GTP,S Prolapsing & Possible cause

[Amby_Purr]

Baden and waterrat,

I think that this is definately one of the most informative/important threads I have read on here. I think you are singlehandedly going to save quite a few GTP's with this sort of thread with the research you have done. Thankyou so much fot going to the effort of sharing it with us

 

[krusty]

very interesting......

 

[lgotje]

What usefull info thanks heaps

 

[Chadleystar]

Thanks Baden for the information,
I have a question though. From reading your posts on this matter it would seam to say (and please correct me if I am wrong) that prolapse occurs as a side effect of dehydration or prolonged dehydration. So my question is then other than through food is there any other way to rehydrate the animal after eating? If there was another way to rehydrate the animal after feeding and not through the food you could check to see if it is a dehydration related problem or maybe something to do with certain hydrations levels required to propley digest and deficate (these I imagine would be differnt for each snake, and in each growth cycle). Why do you think prolapse is more likly to occur in Juvies over adults? What changes ? Does it occur more often in CB GTP's from down south or is a fairly common thing that occurs with some regularity no matter where your GTP's are kept?

I do not own any snakes and these are just simple thoughts that I thought of as I read this thread so if they are off the mark please forgive me.

 

[Waterrat]

Chad, no doubt Baden will offer his explanation re- hydration soon.

This is an extract from my article published in Scales & Tails (issue 9 Jan. 2010). Bit long-winded but those are my thoughts on rectal prolapse:

The biggest worry on everybody’s mind is the dreaded rectal prolapsed, as if it was some kind of a Chondro cancer. Why is it prevalent in greens and not in other species? Anyone who watched a GTP defecating would have noticed that they usually suspend their posteriors from a branch before dropping their load, as we expect arboreal pythons to do. If the load is too heavy, the rectum everts out of the cloaca more than it normally would and if the snake is in poor condition (weak muscle contraction) or genetically
predisposed to prolapse, it may not be able to retract the exposed part. Having said that, there is no evidence that rectal prolapse is a hereditary condition - it’s just a general assumption.
I tend to think that prolapse, in most cases, is a result of overfeeding, feeding too large food items or a wrong type of food. This topic has been sufficiently discussed elsewhere in literature, so I will leave it at that. It has been suggested that neonates resting on very thin perches could be prone to prolapse more than those with a choice of perches of different thickness. In my opinion, forcing a neonate to rest on a thin perch due to lack of other choice is cruel to start with. However, my neonates have the option of several perches of different thickness and quite often they choose to sit on the thinnest piece there is for days and days, so I don’t think this is a potential cause of prolapse.
Some species of snakes eat, then retreat to their favourite resting spot and don’t move much until the meal is completely digested and the waste is passed out. When it comes to greens, I don’t like to see that. I firmly believe that if the snake moves around, the metabolic process is faster and the body movement also helps in even distribution of the gut contents. A good friend of mine has a female GTP with some history of prolapse, so a few days after each feeding, he takes her out of the enclosure onto the lawn where she defecates. This happens with a remarkable regularity. Exercise is healthy for all animals, including snakes. So, how do we encourage our green darlings to move about? They need some stimulus, which they certainly won’t find in a sterile white melamine box with one plastic perch and a water bowl. Snakes get excited by new smells, different surroundings, change in atmospheric pressure, rain, sunshine, whatever - they are inquisitive animals and it’s upon us to make their lives interesting.

Are Australian native GTPs less prone to prolapse that the others? I tend to say yes because I have never had a single case of rectal prolapse in my collection but I feel that it has more to do with the size and robustness of the newborn babies rather then their geographical origins. The sooner they get off the pinkies onto fuzzy mice the better because by then they start ingesting bones and fur, ever so important in digestion. What I am saying is; the bigger the neonate, the sooner it will switch to a better diet.

 

[Waterrat]

A few more thought on hydration, i.e. drinking water;
many GTP keepers spray their animals / cages daily or every second day, etc.. We often read reports that their snakes suck up droplets of water after being sprayed and some keepers even believe that’s enough, that’s all they need. It may be so - I haven’t got any evidence to argue against it but do have evidence that my 9 months-old juveniles drink up to 15ml of water from their water containers in one go. Once they get their heads down and start drinking, I can watch the rate as they swallow and these drinking sessions go on for quite a long time. 15 ml is quite a bit of water for such small snakes. By the way, I never spray my juveniles or adults. Could it be that having access to “easy licking” from daily sprays, they perhaps don’t drink as much as they should? I know it’s a highly speculative theory but there might be something to it. It reminds me of a parallel; people who nibble all day along are never hungry and often skip main meals. Not good, is it?

 

[Pythoninfinite]

Interesting thread. I feed my GTPs on thawed stuff most of the time, and always straight from the bucket of hot water. The extra water contained in saturated fur must assist with extra hydration if it's needed.

I've only had one reported prolapse in 3 years of breeding, in a juvie, which I retrieved from the purchaser and still have at home. It proplapses regularly, but not every time it defecates, and I have been simply watching it for the past 6-8 months. In every case, the prolapsed tissue returns to normal after 48-72 hours. The snake has good appetite, but is a little small (probably because I don't feed it as regularly as the others.

