Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I just went downstairs to my reptile room to check on my female ETB... she seems to have developed some sort of bowel prolapse? 3/4"- 1" of her bowel is present outside her body!! She doesn't appear in any distress.. she's actually hanging head down in the "strike position" and nosing around to see if I'm going to feed her.... I misted her really well with warm water but beyond that is there anything I can do??? It's midnight here and my vet's office isn't going to be open until 9am.
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~Ginny

1.0 Children’s Python
1.0 Jungle Carpet Python
0.1 CBB Emerald Tree Boa
0.1 Brazilian Rainbow Boa
1.0 Colombian Boa (7.5’)
1.1 Mid-baja Rosy Boas
1.1 Bearded Dragons
1.0 Reptile Phobic Husband (go figure!)
And various other non-scaley creatures…

Make a mixture of sugar and water and let the animal soak in it....maybe 1/4" deep with sugar water. Give it an hour then gently try to push the bowel back in if it isn't in already. It is very important to keep that area moist so the membrane won't dry out. You should be able to work the membrane back inside her, use plenty of astroglide, KY Jelly, or some neosporin if you must. Make sure to feed her smaller meals for awhile and let her deficate after every meal before you attempt to feed her again. Good Luck!!!!!

All in all it's been a rotten day... I wasn't able to manually replace the bowel so I took Saphira (my ETB) out of her cage last night and put her into a large Tupperware tub with about an inch of luke warm water in the bottom and let her soak while I tried to get a hold of the vet. I took her in to see the vet first thing this morning, only to discover that the herp vet (the only one in my area!) was out of the office until Monday. Another vet there that specializes in exotics (just not so much in reptiles) agreed to see her and didn't think it would be a problem.

Saphira didn't appear to be in any distress, she was alert, active, and trying to find a way out of the tub. The vet called a couple hours later and said that she was unable to manually replace the bowel and that she felt it was necessary to anesthetize her and suture it back into place and that they wanted to keep her over night.

The vet then called me again when she was done with the procedure and said she’d had a hard time replace the bowel and that she was concerned it may prolapse again at some point tonight. She also stated she was very worried because Saphira appeared very lethargic and didn’t seem to want to move much at all……

She wasn’t acting like that when I dropped her off at all!!! I asked if it could be related to the anesthesia.. and the vet said it should have worn off by then but that she’d appeared lethargic since I brought her in…

What the heck??

I am so frustrated right now… I’m starting to think I should have taken her to see a different vet…
She also asked me all sorts of questions about my husbandry and when I told her I only fed Saphira a f/t small adult mouse every 12-16 days she told me I wasn’t feeding her enough (even though her body weight is just fine!) and that I need to be feeding her two to three mice per feeding. WHAT THE HELL??? Does that sound right to anyone else??? She had all sorts of questions about my husbandry and what may have caused the prolapse, but her answers made me wonder if she really knows as much about snakes as she seems to.......

I keep Saphira in a 5’L x 2’ D x 2’ H cage full of live plants and driftwood and manzanita branches. The humidity stays between 70-84%, she has two large water pans, and a thermal gradient from around 78 deg F to 86 deg F.. although her basking spot tends to run just a tad higher than the air temps of the rest of the cage it’s typically between 87-90 deg. I feed her one small adult f/t mouse every 12-16 days… she almost always has a bowel movement between feedings and I’ve never seen her go more than 2 feedings without having a bowel movement. And she’s never refused a meal… she’s six years old, CBB, usually pretty tame and handleable (though I try not to mess with her much) and really this is the first problem I’ve ever had with her…….

And now I’m worried that the vet who saw her doesn’t know what she’s doing.. She was acting fine when I dropped her off this morning.. I didn’t expect they’d have so much trouble with her. I’m really worried.. I love this snake and hate to think she’s not going to be ok….. I wish my regular “reptile vet” had been in….. but then again I certainly couldn’t have left her all weekend like this.

I guess I’ll have to see what happens when I pick her up tomorrow.
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~Ginny

1.0 Children’s Python
1.0 Jungle Carpet Python
0.1 CBB Emerald Tree Boa
0.1 Brazilian Rainbow Boa
1.0 Colombian Boa (7.5’)
1.1 Mid-baja Rosy Boas
1.1 Bearded Dragons
1.0 Reptile Phobic Husband (go figure!)
And various other non-scaley creatures…

Your cage conditions sound pretty good, although we don't generally provide a hot spot of much more than 86-88 unless they are gravid. However, at 6 years she should be eating small rats. Our 5-year-old CBBs have been on very small/small rats for over a year and were on rat pups long before that. They feed approximately every 14 days.

With that said though, prolapse is usually caused by having too big of a bowel movement. With her going as often as you wrote, that should not have been an issue. It's really odd she just prolapsed out of the blue like that. I've no idea what could cause a spontaneous prolapse, actually have never even heard of one (particularly in an adult animal). Hopefully the regular vet will be able to shed some light. You will have to be EXTREMELY careful about increasing meal size and making sure she has a BM after meal after this episode, as she will be much more likely to prolapse now.

Is the vet keeping her at her usual temps? Being cold can cause lethargy. I would wonder especially since the comment was made that she had been lethargic since shortly after you dropped her off.

Good luck with her and keep us posted.
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Karen Clark
Gems of the Rainforest

please dont be offended by what I said but you may have done the wrong thing by soaking her in luke warm water since plain water is hypotonic and could actually make the prolapse worse.
Matt Ghi's suggestion was the correct one...water supersaturated with lots of white sugar is hypertonic but soothing and will reduce the swelling and allow the prolapse to correct itself naturally. Nonetheless, it may have made no difference at all since the prolapse may have been severe enough that the sugar treatment would not have worked and only suturing would work....I wonder if maybe your snake ingested some plant material or substrate by accident that led to the prolapse.....Your husbandy sounds just fine although like Karen I tend to think ETBs like it a tad cooler than most people would imagine..