Anyone have a clue??

[sclark]

Hey all,

I have been helping a few local people with their snakes and I am running into something I can't figure out, and have never seen. There is this one person who has a RTB about 4 months old. Healthy alert etc.. In a solid enviroment, temp, humidity, etc.. Very friendly RTB. Now comes the odd problem. This baby is a great eater, anything you feed it, it whomps down. The problem is if it has hair, it regurges it the next day, if it is hairless, no problem, he keeps it down. We tried this experiment to see if we could narrow things down. We took two fuzzy rats, fed one and as figured he regurged it the next day. A few days later we tried the second one, only the hair was removed (don't ask, it was a pain in the A##). He keep it down no problem. We tried the next week and he regurged the hair one, then the following week no hair he kept down.. Ever hear of a snakie that was hair intolerant? Hate to tell his owner he needs to start getting hairless rats and pay the crazy price for the life of this snake..

Any ideas?

Steve

[Red]

Re: Anyone have a clue??

Well lucky for him it is easy to breed hairless rats... Sounds like he should get incontact with the boaphile.. He has hairless rats that he breeds... I think that buying them is probley a bad idea Breeding is easy enuf... I did it... lol....
Or I guess you could just shave the rat every time...
Eric aka....red

[Doug]

Re: Anyone have a clue??

HI,
Digestion is a complex process in Boa's,  while some people donot   follow a feeding schedual and have no problem other's will.
 Your trying to hard to feed your boa's, even a really young one should only eat once a week as they age the feeding should become further apart. My sub adult Guyana's only feed once a month..   The reason this is important is the digestive process is  slow and they can use a little down time to recover..
 If you  rush the feeding the animal will either  regurge or prematurely expel the food item before recovering all the digestive juices and loose many of the benaficial bacteria and vitamins and  some of the stomach acids. The stomach acid takes time to replace by the snake post regurge and a cycle of regurge can occur with the next feeding and this can be fatal.
  review the care sheets, if you have a regurge allow some recovery time, be sure the food item is the corrrect size for that animal. Re-check your ambients on the warm and cool side if the cage is to cool fermentation can occur which will make the snake sick and cause that regurge. Here's a useful care sheet ..

http://www.redtailboas.com/general_care/general_care.html

   Snakes are capable of long fast and can adjust their metabolism as needed , feeding time it goes up 300% and then slows back down.
 One thing is for sure if you over feed a snake you will shorten its life span, power-fed boa's may die in a few years instead of living up to 30.
  Doug

[sclark]

Re: Anyone have a clue??

Hi doug,

This baby was on a weekly feeding, and no power feeding. And like I mentioned the teps, humidity, etc are perfect. The regurg is related to the hair of the prey. Could be alergy related, but not 100% sure. Remember what i said in the post the snake is keep any food item without hair down. The problem is this baby is not one of my baby's or any stock I know about, just a per store snake. I have done fecal smears and the snake is clean. Thats why I was leaning towards an alergic reaction to the hair.

He fed again two days ago, we did a hairless rat pup. I expect his will keep it down and he did. We plan to try a fuzzy or two next feed to try one last time and see if he regurges again..

Just frustrating..
Steve

[redtailedmel]

Re: Anyone have a clue??

that is definately weird could be a allergy thing maybe it just dont like the hair. a friend of mine has 2 rtb and neither one of them will eat a white rat only black! i never heard of a boa having a preferance on color either i would think maybe this lil guy has allergy though.

[sclark]

Re: Anyone have a clue??

Just an update on this boa.. It has been switched soley to hairless rats. And the regurg has stopped.. Figure ones the boa is a year old, we can try the hairy rats again, but since we set the owner up with a pair of hairless rats, and he got real lucky we got a set and the female was already knocked up. So he got 12 pinks three days later and no charge..
Steve