Something wrong with the tail?

[SternM]

Hello to everyone! Maybe someone can help me with my question.
We got garter snake about 10 month ago, she is at least 12 or 13 month old now.
All goes well, she ate well, she shed well. She was on frog diet because she reduce fish fillet or guppies but we were not worried. We hope that frogs are good nutritional and we've bought them in vetshop.
A couple of days ago we noticed that garter's tail looked dehydrated or like broken. We are in panic, what had goes wrong? She can move her tail and she feels my touches but tail looks so strange. Or it is ok? What are your opinions?
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[Eddie]

If that has not been noticed since birth I would assume its a dietary issue. What are you feeding?

[serpentcurator]

Eddie, trying to reach out to you, please e-mail me at serpentcurator at gmail dot com , thanks in advance, Marc

[Charming]

I would find some dietary supplements, like a power you add to her water or food. Eating frogs and nothing else could definitely cause a lack of some needed vitamin(s). I'd ask a vet to be sure.

[Eddie]

I just saw that you were trying to get in touch with me. Sorry about that. How is the snake doing?

[SternM]

Hello to everyone!
I would like to give an update and some notices about our garter. I hope it maybe helpful for someone.

On the next day we have noticed that she couldn’t creep well. About a half of a body has remained motionless once she tries to move.
We were in panic and took her to veterinary immediately. Veterinarian noticed that snake has bloating in the abdomen area. Unfortunately x-ray was out of order on that day and vet was not able to make a screening. Vet gave to her oil (or something like that) because we thought that snake may have something foreign like substrate in stomach which presses on spinal nerve. We have to wait about a week till next visit to vet. We bathed her every day during this week as it could help to improve bowel patency.
On the next visit we have made x-ray. It showed that snake has somehow broken her spine. We were absolutely upset.
It was fully our fault because we thought that grater snakes doesn’t need any supplementary of calcium (like eublepharus) and we also didn’t use UV lamps and x-ray shows that snake has hypocalcaemia.
It was like a disaster for us. We have two more garters (at about several month on that moment) and they were on the same diet. We took them to vet but we were lucky with them and their health was not undermined by inappropriate diet.
Of course we bought lamps on the same day. We also made calcium injections to our garter with broken spine.
As you may imagine broken spine cannot be cured (once we talk about snakes). Thanks god our snake was able to eat and digest food. We were really worried if she felt pain but our vet said that probably she didn't.
Three months have passed since the fracture was diagnosed.
We feed our snake once a week. She has molted twice (of course with our help).
She still is not able to move well but she uses her tail better than it was in the beginning.
Of course she doesn’t move around the terrarium. Mostly she lies in the cage.

As a result I would like to say once again that my husband and I are fully upset with this situation. We love her so much and I begin to cry every time when I realize that it is only my fault.

Information about if calcium supplementary and UV lamps are needed is very poor (especially in Russian serpentary segment). I hope that our case will be useful for everyone who is not sure about these mandatory things.
Hello to everyone!
I would like to give an update and some notices about our garter. I hope it maybe helpful for someone.

On the next day we have noticed that she couldn’t creep well. About a half of a body has remained motionless once she tries to move.
We were in panic and took her to veterinary immediately. Veterinarian noticed that snake has bloating in the abdomen area. Unfortunately x-ray was out of order on that day and vet was not able to make a screening. Vet gave to her oil (or something like that) because we thought that snake may have something foreign like substrate in stomach which presses on spinal nerve. We have to wait about a week till next visit to vet. We bathed her every day during this week as it could help to improve bowel patency.
On the next visit we have made x-ray. It showed that snake has somehow broken her spine. We were absolutely upset.
It was fully our fault because we thought that grater snakes doesn’t need any supplementary of calcium (like eublepharus) and we also didn’t use UV lamps and x-ray shows that snake has hypocalcaemia.
It was like a disaster for us. We have two more garters (at about several month on that moment) and they were on the same diet. We took them to vet but we were lucky with them and their health was not undermined by inappropriate diet.
Of course we bought lamps on the same day. We also made calcium injections to our garter with broken spine.
As you may imagine broken spine cannot be cured (once we talk about snakes). Thanks god our snake was able to eat and digest food. We were really worried if she felt pain but our vet said that probably she didn't.
Three months have passed since the fracture was diagnosed.
We feed our snake once a week. She has molted twice (of course with our help).
She still is not able to move well but she uses her tail better than it was in the beginning.
Of course she doesn’t move around the terrarium. Mostly she lies in the cage.

As a result I would like to say once again that my husband and I are fully upset with this situation. We love her so much and I begin to cry every time when I realize that it is only my fault.

Information about if calcium supplementary and UV lamps are needed is very poor (especially in Russian serpentary segment). I hope that our case will be useful for everyone who is not sure about these mandatory things.