Regurgitation in small snakes

[Malkavian]

I have a ratsnake that's been in my care for about a year now. It's approaching 18-20 inches long, and has just started eating fuzzy mice. The past two feedings, I've offered it two, which it promptly ate with no hesitation. Then, maybe 5-6 days latr on both counts, I would find the husk of one mouse regurgitated in the cage. Is this an indication of overfeeding? I'd have thought for sure that it wouldn't eat more than it could digest, I've never seen that behavior in small snakes before.

The snake is in excellent health, alert, active and so forth, can't see any reason it would be throwing up. If it were a health problem wouldnt it be tossing up both mice anyway?

 

[Cirith Ungol]

Any change in temperature after the feeding? I mean, may you have put it too warm afterwards? Can it have swallowed any substrate?

 

[Malkavian]

Both times I fed it in a bare bottomed container (looking to curb the feeding response early on this one) and immediately put it back in its own container after...there's no heat source but it sits a shelf above the heat lamp on my leo's cage.

 

[Cirith Ungol]

If you have a thermometer I'd suggest you check the temp then. A friend had done the same thing with 2 baby corns he got from me and he ended up with one not eating at all. The reason is turned out to be too high temp (29C). He moved it and now it's eating like normal.

 

[Schlyne]

Regurge is also really tough on a snake's digestive system. You might want to give it a week off to recover or just try offering it one prey item next feeding.

 

[casesensative]

sounds more like a lack of heat to me.

My snake reggurgitated once before.

 

[Cirith Ungol]

case - how can it be lack of heat when you describe that he throws up in the warm water bath? He throws up when he's warm in your bath and throwing up isn't good. Sorry for asking, it's just that your conclusion confuses me.

My male corn has gone through a serious period where he regurgitated repeatedly. All it went down to was that the tank was too warm, between 27-29 degrees C. He threw up repeatedly over a long period so I decided to put him on a "diet" - nothing to eat for 6 weeks. After those 6 weeks I fed him 1 pinky and continued to feed him 1 pinky once a week. now recently I've increased the ammount of pinkies to first 2, then 3 and now I've decided I'll try to feed him 1 mouse. He's been on this diet for about 4 months now.

Every time I fed him I checked if he'd pood or regurgitated and happily he'd pood so it went out the right way obviously. I'm still not sure though if he will poo after a mouse because I don't know if possibly he accidently swollowed substrate at some point. I'll see today, since it's today that I want to feed him his first mouse for a long time.

 

[Herps&Inverts]

It certainly couldn't hurt to raise the temps, raise the humidity slightly, lay off food for a week and try going back to smaller prey more frequently.

Sam