Reptile & Amphibian Forums

well, my baby Eastern that i hatched last August died the other day. i was giving him scented pinkies. initially i think he wasn't getting adequate warmth because he regurged a couple times. so i warmed him up and tried again and he still regurged. then i concluded i was probably feeding him too much at one time. i guess it's easy to overfeed a small Hognose because they are a little 'plumper' than most other snakes when they're small. last week, i gave him just one pinky confident that things were going to go well. i checked on him a day or so later to make sure he hadn't spit up and he was fine. but yesterday, when i went to check on him, he wouldn't respond. i'd lost him. the question i'm asking myself now is should i have tried to put him down for the winter or is it just possible that some Easterns can't adjust well to pinkies? if anybody has had a similar experience, i would appreciate hearing about it. i do have a picture of the little guy and will post it as soon as i can. i'm really bummed about this...what a lousy way to start off the New Year.

greg

I think that you are making an unjustified correlation between the food you are giving this snake and the decline of its health. Of all the ridiculous things that rodents have been blamed for causing problems in Easterns, one thing that has never been mentioned is regurgitation. Instead there are many other likely causes in this case. One certainly could be heat. Perhaps chronic exposure to sub optimal temperatures resulted in the demise of the snake, and perhaps the damage was done by the time you attempted to try a different temperature.

Another possibility is parasites. Parasites can be introduced through ANY form of foods, and I would suppose that the chance of a heavy parasite load would occur in a collection with other wild caught reptiles that have never been tested/treated for parasites. The one that you gave us has been doing fine, but we also immediately put it on a prophylactic treatment of fenbendazole and metronidazole the week that we got it. I will do a follow-up fecal float in another few months. Hognoses apparently can carry a heavy parasite load, and I honestly think this is the cause of death for a lot of captive Easterns.

Another thing to consider is that not every animal is meant to survive, and congenital defects certainly can take a few months to manifest.

Since most hognoses probably get overfed, I would suggest to you that you evaluate the prey size you are giving the hognose like you had mentioned doing. I have been unable to find any information on rodents being detrimental to Eastern hognoses, and certainly the prey item or prey size wouldn't have been a direct cause of death in this case. We could speculate all day, but in the future I would suggest getting a gross necropsy performed, as that is the only way to conclusively evaluate your husbandry. A heavy parasite load and a systemic infection would be evident even in a small snake.
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"I know the human being and fish can coexist peacefully."
Governor George W. Bush, Jr.

"Sometimes I think the surest sign that intelligent life exists elsewhere in the universe is that none of it has tried to contact us."
Calvin and Hobbes (Scientific Progress Goes 'Boink', 1991)

thanks, Kory!!

>>I think that you are making an unjustified correlation between the food you are giving this snake and the decline of its health. Of all the ridiculous things that rodents have been blamed for causing problems in Easterns, one thing that has never been mentioned is regurgitation. Instead there are many other likely causes in this case. One certainly could be heat. Perhaps chronic exposure to sub optimal temperatures resulted in the demise of the snake, and perhaps the damage was done by the time you attempted to try a different temperature.
>>

Another item to consider is every time an animal regurges, it causes some minor damage in the throat, etc. due to the stomach acids. Baby snakes that have a hard time keeping food down often die because of the progressive damage caused by each subsequent regurge of a meal.
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PHWyvern

that happened to mine 2. he was supposed to be eating pinkies but he didnt. he was doing great on frogs then throw up 1 day. next week he died. im sticking with westerns for awhile now.

The pink could have very well been the reason for regurgitation. If you look at platyrhinos natural history, they aren't adapted to consume young rodents. Despite that, it really could have been a number of problems. Regurgitation is always a problem with snakes. Given that it was a hatchling, and a double regurge, I'm inclined to believe that regurgitation is probably what killed it. You should concern yourself with why it regurgitated in the first place. If you were working with an entire clutch, and half of them regurged pinks, and the other half did fine with small anurans, then you could be relatively satisfied with the cause, but there are too many variables in your situation. Shane