem is. If the snake has regurgitated for a third time, I would most definitely get it to a vet as soon as possible.

they are so very thorough and knowledgeable.
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sue

Man, you can say that again.
Munchkins, Oldherper it's good see that there are people out there like yourselves who are willing to give advice and help. Thank you both very much!

Live feeder mice CAN and DO carry parasites and can transmit them to you snakes. I haven't seen a feeder mouse yet (except pinkies) that didn't have something, usually Coccidia and Entamoeba, but they can also carry nematodes and flukes. Freezing kills them effectively as well as the eggs. There are many good reasons to use frozen/thawed mice, very few reason to use live. There are some snakes that simply refuse to take dead food, but they are the exceptions.

Also, lax cage cleaning habits can lead to problems with certain parisites. Those that have a direct life cycle (don't need an intermediate host) can reinfect if fecal matter is allowed to stay in the cage. These would normally be self limiting for the most part, but in the small environment in which captive animals live, they just keep re-infecting and accumulating.

I just came home from work and was swapping the pine shavings out for a paper towel when I saw your post =).
Since this whole thing started, I've been trying not to handle her much. I noticed something interesting, but sad when I had her out. I set her down on our pool table to see if she was alert enough to recognize new surroundings. She sat there for a moment, then began to explore. I noticed that the last 1/3 of her body flopped from side to side rather than following the smooth slithering motion of the rest of her body. When I got closer to her, I could see that she has 2 fairly pronounced kinks in her spine. The 1st one makes a mound, the other one, about 4 or 5 vertebrae down, makes a divit. This is probably putting some pretty severe stress on her poor little spinal cord and maybe the root of the problem. I will get her to a vet, but I don't think that this can be corrected.
I'm rooting for her too.
Again, thank you for your reply.

Normally spinal kinks are a developmental problem arising from too-high incubation temperatures. I have heard people mention cases of congenital spinal kinks, but I've never personally seen that. I've seen adult breeders with spinal kinks successfully produce clutch after clutch of perfectly normal babies.

Kinks can also be cause by injury, especially in neonates and juvenile snakes if they are injured while the bones are still in the process of hardening. You have to make sure that there are no opportunities in the cage for neonates to get "stuck" in any fixtures or parts of the cage and begin thrashing and injure themselves trying to escape.

I've seen a few snakes that seemed to "develop" kinks in the early growing process. I'm not sure why that happens. The people always insist that the kink wasn't there before (and I believe them), and then one day it was. Maybe this could be related to cage temperature during early neonate development? Maybe there's some pathogen or chemical agent that has an effect on early spinal development?

>>Normally spinal kinks are a developmental problem arising from too-high incubation temperatures. I have heard people mention cases of congenital spinal kinks, but I've never personally seen that.

I strongly suspect that there is often a genetic origin to this abnormality. In the several cases that I have encountered (all corns) there was known inbreeding to achieve a particular morph. The kinks became visibly (and seemingly suddenly) pronounced at around 6 months of age as the vertebrae became ossified.

T.B

That's a good possibility where there is a lot of in-breeding. I haven't seen it personally, but then I haven't been real involved in breeding for morphs.

she took down a pink last weekend and kept it down. I was happy w/ that. A friend of mine who has been involved w/ herps for much longer than I have, suggested that I douse (or possibly inject) the pinks that I give her w/ vitamin powder (reptivite, etc.). His thinking was her condition might be aided by the extra vitamins. Thoughts???