Malnourished ball: Frost

A friend of mine recently received a ball python from a friend of his that seems to be badly malnourished. the back story of the snake that was given to me is that she is estimated to be around 5 years old. she was kept in a rather small enclosure, not sure of type, and was only being fed two small mice at a time once a month. our friend brought her with him when he moved in with us. we have 3 healthy normal balls ranging from 3 to 7 months old and i could tell just by looking at her that she was not healthy. we have had her here for 4 weeks and she has eaten one small rat, just out of hopper stage, the first week. two weeks later she ate another, slightly larger but not too large for her to eat. 3 days after eating the rat she bloated up really big around where the rat was being digested and regurgitated the rat. we decided to move down to a hopper for her next feeding, but refused to eat it. she is used to eating mice, and she eats live, not f/t. maybe she is refusing to eat the rats because she's used to mice? she has deficated and it is being saved to be tested for parasites. (one of the 3 regulars we have was housed with her and he seems to be doing fine with eating and behavior.) she doesn't move around much when brought out of the cage. she just sits there, not much tongue flicking either. temps and humidity are fine. i'm pretty sure i've covered everything. here are some pics of her.

http://ball-pythons.net/gallery/file...n_2012_052.jpg
http://ball-pythons.net/gallery/file...n_2012_053.jpg
http://ball-pythons.net/gallery/file...n_2012_054.jpg
http://ball-pythons.net/gallery/file...n_2012_055.jpg
http://ball-pythons.net/gallery/file...n_2012_056.jpg


i know this snake should probably see a vet, but i was wondering, if just malnourished, how we can coax her to eat. if she is used to only eating mice, should we only feed once a week and then see if she'll move on to rats? i am very unexperienced with sick snakes, as the three we have are very healthy.

I dont know what to tell you but that is the skinniest snake ive ever seen :( Good luck with her and im glad she is now in good hands.

You don't want to move her up in size of prey too quickly. Her body / organs might be damaged from the malnourishment. Keep it small, and once a week should be ok as long as she keeps it down. She is VERY thin, scary thin. I'm not sure what a vet could do for you honestly, in comparison to added stress from the visit. Try not to handle her except for necessary handling. Cleaning the cage, weighing etc. I would probably suggest keeping a close eye on her weight, maybe once a week or once every two weeks. I don't have any first hand experience with nursing snakes back from malnourishment, but those are the tips I've seen thus far. Hopefully someone with more hands-on knowledge will chime in.

Mice should be fine if she will readily accept them.

That poor baby :(

thank you for the advice. i will switch her back to mice and try to feed her again on thursday. think we'll save the vet trip for when she starts to perk up. we currently do not have a scale, do you have any recomendations on a good scale? would a kitchen food scale work fine?

Yeah a digital gram scale from walmart or the like.
Good luck with her, poor thing :(

OMG that is the worst case f malnutrition i have ever seen.

Poor thing :( Are you quarantining her away from your three established ball pythons or are you keeping them all together?

A Kitchen scale that does grams is perfect. I got mine at wal-mart for around $20. Also, a "Tare" feature is a great feature. Turn on scale, put bowl on scale, hit "tare" (It zero's it out) and then put snake in bowl. You'll get the actual weight of the snake without having to weigh the bowl, then the snake, and subtract the difference etc. (I'm lazy) hehe. Good luck! Keep us posted!

She is in her own enclosure. We are sure to wash our hands very well after handling her. The one that was being housed with her was separated from her and kept alone until a couple of days ago and i moved him in with my female (i was told males get territorial with each other?) when i was sure that he was happy and healthy.

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i'm totally for going with the easy road, lol. i'll have to check out the kitchen scales tonight when i head to walmart. i'll definitely keep updating. i wouldn't post a dire situation and just leave you all hanging.

Quarantine should be practiced for a minimum of 90 days when bringing new snakes in, especially if there are any signs of health problems. You really shouldn't be housing any snakes together unless you're intentionally trying to breed. I would strongly suggest getting separate enclosures for each snake and keep the new one as far away from your established collection as possible, although since you said you already housed them together your quarantine is shot anyway. I'd separate them all at this point and consider this day 1 of quarantine on ALL of your snakes, not just the new ones. No telling what you could have introduced to your collection by putting them together...

i will separate them tonight. i have to bring the other cage in from the shed and let it warm up.

