Today was feeding day and everything went wrong. I'll admit I left my rats out to thaw a bit too long. Today was the first time feeding my White Lipped Python an appropriate sized rat (medium) and because of this I left them out longer to thaw. My other three snakes take 2x weaned rats and 1x rat pup so this is the first time thawing such a large rat. I set them out to thaw at 11AM and fed at 7PM. As I normally do, I left and let them feed, when I returned to check on them I was surprised by my BP's rat having expelled it's guts out. It was disgusting, yes, but it caused a bigger issue. Im assuming the blood and fluids from the rat caused an unusual amount of substrate (Aspen chips) to be stuck in his mouth once he had swallowed the rat. He was visibly struggling to rid his mouth of the substrate. I tried to remove as much as I could with some forceps but did not want to stress him and cause him to regurge. I then check on my boa and find after he has swallowed his rat that he is having the same issue. His mouth was full of substrate. I tried to remove some as I did with the BP but the boa was really trying to get away from the forceps, and again did not want to stress him after eating. I really hope the substrate doesn't do them harm. Has anyone else had these issue with substrate? I'm thinking I now want to switch to something like reptichip as I can't imagine it clumping up and giving me the same issue the aspen chip did. Does anyone use reptichip? I really liked how the aspen chips helped absorb the smell from my snakes enclosures. To top it all off my JCP refused completely to eat. I offered 4 times and all 4 time she struck and coiled up the rat but never ate it, she's never done that before. My worst day dealing with my snakes so far.
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