Probiotic fix for nonfeeding or bloating - puking reptiles

[JuliusSqueezer]

This going to be a long read...maybe even a novel but this one post may answer a LOT of questions, problems etc...Please read on

There have been many topics on...
1- My "insert any reptile here" won't eat
2- My "insert any reptile here" puked
3- My "insert any reptile here" bloats up after it eats and lays on it's side

In a great many of these cases ...most actually, you can blame parasite, stress, dehydration, overfeeding or improper heating under or especially OVER). But even after a good worming or otherwise correcting the issue(s) the problem may remain. Why? Any of these things can and will cause a reduction or total wipe out of the animals gut flora. What is gut flora? In order for any animal (including yourself) to digest food, BILLIONS of bacteria must inhabit the gastrointestinal tract. Without the bacteria helping to break down the food, it will spoil and excess gasses will form. If this happens, a very lucky animal will have the wherewithall to puke it up. Others may parish. MOST won't even bother to eat because they KNOW somehow that they can't properly digest it. Overfeeding whether too large or too frequent causes a huge depletion of natural gut flora. It also put's an unmanageable growth ratio on organs v/s body and will cause premature death. Any old boa breeder can tell you (whether they will or not may vary) that powerfed breeder boas seldom live past 5 -6 years.

Ok now what? How do I fix ithis?

For many years, I have used Yogurt to correct this with varied success but mostly fairly good. Yogurt is chocked full of cultured beneficial bacteria.

BUT...then I ran into a couple of hard cases. Corallus (tree boas) are delicate as we all know and a couple of years ago, I took in a couple of rescue w/c emeralds. One wouldn't eat. The other would eat, bloat and puke. Yogurt did not help either and they both died. I even tube fed the nonfeeder and because the gut flora wasn't up to par probably killed him quicker than starvation would have. A little over a year ago, I bought what may be the only piebald amazon tree boa in captivity. I have heard a few reports where someone "used to have one" or maybe they saw one somewhere...but I can't find another one anywhere. She is a wild caught adult....very stressed and has refused food for a year now regardless of how offered. You can see all her bones and she has brought me much agony as I am sure I have caused her some too trying to get her up to speed. Yogurt has done nothing for her. I have been offering her various types of food once a month for the whole year and tube feeding her once or twice a month as far away from food offering time as I can schedule it. She is constantly dehydrating and having bad shed after bad shed. I KNOW her gutr flora has to be shot...I am extremely concerned about renal failure also because of all this.....THEN, if that's not enough, my 2 oldest emeralds start bloating and puking just like ther rescue female NL emerald that died a year ago was doing...If any of you know me at all, you know how much I love Esmarelda and Emilio and how proud I am of my pied amazon and how much I want her to pull through....but I gotta tell you, Those two emeralds are family. If anything happens to them because of something I did or did not do....I won't be any fun to be around for a very long time.

SO....with my 3 closest to my heart snakes facing premature death....I went into hardcore research mode and learned about bene-bac and other products like it (probiotics). Nutri-bac has some rave reviews too but I couldn't find any local and ended up buying benebac. I should also mention that the problem with my emeralds stemmed from me using crappy petstore dial thermometers. I knew better but the cages were set up identical and they both showed the same temp within a degree...how could two be wrong the same exact amount? I dunno but they were. Nicole Russel sent me a nice PE-2 laser guided temp gun for my birthday (Thanks again Nicole) That's when I found that the spot my emerald cages and a few of my amazon cages were reading 83 were actually 90-91 freakin degrees. Sheeze...I can't believe they aren't all dead....so back to bene-bac. This is how I used it and it worked! I have to give credit to Danny Mendez from Urban Jungles. I used his writings more than anyone elses on this subject to figure out a treatment plan.

If your reptile pukes. they will usually drink a lot of water right away. This is good because puking dehydrates them. Unfortunatly when they puke up a rat or something, they also puke up most of their gut flora. If you don't see them drinking shortly after puking, you may need to tube feed them some water or preferably some pedialyte

From here out a great deal of patience is crucial ! And you can not feed your snake for quite awhile to make this work but the payoff is grand!

For any boid:
Wait one full week and give 2 grams/kg of benebac NO FOOD till the 3rd dose 3 weeks later!. Really huge snakes I would give 5-6 grams just to get it down there. It's a thick green paste and it's not easy to get them to swallow it. As long as some gets down there though you are in good shape. It's alive and it multiplies. One gram has 10 million viable colony forming units.

Do this again every week for a total of 6 doses. On the 3rd week along with the 3rd dose...you can offer a very very small meal. Nourishment is not a goal here people. Conditioning the gastrointestinal tract is the goal. If it's a 6 foot boa, feed it a small weaned rat. If it's an adult emerald tree boa, feed it a pink rat. THINK SMALL! It is very important that this meal does not cause any bloating or regurge and in all actuality, you aren't feeding the snake. You are feeding the bacteria inside the snake.

Continue feeding very small meals every other dose ending on that 6th week. then VERY GRADUALLY start increasing the prey size back to normal

For Colubrids, pitvipers and elapids.... fast metabolisms, fast recovery. give them a dose 3-4 days after puking if they puked or asap for any other problems...wait a week ...dose and feed a small meal...go ahead and keep them on the same feeding schedule just keep it small and get 3-4 doses of benebac down a week apart. for most 1/2 gram to a gram is more than plenty. then gradually return to normal sized prey but not as gradual as you will with boids.

bug eating Lizards...dose and feed dose and feed....just keep feeding them normal ...keep checking for worms ...worm as needed...

monitors, I would find a good herp vet. A non feeding monitor has some serious issues. impaction maybe? huge parasite load? A puking monitior? what could possibly make a monitor puke? You probably would miss that anyway because they will re-eat it lol....I have very limited monitor experience so I really don't have much to offer here.

