BRB bleeding after eating

[Eclectix]

I'm posting this question where I think it might be seen and answered since it seems like it could just as easily apply to nearly any snake species.

I knew that he had issues when I got him; to be fair I paid next to nothing for him and hoped that I would be able to turn his life around- and to a large extent I have. When I first got him he was very underweight, very aggressive, very shy and would not eat. When I finally got him to eat for the first time he ate a large rat (this is what I was told he had been eating), frozen/thawed. I saw a bit of blood on his mouth after eating, but it was a small amount so I didn't think too much about it (figured it could have been from the rat).

After that meal he refused to eat for over six weeks, and since he was already underweight to begin with I got a bit concerned. So, I offered him a large mouse, fresh killed. He snapped it up, so I gave him another and he snapped it up too. Suddenly something clicked in my brain as I remembered the blood on his mouth from before, and figuring that he might just not be able to handle such large food items, I offered him a small f/t rat and he gobbled that up, too. He's never refused a small rat since. He was eating 1 small rat each day, which was getting to be costly, so I tried giving him a medium sized rat, and he ate it but immediately after eating it there was quite a bit of blood coming from his mouth. This was a few months after the first incident of bleeding.

I now have him back on small rats again, and have noticed no further bleeding since (though he eats them so fast I don't know that I would be able to tell). A snake his size should have no problem eating medium to large rats (he's about 5 foot 6 inches long), so I'm wondering if he has some kind of scar tissue in his mouth that is tearing when he tries to stretch his jaws to eat regular sized food. It gets expensive feeding him so many small rats but if that's what I need to do, I'm prepared to do it.

Has anyone experienced this before, and if so, did it eventually improve? I don't know a lot about his history except that he is about 5 years old and was kept for breeding and not handled much except with a hook or by being grasped firmly behind his head (this was how he was handed off to me).

The good news is that despite all of this, he's slowly putting on weight and getting easier to handle. He recently shed for me (a nice complete shed) and I got a few lovely photographs of him with his shiny new skin:


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[mattb]

I have no answer to your question. I just had to say that is one beautiful snake.

[carlson]

Wow that snake looks awesome such great colors

[Mrl249]

Amazing boa! I had lost interest in BRB's for awhile, but I think you just re-sparked it! .. Sorry I couldn't be more help :/

[3skulls]

Great job catching his colors in those photos.

I don't know if anyone would be much help over the Internet. I have never heard of this.
Was the blood in the same spot? Does it pool or drip, coming from the top, anything around the nose?

I would take a look in his mouth or better yet, have a vet give him a good check up.

Good luck with him. Let us know what you find out.

[RoseRed]

Sadly I have no advice but I am glad he is eating. Maybe his last owner gave him too large of prey items and that somehow screwed up his jaws? (I know they can dislocate them to fit in bigger prey items but there has to be a point where the prey item is too big). That would be my guess, but it's a shot in the dark.