First.. Thanks WhompingWillow for pointing out that thread! I saw it before, but must have completely forgotten about it. I was referring to their main thread, but didn't remember the spin-off one there.

Quote Originally Posted by Bogertophis View Post
That's a challenge to supplement live feeders: you might do better if you can "gut-load" the feeders themselves- restrict food to something saturated with liquid vitamins,
& then feed soon after. Two problems with dusting powdered vits onto a live rodent: the odor of the vitamins can cause a refusal, & then even if wet* the powder mostly
falls off as the snake grabs & swallows them. *I've tried putting powdered vits onto damp f/t prey, & live prey moves a lot more than f/t. Just doesn't work very well...

Yes, you'd think a snake's skin would be a priority??? but have you ever noticed, when they get injured, they don't bleed a lot. They may have evolved to conserve blood
this way, since injuries aren't rare in the wild; I have a hunch that the slow healing is because their skin just isn't that vascular. What do you think?
I would definitely try that, except I recently got some really good rats for breeders but they're not up to size yet. The store nearby doesn't breed themselves, they just ship in from one of the bigger breeders around here (not sure which one), but they're kept in an ARS rack at the store with Mazuri 6F, so I know they're well-fed. I'm not as sure if they may have any illnesses, though. One of the breeders nearby that vends expos always has some pretty sickly-looking rodents and I have been trying to feed them off ASAP to prevent my future breeders from getting any illnesses (especially any RI). There's not really a way to keep them out of the same air supply most of the year, so I've been picking them up in the evening and feeding right when we get home. Since we're experiencing spring weather for the next while, I may be okay to keep those for a day or two in the garage, but the real issue is she's eating rat fuzzies or extra small rat pups (12-18g, her weight is around 160g when I weighed a few weeks ago). Neither of those are weaned, so I'm not sure gut-loading them is even possible; fuzzies would mostly still be drinking milk and it would be cruel to semi-starve them just to try the gut-load approach unless you think a few hours would be enough for it.

I wonder if the reptile vitamins are water-soluble... it may work a bit better if a bit is dissolved in water and sprayed onto the rodent that way it isn't just powder falling off. Doesn't prevent the smell being off-putting, but I'm willing to give her a try. I could just wet the back of the rodent so the head still smells normal. She spends just enough time to make sure she's pointing at the head before she strikes, hardly any tongue flicks to smell it, so I think I may get lucky with the smell not bothering her. (And if it does, I feel like worst case, I remove the rat, rinse it off, and offer with the smell gone)

I suppose I could go for adult mice to try and gut-load, which she has taken without issue before as well, but I've been sticking with rats for the smaller size which have less developed teeth and seem less likely to manage a serious bite if something happened. She's enthusiastic, but likes to grab the neck rather than head-on, which is a bit worrisome some days. I also felt like the extra fat of a younger rat was helpful to her putting on some initial weight.


From the other thread that was posted, it seems like it may be a good idea to try vitamin C, possibly instead of the multivitamin. She really is in much better shape than the other snakes in those threads (thank god), but that may be a more targeted and helpful supplement than a general one. I might be able to entice even a fuzzy rat to eat some of a ground up vitamin C tablet with some baby food or something else appropriate as a gut-load for that. Her condition seems good enough as-is compared to the others; she doesn't have any actual skin wounds, just weak-feeling skin and scales. It may not be a huge deal either way, but I might try that instead.

I have been lucky enough to not see any really major injuries in reptiles (that weren't.. y'know.. actual road kill). The only one we've had was a baby giant day gecko we had shipped to us must have panicked during part of the shipping as he had managed to tear some of the skin and scales off of his throat. He healed up good as new in a few months with no intervention, but there was no blood at all on him or the paper towels in his deli cup. That was something we were aware was a risk; they're such flighty and nervous geckos and in addition to tail-dropping, they can also sheer off skin if they feel like they were caught by a predator to escape. (Sheering off the skin more easily than other lizards or geckos, anyway.)

That sounds like a reasonable explanation for the slow-healing of the skin to me. I would have somewhat assumed that it was tied to snakes having slower metabolisms leading to many bodily functions being generally slower, but I think I like your reasoning better.

If her skin and scales don't seem to be improving much (or really, not enough to be noticed), I'll try gut-loading a feeder with vitamin C or the multivitamin, but if there is some good improvement, I may just leave it be. There doesn't seem to be a very good way to get her feeder size to reliably take in enough to be beneficial, so it may be better to just let her take her time getting better.

I also owe you all a photo-shoot on the boy once he has shed finally; maybe we will have a better idea if he really is a low-quality enchi or just a nice normal.