Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I got this trio of kings about a month and a half ago as rescues.. Each were extremely skinny, dehydrated, and generally not-well taken care of.

I lost one of the kings a few weeks after geting her for an unknown reason. One of the kings, the albino, continued to throw up her meals a few days after eating. Internal parasites. I didn't have the means/money to treat her so I sent her to someone who did and was willing to give her a permenant home.

Her new owner has been treating her for internal parasites and been giving her as much food as she could possibly want in order to get her back to the weight she needs to be at. (skinny enough to feel her ribs when I got her )

But the past week she's been throwing up this white-milky-runny substance. The owner didn't know she was throwing it up until she saw it happen.

Here is what her owner wrote: "I need to talk to you ASAP about Contri. She has been pukeing up this weird clear/white stuff for about a week now. I did not know that she was actually pukeing it up untill i saw her do it tonight. I thought that it was just weird poo from having the de-wormer.

I am really scared about her, i really love her and i will do anything to make her better. We had an E.colie infection recently in our water. I gave them bottled water as soon as i found out, but could that be it? Or is this something else? I have never heard of anything like this before."

I trust the new owner with her, like proper caging/feeding/handlnig and such as she has other snakes/lizards as well.

We're worried abou the king, anyhelp at all is greatly appreciated! The other king that came in the trio is thus far the only one who is doing perfectly, eating two fuzzy mice a week with no throwing up of anything.

Thanks!!

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Randilyn -;,-
Desolate Gray: Reptiles

Generally, when I am treating snakes for parasites (using PO meds) I take them off feed during the treatments. For instance, if I'm treating once a day for 5 days, I don't feed them at all until 3 days after the treatments are done. If I'm treating once every 2 weeks, I wait until 3 days after each treatment to feed, then I don't feed again until 3 days after the next treatment. This is to allow for proper absorption of the medications. Sometimes feeding during treatments can interfere with absorption.

If an already sick snake is fed too much, this can result in regurgitation.

If this king snake is still receiving treatments, I would suspect the milky fluid is the medications being regurgitated along with stomach fluids.

I would recommend suspending feedings as outlined above and raising the cage temperature a few degrees (do not exceed about 93 degrees F on the warm end of the cage or 85 degrees on the cool end). This will aid in absorbtion of the meds and will also stimulate the snake's immune system.

You didn't mention what the parasites were or what med was being used or dosage. That info would also be helpful.

I would strongly recommend checking the one that is doing well for parasites also, especially if they were ever housed together. Certain "bugs", such as Coccidia, Pinworms, Hookworms, and Entamoeba can easily be passed from one snake to another. It may take a while for the newly infected snake to start exhibiting symptoms. These parasites are much easier to eliminate if treatment is started before the load becomes overwhelming to the snake.

One other thing that will be of critical importance is cage cleaning/disinfecting. Use newspaper for a substrate during the treatment, remove all furnishings for the cage except a water bowl and hide boxes, and do not allow any fecal material or regurgitated stomach contents to remain in the cage at all. As soon as the snake defecates or regurges, the cage needs to be cleaned along with the hiding boxes and water bowls using a solution of 10% Chlorine bleach and water. Then allow the cage to dry thoroughly, rinse water bowls thoroughly and let them dry before returning the snake to it's cage. This is because many parasites have a direct life cycle (they don't need an intermediate host), therefore the larvae present in the fecal matter can easily re-infect the snake.

From readimng this post amnd some others you seem to have a fairly extensive knowledge of reptile medicine. I was wondering if you simply learned from experience, some sort of formal training, or if their are any books you could reccomend. Thanks.
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International Snakes Meetup

Well, you see...in the old days (back when we had stone hooks and tongs), there wasn't much choice. There were very few veterinarians that would (or could) work on reptiles. If you had a Boa with a prolapsed cloaca, you were pretty much on your own unless you were one of the lucky ones that lived within driving distance of a herp vet. If you had something infested with parasities, you had to figure it out for yourself...you could get the meds from a vet and whatever else you needed, but they just didn't want to work on them. I have some background in Biology, so that helped some. I had some friends that had been in herpetology for years before me that had some experience with doing their own reptilian medicine and they taught me a lot of stuff, and I bought some books on reptilian medicine. Still have them. There weren't many available then, but there were some. In 1965 Reichenbach-Klinke published a 3-volume set called "The Principle Diseases of Lower Vertibrates". It was a veery technical manual, but very thorough and complete covering diseases bacterial in nature, diseases caused by internal and external parasites and secondary infections. That was my Bible. Then in 1973 J.S. Dobbs (Director, Atlanta Zoo) published a small booklet called "Reptilian Diseases Recognition and Treatment". It was relatively basic, but covered some of the gaps in new treatments between 1965 and 1973. Those were my two mainstays for a lot of years. Now Roger Klingenberg has a good, basic reference out for reptilian parasites as well as a parasite identification chart and formulary. It's not really what I would call all-inclusive, but it does help in identifying the more common parasites you are likely to see in collections, and has some pretty good dosing guidelines for treating them. It sort of fills the gap between Dobbs' book and now as far as current meds.

It's just like anything else, after some experience and seeing a few things, it all makes sense and gets easier...some of the mystery goes away. Most of it is just good common sense and good husbandry.