I have a nice little low white pied female . She stoped eating and wasn’t doing well. My reptile vet found nematodes. My vet said that feeding live can be the cause even if the live mice are purchased from a pet store or supplier. I have never fed wild caught rodents and the snake came from a good breeder,NERD.
I had my snake treated and she is eating again and looks better. However, I am wondering how common this problem is. I have never ran into much information about needing to worm domestic born/bred snakes.
Roundworms are very common. Not sure about it in snakes, but rodents yet.
It can be an issue when feeding live, if the source of your feeders has worms in their colony the can be passed on to your snakes.
There are solutions to prevent this in the future
Feed F/T
Find a source with clean rodents
Breed your own
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I have started a colony of ASF rats, I feed most of my snakes frozen thawed, but this girl won’t eat anything but live. Considering all of the controversy about feeding live, I’m surprised this doesn’t get mentioned more often. I’m also wondering if I should treat my other snakes. But the vet visit was around $100.00 I have about 20 snakes and my vet wasn’t willing to sell me the wormer without seeing the snakes. I have never seen anthelmintics marketed for reptiles. One see it for dogs,cats horses…
Usually the go to drug which can be obtained without prescription when it comes to de-worming is invermectin, now you have to be careful on the dosage if you decide to treat your feeder colony or snakes.
You might find this interesting as well http://www.reptilesmagazine.com/Reptile-Health/Disease-Management/Nematode-Parasites-Treatment-Ivermectin/
Thank you. I will get a copy of the book from the article asap.