What should I do?

[froggsong]

I don't want to hijack the other thread, so I am making a new one.

My snake came to me underweight (which I know because he looks thinner than he should, he has a triangular appearance, rather than a round one). They said they were feeding him hoppers at the pet store, I don't know how many at a time, and they acted pretty unsure of what he was eating (so I guess it's possible they never fed him, since I bought him shortly after they got them in). I have been feeding him large adult mice, one every five days, because I have never been able to get him to eat more than one at a time (even leaving the second one in for hours, after dancing it around for him until my arm was too tired to continue). The time before I fed him this time, he acted like he wanted more food, but I didn't have any more mice. So this time I moved up to a small rat. Unfortunately, I managed to get a better heat signature in the middle of the darn thing than on the head, so he kept trying to eat it in the middle, but then he finally went for the head, and didn't have any trouble after that. The rat did not make a noticeable bulge after he got it all the way down. I don't have a scale, so I don't know his weight, and I haven't measured him in a while, so I don't know how long he is. I think he was around 28-32 inches last time he was measured. I didn't have any string on hand, so I tried to get him to be still enough to measure, and then I measured his shed. The first number is what I got from measuring the snake, and the second is what I got from measuring the shed).

My question is: should I feed him a small rat again next time, or should I move up to a medium rat? Or should I try two small rats? Should I wait a full 7 days, or should I feed him after 5 again like I have been doing?

On another subject, I have a postal scale that I have never used, would this be appropriate to weigh him with? I think it measures in ounces, but I'm not sure; I'll have to dig it out in order to see.

Is it easy to measure him guys with a string, since he is so head shy? How do I hold the string on his head without getting tagged?

Also, due to an inaccurate digital hygrometer (which I have replaced), he has some stuck shed on his head. He got it off everywhere else except his head. I tried soaking him, I tried putting him in a pillow case, I tried running him through a warm wet towel, I even tried to gently peel it off after soaking him. I got about half of it off, but he is so head shy, I can't get him to let me get the rest off, and I don't want to stress him too badly (nor do I want to be bitten). Does anyone have any other recommendations for how to get the shed off of his head?

This is my first snake, and even though I did lots of reading before I bought him, in practice it is much harder than I thought it would be.

[Fisherman 1991]

For the food. My snake is about the same size. He is now eating one small rat a week. I'd try every five days, and if he doesn't eat one, wait a couple days to make it seven.

As for the stuck shed, I just misted his tank every day and it came off with his next shed. I don't know if it was good to wait that long, but it was on/near his head as well.

fisherman

[Tiamat]

OK! first of all, it is important to tell wich spicies of snake. BP? corn? boa? any thing else?

From your descritpion, he was probably underfeed, but the snake seems totaly willing to eat more. So your goal will be to put him back to shape, and apparantly with a minimum of difficulty. Don't worry about him get the prey in a bad way. Leave him, he will find the head no matter what. I have seen snakes fooling around with a prey more than 10mins before finding the proper way to eat it.
If your snake his really underfeed, you should see his spine standing out. If not, it is not bad. Not good, but not bad yet.

For the shed, you did all what was humanly possible to do. Don't push it. If it is a BP, bothering him to much will make him stop eating. You can wait the next sheding for the exess to go away. But with one condition: You have to make sure it doesn't bother the snake and he doesn't pass his time rubing its head on everything to remove it. He might do it too hard and harms himself prety bad in the process, like losing eyes, rubing skin off, etc...(all wintnessed behaviors). If the shed does not bother him, you should just wait for the next one.
Make sure, when you see his eyes going white, to seriously augment the humidity for the week. from 60-70% you should aim for a wooping 80-90% during the shed week.

Beside that, do give him bigger preys if you do not see the bump in his body after feeding. As long as he eats it, the prey is not too big.
And make sure you check the parameters correctly. Temps, humidity have to be verified daily until you are prety sure it is staying the way the snakes likes it.

Do you have a picture of its terrarium and a picture of the snake. This would be even better to give proper infos.

