Post Compaction Advice

[ProXimuS]

I hadn't really thought about the issues of hair in the digestive tract before this thread. I knew hair didn't digest, and I often see it in the faeces of my snakes that eat an all rodent diet and just assumed that in a healthy animal it just passes through. It's interesting to think of their diets in the wild, and as mentioned above garters have no means to kill rodents. I haven't seen a garter constrict yet anyhow.

As for the small garter with the care fresh, could you try bathing it in warm water to encourage it to defecate and see if it passes it?

I don't think garters generally constrict anything.....But then again, most garters people keep are fed already dead meals, and that's mostly what I hear about. I've never heard of them doing it....But I could be incorrect.

[kibakiba]

They have the mild venom, but all Ive seen it do is slow down the worms they eat. Most garters don't eat many mice in the wild... They do eat them, but I'm pretty sure they just grab on and swallow it. Someone on the forum had a garter grab onto a food item and coil its body around it really fast. The search feature is quite underrated, I'm sure there are threads about those things

Also, do not use castor oil on snakes. They aren't humans and they don't work the same. Besides, castor oil causes bad cramping. Its just as bad as taking a few laxative pills. And I'm speaking from my experience and a lot of family members and friends too.

[Stefan-A]

Someone on the forum had a garter grab onto a food item and coil its body around it really fast. The search feature is quite underrated, I'm sure there are threads about those things

I've seen that once.

And here's a picture user and former moderator Cazador posted (IIRC) years before that:



And here's an abstract and preview of an article about it. I happen to have the full one, somewhere.
JSTOR: An Error Occurred Setting Your User Cookie

[Light of Dae]

my female eastern flame/ery grabs her food n flips around doing 'death rolls' and swinging it everywhere then sometimes curls around it... not really coiling but half way.

[Steveo]

I only had a vagrans for a few months but she would sometimes curl around her food before eating it. I didn't really think of it as constricting behavior because she was not even as strong as my smaller constrictors.

[ConcinusMan]

A lot of variables come into play with feeding behavior. Even food preference can have a genetic link. Then there's the availability of specific prey items, which will vary from location to location, specific local adaptations, etc. To say garters do not constrict is too general. I'm sure that such behavior would develop in a population that relies heavily on rodent prey. Even though concinnus' I've kept do not rely heavily on rodents where I find them, they will eat them given the opportunity, and I have seen them pin dead rat pinkies against the glass while they eat them. Presumably to assist with swallowing though. I've never personally seen them coil around prey, but maybe a different garter, from a different place, that relies heavily on rodents would develop constriction behavior over generations. Then when you use vagrans as an example, well, one of the first vagrans I found in WA this year vomited up a full grown mouse when I got it home. If that mouse was alive when the snake attacked it, there had to have been a struggle and the snake had to subdue the mouse somehow. I get the overall impresson that vagrans are more apt to be rodent eaters in the first place.

But lets make no mistake. Any prey item that leaves wads of undigested material is more likely to cause an impaction than say, worms and fish. Let me rephrase. Not "cause" an impaction, but rather it provides the necessary solid undigested material for a blockage to consist of.

[ProXimuS]

To say garters do not constrict is too general. .

I wasn't trying to say they flat out don't do it, I was just mentioning I don't think it's super common behaviour, so don't get your hopes up, basically I know of course every snake(or any person/animal) is it's own indivual, and there are many variables that could come into play.

[ConcinusMan]

I wasn't trying to say they flat out don't do it

I didn't necessarily mean you.

[Invisible Snake]

Thank you everyone for your input! I take everyone out and place them in a separate bin during feeding with the exception of this particular baby who will not eat if she is outside of her enclosure. So what happened was I was placing some live feeder fish in her water dish and a single drop of water from the fish landed on a piece of carefresh and the baby went into feeding mode and ate the carefresh. By the time I saw this there was very little I could do and as she swallowed their was a noticeable lump on her. I placed her in quarantine with newspaper bedding, gave her lukewarm soakings and only fed her live fish. Suffice to say she managed to pass the carefresh, now my only concern is if there was any internal damage done.

[guidofatherof5]

I doubt there is any damage. Care fresh is a soft substrate.