Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Do your bowels move less than three times a week? Well, if you are my friggn' Copperhead or my Pigmy, then the answer is NO. These god dang things move bowels very often.

I just changed hide box and newspaper for BOTH of my copperhead and my pigmy rattler on wednesday night. It is Friday Morning and I just had to do it for BOTH again!!! WTF???

Man, sorry for the rant. It's just that they sure do poop like small colubrids.

I didn't realize they were going to be like this. Does anyone know if when these things get bigger, they will bet less frequent bowel movements?

The two I have are juveniles and I feed them about once every 5 days. Their temp is 75-88 and their humidity is mostly 60-79%

So, what am I looking @ in terms of Stools when they are adults?

Please help. I d really like to know if I am in for 20 years of 3x/wk bowel clean ups

cheers.

Try keeping them on calcium sand, or something similar. It makes clean-up easy, kinda like cat litter, it clumps. I keep both my copperhead and pygmy on it, with a mixture of forest bark. How often are you feeding your snakes? I generally feed mine once every week or so, they usually only defecate once or twice a few days after.

Yeah, man. That is the thing: I only feed them like once every five days. But you said it: they crap once or TWICE! a few days after that. Now, why do they have to go and crapp twice off one meal is beyond me.

hehhe. I know I am whining. But wish they were like ball pythons where they crap once every two meals or so.

So, you didn't say if they slow down when they become adults. I am deducing that they don't! They crap like colubrids. (well, at least they are 1.5X cooler than colubrids!). I would say that any pit viper is at least 1.5 timex cooler than any colubrids. Just my opinion.

Nice suggestion on the calcium bedding. I will look for some @ Petco. Thx!

cheers.

If the animals are going alot or have 'odd' poo, they might have parasites. Get a fresh fecal sample and take it to the vet. That might help you out.

-michael

Not recommended for the little ones. I've seen too many case reports and x-rays of fatally impacted young animals kept on calci-sand and other substrate.

Sure, in small amounts calcium sand is supposed to be digestible. But it doesn't always go down in small amounts, especially for a proportionately smaller animal. Other substrates can also cause adhesion and impaction.

It's less of a problem with snakes than with lizards, but it's definitely an issue with snakes. Beware of sand and any substrate that is at all possible to ingest, because they may ingest it along with food or water and it will cause problems. Newspaper is definitely your friend when raising young snakes.

Adults don't seem to have nearly as many issues with substrate as long as they aren't fed wet prey right on it. I use a piece of newspaper or a tupperware container lid as a dish for thawed prey items in cages that have substrate, or hand feed on forceps with supervision to make sure there is no ingestion of foreign matter.

I don't know why eating substrate causes snakes to impact. Obviously they don't eat from plates in the wild. But I know that impaction of foreign matter is a very serious issue in snakes (seen too much veterinary evidence), so mine are pretty carefully monitored to make sure that they never get the opportunity to ingest any potentially indigestible stuff.

Hello,
Your post reminded me of my curiousity concerning the use of newspaper as a substrate. I heard from a professor that the ink in newsprint had ingredients that demonstrated mild antibacterial properties, and that someone had even published an abbreiviated study on this topic.
Have you READ anything or have you had any person experience with this?
creep

Nope, haven't read any formal studies on newspaper.

All I can state factually is that I've never heard of newspaper substrate causing any kind of injury or illness in a snake. I have seen a very large number x-rays, veterinary case histories and anecdotal accounts of serious substrate impaction in snakes. Serious adhesions and impactions can be fatal (and often are) if not surgically removed. That's enough to pretty much scare me off of using the stuff.

I stick to plain newspaper for the most part. Some snakes are happier on substrate for various reasons, so I monitor their feeding and water dishes a lot more carefully to avoid possible ingestion. One of my kings with a perpetual eyecap shedding problem has a 50-50 setup where part of the cage is mulched to add humidity, but the front half is bare newspaper. He also eats off of a "plate" or directly from tongs to avoid any loose pieces of substrate sticking to his food.