P.S: i cannot stress this fact to poeple. I wish it could be placed in a way that any new snake buyers read it first: NEVER EVER buy a snake in a pet store. Always go buy it at a Snake breeder. Would you go get your 800$ dog in a pet store????????????
Pet store make it almost a law to: not know what snake it is, not feeding it, giving him bad keeping conditions, parasites, mites and everything else that would probably be bad for the snake. It is not the case for all pet store. But most of them stick to this like a guideline.
Just the way froggsong talked about the way the vendor seemed ignorante, would make me ban this pet strore for anything alive. Froggsong, you were too impulsive i think. It should have ringed a bell when the vendor acted like that...you should have been more aware and carefull.
If by any bad luck (and probability are high in a pet store) your snakes has intestinal parasites, you will discover that it will cost you much more money at the vet than with a cat or a dog!!!!

[froggsong]

h, I'm sorry tiamat, I have talked about the snake so much, I just forgot to put in the type, plus it is in my signature. It is a BP.

As for being too impulsive, it was not an impulse buy. I did lots of reading for a couple of months before buying the snake. I purchased him from the pet store because other than being a little thin, he was healthy looking. Not all of the snakes they get are healthy looking but the entire bunch they had that times was. I also do not know of any breeders in my area, and the price was right, since I am on a budget. He eats well, other than refusing seconds. He always takes the prey within a couple of minutes of me putting it in, other than when I offer a second item. Not to defend them (because I agree with you on how pet stores keep their animals), but the people I talked to were not the ones doing the feeding, so that may be why they didn't know. Other than that, if people didn't buy the snakes that pet stores stock, what would happen to those poor snakes? I will not rescue a pet from a pet store, but if it seems healthy other than being a little thin, I don't see a problem with it. This store is very clean, and most of their animals appear healthy, other than sometimes looking a little underfed.

As for the parameters, I check them several times a day, just like I do for all my herps. Other than the humidity device being defective, everything is fine. Now that I have a new hygrometer, the humidity is at a constant 65%, except after misting, of course. His temps are at 91-92 degrees in the warm hide, and 80 degrees in the cool hide and the ambient temp. He has three hides to choose from, one on the warm side, one on the cool side, and one in the middle. He has a water dish large enough to soak in, should he choose to, that is changed at least daily.

I wasn't worried about him being able to find the head, but he has in the past eaten a mouse backwards because I did not get the proper heat signature on the head. His spine does not stand out, but he is not round either, more of a triangular shape.

he isn't rubbing his head on anything, so I will leave the shed until his next one.

I have pics of him and the terrarium posted in other threads, but I will post them again here. I do not have any current pics of the snake, but I do have some from a couple of weeks after I purchased him.

Here is a pic of the tank, a 20G long:


Here is a pic of the snake where you can see the triangular appearance I was referring to:


and here is one of him where you can see his whole body better:

[Fisherman 1991]

I remembers it was a ball python from a couple different posts so I didn't mention it either. Anyways, The himidity thing should not be a big deal as long as you keep it up during the shed. I've been able to raise mine since getting a bigger water dish, but it is still below 60% most of the time, so when its shedding time, I mist and keep wet paper towel in a his hide.

As for pet stores not caring for the pets, Most of the time this is true, but there are exceptions. The pet store near me has a manager that actually knows what she is doing and has various herps herself. Granted, living conditions still aren't great, but at least they get fed on a regular basis. And I could tell. They had a BP there that was about 24" long that was very well filled out. (we was in ther for all of like two weeks before we was bought though). This snake got three mice a week which I tihnk is good for a big chain pet store. I don't go there much, but the Petco and Petsmart here suck for herps.

The snake doesn't look look too underweight, and if he is active then he is probably healthy and will fill out fine.

Not to steal the post, but can BP's be fed "snacks" in between feedings (like the three mice I have left over from before he ate rats?) Could I feed one or two between weekly rat feeding? You think he'll be too full to eat the rat next time? Or should I just try and is he eats it he does, if not oh well?

thanks,

fisherman

[froggsong]

He's not very active at all... I know they only come out at night, but I rarely see him out at night, and he is in my bedroom, so I should be seeing him when I am laying in bed, right? I wonder if the TV being on would keep him from coming out? I put him in that room because it is the least frequented, and my cats use the spare bedroom, and I don't want them messing with him.

I know he isn't terribly underfed, but I have seen some other people's BPs in person, and they were much shorter than him, and much bigger around. He has been coming out a bit more lately, maybe he is just taking a long time to be completely settled... I don't know though, I haven't had any trouble getting him to eat when I feed him, other than not eating enough at a time.