Very small meals, very little handling, good heat and humidity and hiding spots. With care she will probably do okay. But be aware that with no food probably came little fresh water too, and extended dehydration and starvation can often damage organs past recovery. So you could do everything right and then she may die anyway, due to organ damage.

Definitely keep them all separately. A sick snake can look fine until it gets very very ill, so you've put your pets at risk bringing in new animals.

Good luck with them.

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Very small meals, very little handling, good heat and humidity and hiding spots. With care she will probably do okay. But be aware that with no food probably came little fresh water too, and extended dehydration and starvation can often damage organs past recovery. So you could do everything right and then she may die anyway, due to organ damage.

Definitely keep them all separately. A sick snake can look fine until it gets very very ill, so you've put your pets at risk bringing in new animals.

Good luck with them.

Yes, keep her meals small for now, and don't offer more than every 7 days. If she regurged, it can take a few weeks to a month for her system to recover. Make sure she has plenty of clean water and keep her enclosure stable with heat and humidity. Keep her quiet, and a little extra darkness isn't a bad idea either. I've dealt with one that was a skinny as her, it took a long time for him to come around, but he was young and eventually he did great and when he went to a new home, you would never have believed he was the same snake.

Your girl is older, and depending on how long the neglect went on, she could easily have permanent damage. The only way you will know is by taking things slow and watching her carefully.

If you are like me, the hardest part will be keeping the food small and the feedings steady. It hurt my heart to look at the boy I had, and my mother instinct wanted to bury him in food. I knew such a course of action would have been disastrous, so I kept things slow and small for his sake. And even though it seemed to take forever, once he started growing again, he really blossomed.

Offering her mice right now is fine. Keep them on the small side, even if you think she could handle bigger ones. She is very weak and has little to no muscle tone, so a frisky adult mouse might be too much for her. Even if you have to go with young adults, just out of the crazy hopper phase, as long as she eats consistently, they'll help her get back on track.

I wish you all the best with her. She didn't deserve to be neglected so badly, and I hope with all my heart she'll do well now that you are giving her a fighting chance.

Gale

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Originally Posted by wolfy-hound

Very small meals, very little handling, good heat and humidity and hiding spots. With care she will probably do okay. But be aware that with no food probably came little fresh water too, and extended dehydration and starvation can often damage organs past recovery. So you could do everything right and then she may die anyway, due to organ damage.

Definitely keep them all separately. A sick snake can look fine until it gets very very ill, so you've put your pets at risk bringing in new animals.

Good luck with them.

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Very small meals, very little handling, good heat and humidity and hiding spots. With care she will probably do okay. But be aware that with no food probably came little fresh water too, and extended dehydration and starvation can often damage organs past recovery. So you could do everything right and then she may die anyway, due to organ damage.

Definitely keep them all separately. A sick snake can look fine until it gets very very ill, so you've put your pets at risk bringing in new animals.

Good luck with them.

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Ah, yes... I guess I forgot to address the feeding question in my last post. I agree with the small meals to start. I would even go so far as to go with a single large mouse per feeding, once every 7 to 10 days to start. Once she starts eating consistently, then work on bumping up the prey size a bit. The key is to ease into getting her up to weight as you don't want to shock the system by trying to overcompensate for the past...

I think you'll have a pretty good chance of getting her back up to health. I took in a bunch of rescues about a year ago who had been fed once every few months if that (I'm talking 3 year old plus snakes that came to me at 200 grams) and I've managed to get them all back in shape...

Good luck and great job on the rescue!

with some rearranging of hides and a quiet few days without being handled or us trying to feed her, frost ate a rat pup! she was very eager to eat and was up and moving around after her meal. so far she has kept it down, and we're hoping this is a sign that she will pull through this.

we talked to a breeder experienced with malnourished regurging snakes in our lacale and he gave us some pro biotic to help build up bacteria in her digestive tract to keep her from regurging. hopefully it works and she'll keep her meals down.

Frost is eating regularly without any fuss. She is starting to fill out nicely, in my opinion. I will have to take some recent pictures of her and post them on here. Thank you all for the advice! All of it combined helped a lot!

Awesome to hear! I hope she continues to recover wonderfully for you!