Regurgitated 1 of 2

[Clutch22]

I've got a 3 year old ball python, about 1500 grams. I fed her 1 small rat and 1 medium rat on 9/17/17. Everything was fine. 10 days later (9/27/17), I fed her 2 small rats. She took them both and seemed ok. I feed fresh pre-killed, so there's no thawing or temperature issue to deal with. Three days later (9/30/17) she regurgitated one rat. I presume she would have fully digested the two from the 9/17 feeding (and there was a defecation afterwards), so it was likely from the 9/27 feeding. I cleaned her bin out, dumped and refilled her water. The next day, she had defecated. There was a lot of liquid (evidenced by wet aspen), and some brown excrement that was not 'runny', but also not hard and 'turd-like'. She's been pretty still, and coiled. She's alert, but not moving around much at all, except for a few minutes after I moved her to clean her bin, and look her over. Before settling back in, she drank a lot, but by and large, she's just coiled in the back of her bin, I assume to soak up heat to help her digest whatever is left over in her belly.

She's in a rack with 6 other snakes, who are all healthy and eating. The room is temp controlled at 79, and heat tape on the back of the bins provides a hot spot of 88 - 90. Humidity is about 60% inside the bins.

She's not breathing heavily, and her eyes and mouth look clean and clear. No open mouth breathing. Her scales and vent look clean and good.

My assumption is that she just ate more than she could really handle. She's never been breed, but she's about that size, it's about that time of year, and there's males in the room. It's understandable that she'd be trying to pack on the weight to try to prepare herself to breed, and wanted to eat as much as possible. So I think what happened was that a few days in, she realized she wasn't digesting her meal as well as she wanted to, and she got rid of half of it.

I can't explain why else she would regurge 1 rat, but not both. It looked less digested than I would expect after 2.5-3 days, so I think she decided that two was too many, and she should focus on just digesting one of them. My plan is to keep an eye on her and make sure she's staying healthy looking, and to offer her a small meal (perhaps a very small rat) in 2 weeks.

Apart from being pretty inactive, and staying tightly coiled over her hot spot, nothing else appears to be wrong with her. Does anyone have any ideas on this? Has anyone seen or heard of a snake regurgitating only 1 of a multi-rodent feeding? Does anyone agree or disagree with my assessment? Am I missing anything?

[Sunnieskys]

As deb always says. Do not feed for two weeks and feed one only. And I think one size smaller to get them back on track.

[cchardwick]

Are your rats doing OK? Have you had any deaths in the colony or sickly looking rats? If you are getting your rats from another source besides breeding them I'd look into it, maybe find another source. I had a sickness run through my rat colony when I first started, I was throwing out dead rats every day. I finally figured out it was the pine bedding that was toxic and was giving them respiratory infections. I tried multiple antibiotics in the water and nothing helped, finally switched over to shredded paper and the problem went away.

[Godzilla78]

WHY are you feeding one small rat and one medium rat at the sane time??? That is too much food, much more than they need. 1500 grams is not that big to warrant such amounts. 1 small rat is plenty.

[Clutch22]

That batch came from a large non-chain pet store. They were out of both large and medium rats, so I ended up buying 1 XL rat, 5 small rats, and 6 mice. All the rodents looked healthy, and they were all eaten.

Also, the morph of the snake is unimportant to the thread, so I left it out, but she's a butter, and definitely X-gen captive bred. I know that doesn't rule out internal parasites completely, but it's far less likely in her than in a WC.

[Joci]

Here is a feeding chart that a lot of the people on this forum follow. As you can see, your snake really (at most) only needs one medium rat. I think overfeeding could be the cause of your bps regurg.

[Clutch22]

Thank you for the input to both Godzilla and Joci. I'll keep an eye on the amounts I'm offering.

[Stewart_Reptiles]

Regurgitation if regurgitation (you should know by the smell and state in which you found the rodent) needs to be addressed as followed.

No feeding for a period of 2 weeks, it is very important feeding too soon after a regurgitation could lead to another one and you want to prevent that at all cost. When feeding feed a single smaller prey.

Now if the animal does regurgitate again in 2 weeks you will need to assess a few things.

Stress - Temps - Prey quality - and have a feval done by a vet because your animal is captive bred does not rule out internal parasites at all
or being less likely that's a huge misconception. You feed fresh kill and the prey you are feeding could be loaded with parasites and that is not uncommon at all.

I would not worry about rats raised on pine as suggested in the thread I have been breeding rats and mice on pie for a decade and this does not cause respiratory issue and or premature death in feeders, countless of breeders also breed their feeder on pine.

[Clutch22]

The snake was pretty listless for about 4 days, staying tightly coiled on top of her hot spot. She kept her head in the center of her coils in a "I don't feel good" sort of way. Then over the next 4 or 5 days, she started to have a little better posture; still coiled over her heat, but looser, and with her head up, and more alert. 14 days after the regurgutation, I offered a very small rat (10/13/2017). She took it right away, and seems to be doing just fine. This evening (10/19/2017) she was cruising her bin, perhaps looking for food. I'm going to wait another few days before offering her anything else, but so far, after 19 days, she seems fully recovered.

[bcr229]

Give two full weeks to let your snake digest that last rat, and then offer another small on the small-ish side. It takes a lot to get a snake past a regurge.

Even my largest females only get one medium every two weeks, breeding or not. Feeding more or more often doesn't really do anything for them.