[Fisherman 1991]

I wouldn't think the TV would affect him. I've got my BP in the computer room which gets light later at night, and he seems fine. My BP is very active at night, and I'm watching him climb around now. (he's normally not active the night after feeding and less active during shed.) Maybe he just needs more time to become comfortable. Try holding while watching TV at night or something to get it more "used" to being held and around humans.

fisherman

[Tiamat]

Your BP doesn't look bad at all. His spin stands out a bit, but i would not consider him underfeed or any bad thing. He seems pretty healthy to me. Remember that snakes are like humans, they don't all look alike regarding lenght and girth.

For the tv, remember that snakes are very suseptible to vibration. And tv creats a lot. If the TV is just beside his terra, i could understand he is nervous. But more than 5 feet away wouldn't cause a problem. Meaby he is just shy or still, like you said, not yet adapted to his new place.

Fisherman, i can't say or prove it is wrong to do what you want to do, but my advice is: once a week to leave the snake time to diggest correctly. Never feed a snake who is in the process of diggestion. One thing you could do, but then again i don't encourage you to, is to feed him 1 day after he....heu....pooed? (take a shit?). It might lower the periode of feeding to 5 days if he diggest fast insteat of a week.
I have to get information on this, but if you feed a snake who is already diggesting something, you might cause the snake some diggestive oclusions. And that can be bad.
Yet again, the best way to feed a snake is to give him the proper size of prey. And like i said before, people tend to underestimate what a snake can eat in one shoot. If you are worried, just give bigger preys. As long as he eats them, you are ok.

froggsong, i didn't say you rushed your bying without knowing how to take care of a BP. That is a normal, smart people action, gattering of information. I said rush in the actual pet store, the actual buying of the snake. If you have frogs, you are definitly smart enought to get infos before buying a pet. Otherwise, you wouldn't have any frogs left!

Snake breeders will always have better prices than a petstore no matter what. here in canada the price for a BP in a pet store goes from 80 to 120$. A snake breeder will sell it from 40 to 70$. A pet store will never be able to give you such a low price...unless they want to get ride of the snake....wich gives you a warning msg not to buy it.....

My main grudge against pet store beside ignorance of some people working there, is the fact that control over deseases and parasites are very low. This is not just with snakes, but dogs, cats, birds, etc....In my point of view, pet store should hold no live animals, just hardware. Breeders should be the source of pets. For the simple reason that they generally breed only one species, and are very very very carefull of desease and parasite. For them, this is a serious enougth treat that they could lose everything!

[Tiamat]

Sorry to polute this forum with so much long and boring treads, but i forgot something!

BPs do not need any mysting outside of sheding periods. So 50%-60% humidity is perfectly reasonable.
Another urban legend to destroy: never leave your BP's substrate in a wet state.

[froggsong]

I bought my BP from Petco. Petco has nationwide sales at certain times, that have nothing to do with the amount of animals they have in stock. My BP was $30. If he had not been, I would not have been able to buy him (it was the only reason I was able to convince my husband to let me have a snake at ALL). He wasn't on sale because they wanted to get rid of him, but because of one of those nationwide sales.

I'm glad you think he looks normal. He does look a little thinner in person than in the pics, but not much. I had to take him out a bit ago because it got really hot in the house today and his warm side temp was too high (I feel so bad, that has never happened before), and he looks so much bigger around since he ate that rat! I hope he stays so filled out. I will feed a med sized rat next time and see if he can take it. If he can't, I'll just feed him small ones for a while. I really can't believe how different he looks after that rat. I took him out for a couple of minutes before I fed him, and he didn't look so filled out at all. I think rats are the answer, lol...

The TV is across the room, so I guess it isn't a problem, and the volume is low on it anyway (I know that volume isn't the issue, but the higher the volume, the more vibration). That's another reason I put him in the bedroom, we have a really good theater system in the living room, and we use it, lol. I didn't want the bass and other vibrations to bother him, as well as us walking around all the time.

I mist his cage because otherwise, the humidity would be in the low 40's (or lower) if I did not occasionally mist. I do not drench the substrate, I know of the risk of belly rot, and I hope everyone else does too! So, if your home's humidity is lower than the humidity they need, they need to be misted. The only other way to get the humidity up would be to use a fogger or humidifier.