Bene-bac and Nutri-bac are brand names of Probiotics (opposite of antibiotics). There are many others. Some even come in powdered form.


How are my snakes doing now?

Esmarelda and Emilio are doing great. They have held down their little pink rats and beneback with no bloating. I fhave increased from pink to fuzzy to hopper rats and they ate 3 nights ago and are curled up happily asleep right now with no bloating or sign of trouble. They were weird. The both bloated at the same time and puked within minutes of each other and are in seperate cages. They also always poop within minutes of each other. Might have something to do with same size and species...identical cages and identical feeding schedule.

Spot, my piebald wasn't so easy. Easy enough to dose but I had to puree pink rats, benebac, egg yolk, pedyalite and Vitamin B12 in a blender and tube feed her. BUT...now that she has finished her benebac doses, I left her all night with a f/t fuzzy rat last night and I am very excited to report that she ate it! GO SPOT GO!

Here is what Bene-bac looks like. Trust me on this one guys. This may very well be the best 12 bucks you have ever spent. I would have paid anything I had or could could get if I had to to save these snakes.

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[JuliusSqueezer]

Oh...You can also get benebac at petco where the bird vitamins and stuff are sold in a small package of four 1gram tubes for about 4 bucks.

I found this dosing syringe (15 grams) at a large avian store here near my house.

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[python04slayer]

Thanks for the helpful post, and glad to hear that your snakes are doing good

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[Stormyva]

Great info Brett!
I am glad to hear the snakes are doing better now.

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[JuliusSqueezer]

I'm glad you found this stormy. I was going to msg you a link as you were my first thought. I don't know how many of your w/c emeralds you have left alive but this may very well be the key to saving them.

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[Stormyva]

I wish I had known about this a while back, that probably would have saved them. Let's just say I have learned my lesson about WC animals from crappy importers. With that being said, the one female that wasnt covered in fungus and everything else is doing awesome.
Thanks again for the information!!!!

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	Wild caught wild caught

[pandora1985]

hey julius, do you have any pics of that piebald?

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[natas]

We will defiently need to move this to a article on the new site. Excellent work Julius

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[JuliusSqueezer]

If it wasn't for that big pesky pied spot and a few random odd white scales on her neck, she would be a highly prized patternless orange lol. Here she is...

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[WhiteLips]

How is the bene-bac administered? For someone with limited experience (like myself) would it be something a vet could help with? Thanks for this info! I have had great experience with probiotics and dogs!

[JuliusSqueezer]

Unscrew the little stopper to the desired dosage marked on the plunger. Remove the cap on the tip of the syringe of course...Use the tip of the syringe and genttly pry the snake's mouth open and squirt it as far back into the back of the snake's mouth as you can. Then what I do is use another catheter syringe loaded with water and kinda hose it on down careful not to wash it back out. Hold the snake head up and tail down for a few minutes and then put them in the cage and leave them alone. It's too sticky to spit back out so they just swallow it on down. No vet is neccesary

[WhiteLips]

Aspiration is not a problem? BTW- beautiful snake Thanks again for the info!

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[JuliusSqueezer]

Thanks

It's not a problem as long as you don't squirt it down the glottis (the little tube that extends to the front of the mouth that the tongue flickers in and out from under) Tube feeding and oral dosing snakes is fairly easy since the oepnings to the esophogus and trachea are so far apart.

[NicoleRussell]

yeah bobmac sent me some of this stuff a while ago---glad to hear from another good source how great the product is.

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[pandora1985]

thanks julius, what an awesome looking snake

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[JuliusSqueezer]

Thanks ...She's purdy but she's mean. I tossed a towel over her head the other day to pick her up after a little 24 hour soak in a tote. She bit me through the towel...never had one do that lol...ouch man they got some teeth. It kinda catches ya off guard too when the towel just springs shut around your finger and you feel those almost inch long teeth sink in.

[dave_lp]

Brett I'm very happy that Spot ate. I know from pms with you that you have been worried about her for a long time. I hope the self feeding continues, and all your future goals can be met.

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[NicoleRussell]

Olivia (my little one) just happen to lay down next to me and saw your snake and just fell in love
As usual, nice snake
Did you find out for sure it's a pied? If so is this something you would consider in a breeding program?

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[haroldo359]

wow. what a great post, great! thanks for posting that.

and congrats on getting spot to eat. hopefully that'll continue.

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[JuliusSqueezer]

Thanks for the compliments

Spot will be bred when Spot is healthy enough to do so. I have a lot of faith and am staying positive. I will not however inbreed her to her offspring or them together. I have a huge moral issue with that. So my plans are to hopefully breed and keep her offspring. I suspect the offspring will be 100% het if indeed her splotch is genetic. The male offspring can be bred to various other females and their offspring will be possible hets (in theory) and they will be bred to normals making even less possible hets and making them harder and harder to ID later. Maybe though I can find another one some day and breed to one of the hets or her...or if it's another female to another male and then have 2 sets of unrelated 100% hets to work with. It will not be an overnight project in any scenario. Female corallus can take as much as 10 years to hit sexual maturity....usually about 5 or 6 though but that's still a very long time when starting with one animal and some morals lol...so anyway, it's a life long project that may never pan out. But it will keep me busy hopefully.

	Heterozygous Heterozygous - the animal carries the gene for a genetic trait but does not outwardly demonstrate the trait. Example: A boa that is het for albino looks normal but carries the albino gene. When it is bred to another het for albino boa or an albino boa, a percentage of the offspring will be albino.