Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I have had my ball pythons for a long time and they've always been healthy and eating like horses.I've had my younger male for almost two years and my little female for a little over a year.(The one that's still alive we've had for about 6mo). They are each housed in a 40 br tank with a zoo med combo hood with 100 watt bulbs in them. Yesterday my female died suddenly w/ no sign of illness at all and she just pounded down 4 mice last week. Then, today I found my younger male dying. We've had him scince he was a baby and he just ate a med rat last week. The only sign of a possible cause of death with him was he had some bloodish fluid coming out of his cloaca if you squeezed gently. We are completly devistated and heartbroken. These were our babies. If anyone has any ideas what is going on PLEASE let us know. Our big male(to be checked out) is going to the vet tomorrow as well as our young male(the one that died for a necropsy). We are really heartbroken please give us some kind of an idea what's happened. BTW we are breaking down cages and bleaching as we speak.

Where are you getting your feeder rodents and are you getting them live or frozen? If you have any rodents from the same batch you may want to have those tested as well!
Sorry to hear about your losses.

I got my feeder rodents from a store that specializes in reptiles and this time I had to get live(I usually feed FT) due to the fact that they were out of the frozen. I feed them last about 1 week ago.Thier cage temps are as follows and have been kept at the same temps scince we got them(80-83 with a cooler spot of about 76-78, and a smaller basking spot of approx 95). They are kept on aspen shavings and are removed from habitats for feedings(we put them in feeding boxes). Their water source comes from a rev. osmosis water store. I also do routine dewormings at least twice per year. I just don't know what could have happened. They just ate last week and ate their normal prey size(the female ate 4 lg mice and the male ate a small medium size rat). We had the male out the day before yesterday and he seemed perfectly fine.

Well I'm not very fond of buying Frozen Rodents because I know much of it is LaB Surplus and have personally lost perfectly healthy reptiles. A friend of mine also lost almost his entire collection and thought he had a virus in his collection. I mentioned getting his rodents tested and the rodents. I foget what come up but the rodents were the cause of death to his collection! I breed my own feeders and know exactly what my herps are eating. Just something to consider.

Best wishes

I actually had the same thing happen to me about 5 years ago. What happened in my scenario was I had the 3 ball pythons in a very large enclosure together. They were all very good feeders 2 very long term captive females (15 years) and one CBmale. One day I went in and one female was dead and within a week the other female was dead. The male on the other hand I still have and is doing very well. There were no signs of respiratory illness or other illness. One of the pythons laid eggs a month prior to her demise but the other female showed no signs of being gravid so I threw that possibility away. It was a complete mystery to me.
Anyways with your snakes do you see any symptoms (saliva/mucous from the mouth) of illness. I am suspicious of the possibility of a bad rodent. If it is a bad rodent a possible scenario is that maybe the rodent/rodents got loose from their cage at the pet store and ate some rat poison and then was recaptured and simply thrown back into the cage. This seems like an unlikely scenario due to the fact that it was a live mouse you purchased although sometimes they can take several days before dying as a result of rodenticide. I would suggest you take the live snake to the vet and have them run a CBC and maybe a chemical profile on your snake just to be sure. If it is rodenticide the platelets will be low and it is likely you will have to treat him with vitamin K. Even if you dont think it is rodentide poisoning the CBC may still show other things such as signs of infection (elevated white blood cells). Hopefully the blood tests will come out normal. Also make sure your veterinarian has references for normal values for ball pythons or at least for snakes as they will be very different than for dogs and cats obviously and you dont want a misdiagnosis. Good Luck hope your male does well.

A friend of mine lost his entire hognose group(4.4) from a bad batch of mice. I once had a baby RTB eat one day and die the next day which I can only attibute to a bad mouse. I would have to say most of these sudden deaths, especially those right after a feeding, can be related to the prey items. The fact that you fed the one 4 mice as well may be an issue. I have had several breeders tell me to feed no more than 2 food items at one time.