substrate ingestion question (lol rhymes)

Hi, so my boy has been eating for me (though he's difficult about it, but he's eating at least and seems to be settled into his new home fairly well).

Tonight he swallowed a nice piece of aspen with his meal. I'm aware that their digestive system is used to handling bones, claws, fur, etc, so I'm not too concerned. But it was a little off-putting to watch the wedge sticking out as it moved down his body (first time for me seeing this I guess).

I wasn't going to attempt to remove something that was already that far into him, but I looked into this for future reference and found differing practices, so... When is it appropriate to risk regurgitation to intervene when you notice your snake has taken some substrate with his meal, and what is the best way to do so?

In the future I will be putting paper down over the feeding area to help avoid this.

Thanks in advance for your input.

Unless the snake is ingested a ungodly amount of substrate, like enough to choke a horse I would never force the snake to regurgitate. It is extremely stressful for the snake.

So the people I hear talking about massaging the piece back up or removing it from the snake's mouth with tweezers would be ill advised to do so? I'm aware of how stressful and bad for the snake a regurgitation is, and I'm aware that any handling soon after a meal can be enough to cause a regurge, so I was unsure why people were doing such things, or when such measures would be worth the risk, if ever.

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Originally Posted by Wiggy

So the people I hear talking about massaging the piece back up or removing it from the snake's mouth with tweezers would be ill advised to do so?

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I was going to answer, but I'm just going to log off for awhile.

Wheni had my bps on cypress and aspen i would sometimes pull out bigger pieces with a tweezer. But it was just bc i felt like it, not necessary at all lol. I have them on sani chips now and sometimes quite a bit of them stick to the f/t rats. Its no biggy. I suggest not putting down paper or paper towels because if that gets stuck to the rodent and they ingest the paper it will be very bad and could cause impaction.
Ingesting paper towel= bad news
Ingesting bark= no big deal

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Originally Posted by Wiggy

So the people I hear talking about massaging the piece back up or removing it from the snake's mouth with tweezers would be ill advised to do so?

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Where do you hang out that people talk about things like this? :confused:

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Originally Posted by Slim

Where do you hang out that people talk about things like this? :confused:

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http://www.reptileforums.co.uk/forum...-woodchip.html

Not a single person in that thread pointed out that it was a bad idea, so I was a bit confused. There's other threads floating about but I'm on my phone so finding and linking them is a bit tedius.

I think I recall you mentioning that once before in another thread, Mike :)

Thanks for the clarifying this.

Removing substrate from a snakes mouth is one thing...making one regurge to get rid of a piece of aspen is a whole different story.

I didn't suggest making one regurgitate on purpose. But I would suspect handling a snake for 20 minutes after feeding like that guy did could certainly cause one to, and he was not advised against this, so I was wondering when, if ever, such a risk was acceptable to take.

I do believe I have my answer now. Sorry if this seemed like a dumb question.

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Originally Posted by Wiggy

Sorry if this seemed like a dumb question.

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Not a dumb question. Just to clarify Taking a little piece thats sticking out is fine. Forcing regurge or "massaging" not so much.