This is a tough situation since a lot of the times, reptiles dont have the same protections.
TLDR: We rescued a snake, nursed it for 5 months only to have to humanely euthanize it due to what could only be negligence from the breeder and could have been avoided. This breeder is known to have issues locally, and isnt a fan fav. Is there anything I can do so other people dont run into the same issues?
There’s this breeder that we’ve sorda accidently gotten from on 2 separate occasions. The first we weren’t very well versed with reptiles yet, and didnt know about wild-caught or red flags in shops.
The second, someone gave us a rescue snake, and after talking, discovered it came from this same breeder.
They have a less than stellar local reputation, so at this point im not surprised we had the issues we did.
The first was with a Uromastyx that we had to essentially syringe feed, and around the clock nurse back to health that ended up passing, the second was a pacman frog that they antagonized to the point of it refusing to eat for months no matter what we did, and the third and worst is a Brazilian Rainbow Boa.
We got this little boa in October, adn the breeder said she was roughly 6-7 months. He’d gotten her clutch second hand from a dfiferent breeder and was selling them at a Repticon in September.
This boa had SEVERE concaving in its underside that the previous owner(who surrendered to me) said had been there since the con. (I trust this owner more than the breeder based purely on reputation and her eagerness to find someone to help the snake and happily gave up a couple grand worth of supplies with it)
But anyway, the concave had been there since the con. The snake hadnt eaten in the entire month she had it. The ‘breeder’ said she’d eaten the week before the con, and had eaten 5 prior times before selling at the con.
No vet we talked with could figure out the issue. Perfectly bright , alert snake. Healthy in blood work + imaging. No collapsed lung, and it was 100% not starvation or dehydration, but the breeder SWORE that had to be the issue.
We talked with a vet from a vet research facility who studied her case and eventually said she believed the issue stemmed from a lack of belly muscle from the throat to just behind the lung and she said this was heavily likely to be an issue from birth.
Which obviously leads me to believe this breeder definitly lied about feedings and her body condition, as he most likely didn’t even check her over.
SO…what can I do about this? I spent 5 months, every single week force feeding her because she couldn’t eat on her own, and from October to now(February) she didn’t gain or lose a single gram. She was 1/3rd the size she should have been despite my attempts. Yesterday she had to be humanely euthinized.
It feels terrible to have tried so hard , but learn in the end it could have been avoided due to breeders just being attentive.
