Bloody Regurge

[joeysgreen]

I'm sorry to hear of your loss EK56.

If I had any suggestions, it would be to feed less prey, more often. Gartersnakes love to feast, but aren't really built for large meals; it probably wasn't the problem but could have been.

As per Virginia's concerns about contagious factors etc. If you want to know what happened your best chance is to have a necropsy done; have the body refridgerated and contact your veterinarian.

And while I know in most cases BlueSirtalis may be right, there are a lot of cool things that could have been done to try to remedy the situation... I guess first and foremost since blood loss appears to be the major cause of death, would be a blood transfusion. I've done these in birds and reptiles and lucky enough, most people probably have blood donors as well (because who only has one snake ). Bloodwork, imagery, endoscopy and surgery are all options to diagnose and potentially treat.

Ian

[Rushthezeppelin]

Do herps only have one blood type or something? I would be deathly afraid to do a transfusion on a snake thinking there would be rejection of the blood.

[guidofatherof5]

Blood transfusion? Due to their size blood is a commodity they don't have much of. This is why blood workups on garters is so problematic. Testing requires too much and they just don't have it to give. I think the blood donor would now be at risk if used.

[d_virginiana]

Just got internet again.

I was sad to hear that Big Mama passed. She was always bitey in the tank and hard to pick up but completely calm once you got her out, and big enough that you really didn't want to get tagged. Feisty enough to be fun to handle, but calm enough once you got her out that it wasn't super stressful.

I agree with Steve about the transfusions. I almost had to have a blood-draw done on a fairly big female once as kind of a last-ditch effort to figure out what was going on, and the vet (a herp specialist) was still worried that it could be fatal because of her small size. I probably would never risk the health of the donor on something like that.

Just to clarify on the number of pinkies: The last shipment they got was messed up and they sent the wrong size. They gave me a bag of them, and I prefer to feed smaller meals more often, but they were small enough that I had to up the number of mice I was feeding and my adult male that I still baby and cut his food in two for (because I'm super paranoid and he's on the small side)could handle them whole. Big Mama was a BIG female too. So it was a bigger meal than what I usually give mine, but they were small enough that I wouldn't say it was a dangerously large meal for a snake her size.

[joeysgreen]

The general rule of thumb for taking blood on an animal is 10% (blood sample) of 10% (blood volume). So if your gartersnake is a massive 100 grams, you can safely take 1ml. Many gartersnakes are in the 40 gram range, so you can take 0.4mls of blood. I can run a full chemistry and CBC on 0.15mls. Certainly if you have concerns of blood loss, you won't be taking the full 0.4mls, and you may want to avoid sampling until later, once the animal has stabilized. Now for the transfusion, if an animal that is 40 grams, 0.4-0.5mls of blood can make all the difference; that is why transfusions are used.

There are no documented blood types in reptiles. With that said, there are methods to test blood compatibility prior to transfusion. Now when dealing with such small volumes and little time these tests are generally skipped. You may have heard that you get one free blood transfusion. That is because when you receive blood, you have not had a chance to build antibiodies against it. Therefore your first blood transfusion generally goes well, with little or no reaction. Now if you needed a second transfusion in the future, you would have a humoral immunity already standing by, should we be talking about incompatible bloods. To clarify, reactions to blood transfusions are allergenic; and to summarize, all medical treatments are a weighing of pro's and con's. Do we watch this animal bleed to death, or do we accept the risks with the procedures trying to save it?

[guidofatherof5]

That decision rests with the snakes keeper.