Young Boa - Runny Poop

[Aedryan Methyus]

Priscilla - My soon to be 1 year old (on March 27th) female Ghost Het Moonglow girl seems to mostly have had runny poops ever since i've had her and she doesn't poop very often (maybe once a month) and i'm a little concerned. I have researched it quite a bit and the popular consensus seems to be that it shouldn't be anything to worry about since she is still eating fuzzy rats. It is my understanding that since the fuzzy rats don't have hair on them there wouldn't be much "roughage" to make their poop very solid. Do you guys know how true that is? She has been eating 1 fuzzy rat every 7 days, but I will be bumping her up to rat pups as soon as the fuzzy rats I have are gone. She just defecated two days ago on 2/19 and it was runny, but I think she probably pee'd at the same time, because there were solid white urates sitting in the puddle. So, it is possible that maybe she just keeps getting pee mixed in with her poop and making it appear to be runny, I guess. It is also my understanding that young snakes tend to have watery poops and not defecate often, because their bodies are using up a lot of the fats and nutrients in the food. So, therefor the don't have much waste?

What do you guys think?

[KevinK]

Priscilla - My soon to be 1 year old (on March 27th) female Ghost Het Moonglow girl seems to mostly have had runny poops ever since i've had her and she doesn't poop very often (maybe once a month) and i'm a little concerned. I have researched it quite a bit and the popular consensus seems to be that it shouldn't be anything to worry about since she is still eating fuzzy rats. It is my understanding that since the fuzzy rats don't have hair on them there wouldn't be much "roughage" to make their poop very solid. Do you guys know how true that is? She has been eating 1 fuzzy rat every 7 days, but I will be bumping her up to rat pups as soon as the fuzzy rats I have are gone. She just defecated two days ago on 2/19 and it was runny, but I think she probably pee'd at the same time, because there were solid white urates sitting in the puddle. So, it is possible that maybe she just keeps getting pee mixed in with her poop and making it appear to be runny, I guess. It is also my understanding that young snakes tend to have watery poops and not defecate often, because their bodies are using up a lot of the fats and nutrients in the food. So, therefor the don't have much waste?

What do you guys think?

There is high fat content in pinky/fuzzy rats so this doesnt seem out of the ordinary to me at all, but I guess it depends on how runny you're talking about..... wet looking, almost a melting consistency would be normal....complete liquid would be out of the ordinary as far as Im concerned.

You are correct in your assumptions that there isn"t much roughage there and therefore when you feed very young rats you can run into this....my carpet python breeder who works for the San Bernadino Zoo specifically kept his animals on mice longer so their digestive systems would strengthen from the "roughage"....although rats will cause more growth overall. What you can do is feed an equally sized (weanling) mouse and see what the next poop looks like, see if it improves.

[Sauzo]

When i fed my boas anything like a fuzzy anything, they would sometimes get grey runny poop. That is why i always say stick to mice until they are big enough for weaned/small rats.