Anything I'm missing on this regurg/vomit?

[tempo36]

I thought I'd give up update on how this whole situation ended up playing out...

I kept the little fellow, Joe, in his 6L tub until mid-to-late February and he still wouldn't eat despite various trials of f/t and live prey. He bottomed out at around 50g and got relatively dehydrated. I ended up being put in touch with a snake and reptile breeder who walked me through the process, and over the course of November through January did 5 assist feeds. We'd wait a couple weeks, offer food, if refused, he got an assist and then we'd go back into waiting to see if his appetite would kick in. His weight stabilized and he gained a little bit back up to the 70g range but still would not take food on his own. At that point, I was noticing that he was spending most of his time being active in his tub and trying to leave, despite temperature and humidity being right on. I decided to take a chance and moved him to a 15L tub and gave him a couple weeks during which he seemed more calm.

At this point it was March, he hadn't had an assist feed in ~8 weeks.

His next food offering in the 15L tube was a f/t weaned rat which he refused but I tried being a bit aggressive, which I had tried before without success, bopping him a bit with the rat to try and prompt a strike, and he got the idea and struck. He had no idea what to do with the rat though at that point and got very worked up, poking it with his nose a lot but seemingly clueless beyond that. Using tongs I moved the rat and it was very clear he wasn't going to let it leave the tub, biting onto it and wrapping it up immediately. Rinse and repeat for about 30 minutes...confusedly poke at rat, move rat, bite and wrap, poke, move rat, wrap, etc. Eventually he figured it out and swallowed all on his own. The breeder wanted me to take things slowly to acclimate him to eating and to keep him a little hungry to stimulate feeding, so 2 weeks later I tried another feed, which he took instantly as soon as he saw it come into the tub. Similar poking and wrapping, but he figured things out sooner than the prior time and got everything down. Unfortunately, about 72 hours later and completely undisturbed, he threw it up into his water dish while shedding. Lesson learned there...the rat was probably a bit too big on the weight side for him, despite his ability to swallow it, and I think I need to be very careful with this snake to not feed around shed time as right now he just does not like uncomfortable stimuli when digesting! He went back on food holiday for a few weeks to let his system rest, but now we're back to the "new normal".

He's taken 4 consecutive feeds from early April to present. No more poking, wrapping, poking, etc...he strikes and swallows and is now steadily, albeit slowly, putting on weight, up at 95g. He finally had a complete shed with no retained parts this last week during which I skipped his feeding to make sure he could focus on his skin, and ate again 72 hours ago.

I'm cautiously optimistic that we made it through this learning period and he's figuring out how to do the things he needs to do as a snake! Maybe by next year I'll have gotten over the trauma of the last 6 months to even consider a 2nd ball since this one technically belongs to my daughter!


https://imgur.com/a/qyNeKu6

https://imgur.com/a/NngOpJn