very worrying behaviour

Sorry my mistake, that was the cool side, her warm side was 30/31 celsius.
One thing i have thought of is that she will only take her food if it it quite warm, do you think that if one was maybe too warm it may have burnt her insides and caused that reaction?

Well first of all I would like to preface this with .....I have not been doing this long. With that being said....what worries me is that it could have been a piece of aspen or FT mouse/rat claw and it scraped or cut her on the inside. And could potentially cause bleeding or an infection. That is what instantly came to mind when I read this. Again....I am a bit of a worry wart though.

I am sure that Dr. Del or some of the other members could chime in on this with much more of an educated opinion.

Hi,

You really want the warm end hide to be about 33c if you can. How are you heating the enclosure? And what control method do you use for the heaters?

How and where are you measuring the temps by the way just in case I'm making silly asumptions again.

But if those temps are accurate then you can hopefully rule out overheating of the enclosure.

As to the heating of the mouse, how are you doing it? I tend to defrost on a heatmat and then blast the head with a hairdrier. This means the core temp is never hot enough to burn and you still get the strike aimed at the head ( saves fingers :D ).

And, just to rule out the scary elephant in the room, how long have you had the snake and have you added any new snakes recently (especially boas ). If you have added any new stock what quarantine regime did you use?


dr del

Her viv is heated with a ceramic heat bulb with digital thermometers, one near to the ground on her cool side and one near to the ground by her hide on the warm side.
Heating her food i hold it under the ceramic bulb! Is that the wrong thing to do? Do you think maybe it heated up the inside of the rat too much?
No new snakes have been added recently.
I really appreciate your advice.

Hi,

No I don't think that should overheat the rat unless you really overdo it - I was more worried you were dunking it in boiling water or something just before offering. :)

I would try and put the probe form one of the digital thermometers inside her hides to get an idea of the temps she is actually experiencing most of the time - but the fact you are using the ceramic means the inside of the hides will be cooler rather than warmer as they could have been with an under tank heater.

No new animals does hopefully rule out the scarier diseases so that's definately good news. :gj:

I think thats all of the easily diagnosed or worrying causes of twitching and thrashing ruled out - which just leaves the "keep an eye on it and go to a vet if it happens again" option. :)


dr del

Thanks very much for all the help and advice.
She does seem back to normal now, hopefully it was just a one off but i'll be keeping a close eye on her.