Urgent Force Feeding Help

[Simland]

Hi,

How far down is the stomach on a garter snake? I'm force feeding mine and, while she's not vomiting it, she's not pushing it down either. I massaged it gently down her body, but I don't want to push it too far.

She's very weak, so I don't even know if she has the strength to push it down. I've had problems feeding her for a while, now, but I successfully fed her a few fishes this week and last week (without force feeding....this is my first time trying that). I knew things were bad, but I didn't know they were that bad. She did have a temp gradient, but she stopped using the area with the proper basking heat (though, granted, it was a the low end of the range) a couple of days ago. It's rather small though.

When I came home today she was moving around her cage more, so I was hoping she was doing better, but, in my experience, renewed energy is often a sign that death is very close.

I knew she had lost weight but I didn't know how bad things were because I try not to handle my animals when they are sick, as much as possible. But when I noticed that her renewed energy was gone and she seemed even weaker than before, I picked her up, and she is not just thin, she is alarmingly thin. She feels like there isn't much more than skin and bones on her. Given that she's a cold blooded animal that much weight loss seems astounding to me. She'd been refusing food for a while, but not THAT long.

Any help would be appreciated. I don't think she'll survive long if I don't get something in her stomach...maybe not even then.

[Simland]

I've force fed her a fish. I would have liked to force feed her some liquid food, but I don't knoe what liquid food can be fed to a garter snake and I don't have the tools (syringe and tube).

[Simland]

Now she looks like she's trying to regurgitate the fish, but isn't strong enough. The spasm, moving forward from the tail, stop at the fish.

[Rushthezeppelin]

Gosh, I'm not sure what is best to do in that situation I'd keep her in a warm humid rubbermaid tub or something.....that way you can at least ensure she is hydrated. Try and get it to 85-90 if at all possible. In the future if you have no choice but to force feed, I'd try pureed worms and pink parts in a syringe but that's just my guess, never had experience with this. Hopefully she get the fish the rest of the way down and can pull through : /

[Rushthezeppelin]

Put PTs with drinking water that's 85-90 would be best iin the rubermaid.

[Simland]

I believe she has passed away.

She was getting partial nourishment from the worms she was partially digesting up until mid September and I'd managed to feed her several guppies over the past week and a half, so I'm not entirely sure what happened.

I hope I remember to handle animals with eating issues more often, in the future, instead of the other way around... and to force feed sooner. She did not look half as bad as she did today when I started successfully feeding her guppies and I would have thought getting something in her would improve her condition... but the guppies might have been too small and the force feeding, too late.

How am I supposed to do the work I was supposed to do this evening, after this...

[d_virginiana]

I'm sorry for your loss.

That being said, force-feeding a snake is almost never the answer. Assuming husbandry is correct, they aren't eating because something is wrong, and forcing food into their system won't fix the problem (imagine trying to eat if you had the stomach flu, or if your kidneys were malfunctioning and you couldn't filter out proteins properly; it wouldn't help). It sounds like you could have been dealing with either a parasite problem or some sort of internal organ failure if she's been regurging and only partially digesting food for that long.
In the future, the best thing to do when you notice an eating problem like more than one regurge or partially digesting food and serious weight loss is to get a fecal sample to test for parasites. That's easy to test for and treat usually. Or if they're showing signs of bacterial infection, the vet may want to prescribe an antibiotic. If it's a problem with one of their organ systems, there's usually nothing that can be done.

Mainly, refusing food is a symptom not the source of the problem, so force-feeding without correcting the underlying issues usually won't help. I'm not trying to criticize you because it's kind of counterintuitive, just putting that out there in case you run into something similar in the future.

[Simland]

I completely agree with you Lora. Force feeding was a last ditch attempt to try to keep her alive. Whatever the root cause of the problem was, I believe she died because she was just too weak (a word of warning to others who are new at this, they can look "thicker" than they really are). I think there might have been multiple causes, for instance, maybe it started out as a UVB problem (I think I read somewhere that lack of it can affect feeding, but I'm not sure) and the resulting stress might have weakened her immune system and allowed a parasite or a disease to take over, which would explain the rather quick weight loss (for an ectotherm).

Hopefully my larger one isn't suffering from the same thing. It seems to be keeping it's weight up, but it's not using its basking area anymore (as far as I can tell). I'll double check the temperatures as soon as I get a temp gun (I think its thermometer might have lost its accuracy), and I'll be adjusting the humidity, too.

By the way, does any one know if keeping the entire foam pads on the Extoterra temperature gauges changes their accuracy? I rarely stick them to the glass (so I can move them around) and I leave the foam on so the the thermometer doesn't get damaged, covered in substrate, etc.

I think getting a poop sample analyzed will move up to "do it even though you have other solutions to try" in my "list" (assuming I can find a reptile vet in my area) because, when you think about it, with eating problems, it kind of has to be done when you get the opportunity to get a sample, and you never when the next one will come.

[Rushthezeppelin]

While it certainly doesn't hurt to give our snakes UVB it doesn't seem to be all that beneficial to them. I certainly wouldn't go so far as to say lack of UVB drastically impacted a garter enough to waste away. I would be looking for other culprits.

[d_virginiana]

Garters don't need UVB, so that's not your problem.

Are you talking about those little round thermometers that are like dials? Those are like, up to ten degrees off on a good day (you may be talking about something else, but that's just what my mind went to)