Quote Originally Posted by envy_ld50 View Post
Edie,

This is an odd situation. Which vet are you seeing down here in AZ? I feed all of my boa's rats of the appropriate size as I believe they are much more nutritional. It strikes me as odd because I have never had a boa refuse a meal I am leaning towards internal parasites on this one. Boa's seem to be able to handle larger meals than ball pythons imo and seem to be much more hardy all around, leading me to believe Jo on the internal parasites or some sort of illness. Did you check around the mouth for a RI on her? Let us know what you find!

-Cliff
Hey Cliff - I have had 3 snakes (2 boas and 1 BP) with RIs due to a rescue I brought in and me slipping up somewhere spreading it to the other 2. I have not noticed any signs of RI in the baby boa and I take care of the smaller snakes on different days that the larger ones and they are not in the same room as my other snakes. I will try to get a fecal sample once she starts eating again to see if that has anything to do with it.
I was feeding her mice to start off with once she first came to me since I always tend to offer smaller meals when I first get snakes to ease them into living in a new place - I'm sure she could eat small rats (or whatever other size - I'm not sure of sizing names on rats) but since all I had from my frozen order was jumbo/medium rats and fuzzy/small/medium/jumbo mice I made due and fed her the closest sized prey I had here and the small jumbos seemed to be her size. I am due to order a new shipment of frozen in about 3-4 weeks so I will be ordering more rat sizes then.

I see Dr. Wright and Dr. Johnson at AZ exotic animal hospital and Johnson is the one I see when I go in - I have seen Wright once.

EDIT: And she only refused for me probably 3 times since living here - and one or two of the times was due to her being in shed, the other time I'm not sure why she refused but it didn't worry me too much since she picked back up the next week.