As Michael has pointed out, prolapsing is more common in very young snakes, and anyone who breeds chondros will know that newly feeding babies always pass slimy brown bowel motions for the first few weeks.

I suspect the problem is caused by a combination of factors, not entirely related to food. With many species, even humans, inactivity is a great constipator. There are few snakes more inactive than GTPs, and in my experience, some are 'regular', others can go for a couple of months between bowel motions. I suspect that the snakes absorb most of their water through the lower bowel wall, as in humans, so it stands to reason that a captive chondro which never has to move to thermoregulate (as it must in the rainforest), gets fed on the perch without needing to work for it's meal,(and far more than it would ever eat in the wild), is likely to suffer side effects from the stasis captivity forces upon it.

The extra hydration Baden suggests may be important would definitely be useful in assisting captive snakes avoid reduced fluid in the bowel, but probably doesn't translate to wild snakes, whose habits and activity levels must be very different to those we see in our captives.

Jamie

 

[Waterrat]

Spot on Jamie, for a long time I have been advocating - give them plenty of exercise by making their cage interior interesting, complex and "change the furniture" from time to time. I would humbly disagree that GTPs are largely inactive snakes, they behave like any other python after dark. I watch the juvies crawling and tunneling through the damp sphagnum moss (I use for substrate), up and down the perches for hours every night. That's exercise.
My routine is this: clean the cages and give them fresh water one day before feeding (they always drink when they see fresh water) and after feeding they have water available 24/7. On day 5-6, they crap with absolute regularity. That is for the > 1 year juveniles. No spraying, the moist moss is good enough to keep the humidity up.

M

 

[Southside Morelia]

Far out M, i'm always asleep when their moving around and hardly ever watch...lol

I do however think the theory of licking droplets from their bodies through lack of hydration, "could" be spot on...reason, I have a water bowl in the enclosure and I also have an auto-misting system that "most" times (depending on the resting location of the animal on that day) sprays directly on the animal and it never drinks the droplets from its back.

Now... contrary to this about a year or so back, I didn't have a water bowl in the enclosure and it used to drink from the droplets on its body!

Draw your own conclusion from that!

I did also inject a pinkie rat with a syringe full of water the other day and blew it up....the theory is flawed baden...lol

 

[Waterrat]

The other thing we have to consider in relation to prolapse - our captives are fed regularly for most of their lives, usually fed the same type of food. That is not natural! The wild ones get feed now and then with long pauses between meals, so their digestive system does not work like a clock. These are hypothetical questions but are our feeding routines good for our snakes? Anyone who have seen wild greens would know, they look anorexic. Because they probably meant to be.

Scott, next time inject less water and heat up the rat in a microwave (2 min. on full). :shock:

 

[Pythoninfinite]

I was really referring to most greens in captivity, in cooler climes Michael - if they're lucky, in a 4x2x2, steady temperature, no breezes, very little environmental stimulation, and regular food - a pretty uninteresting life which leads to the kind of stasis which could cause constipation and the health issues described here..

I admit I am currently guilty of this heresy with my beautiful animals, but this summer I'm going to build a greenhouse here on the mid north coast (where the real winters are quite short), arrange heating and cooling as per commercial horticulture, in an effort to get my tropical animals into a more natural environment. I have quite a few greens, a pair each of scrubbies and RSPs, and would dearly like to have them in more natural conditions, so that not only are their lives more interesting, I'll also feel as though I'm doing the best I can for them.

Jamie

 

[Southside Morelia]

The other thing we have to consider in relation to prolapse - our captives are fed regularly for most of their lives, usually fed the same type of food. That is not natural! The wild ones get feed now and then with long pauses between meals, so their digestive system does not work like a clock. These are hypothetical questions but are our feeding routines good for our snakes? Anyone who have seen wild greens would know, they look anorexic. Because they probably meant to be.

Scott, next time inject less water and heat up the rat in a microwave (2 min. on full). :shock:

For me M, you are a Mentor when it comes to the old Chondro! Not only did I get the idea of placing water bowls in the Greens enclosure from you, which substantiates yours, Badens and others theory, which I do concur, I WILL now heat up my pinkies in the microwave for the little hatchlings, as I now know, I have been doing it wrong all this time, ie heating up in hot "NOT" boiling water.... Thanks for the tip mate!! :lol:

 

[Chadleystar]

The other thing we have to consider in relation to prolapse - our captives are fed regularly for most of their lives, usually fed the same type of food. That is not natural! The wild ones get feed now and then with long pauses between meals, so their digestive system does not work like a clock. These are hypothetical questions but are our feeding routines good for our snakes? Anyone who have seen wild greens would know, they look anorexic. Because they probably meant to be.

Is there not a difference between captive breed (CB) and wild species though? As CB I would have thought that we would be trying too provide the python with the best enviroment and ideal conditioning as we humans know it. Does that meant that is right for the python? I am not sure, and I surpose until some big studies are done on Australia's Native GTP's with some regularity so that results can be compared then we can only assume (some with more knowledge than others) that we are heading down the right track.
I have not seen wild greens and it does not surprise me to hear that they are on the lean side, but as generations of CB GTP's come through I would imagine that they become more robust as they have come from healthy parents unlike wild GTP's that I would imagine only breed when food is abundant and the weather is warmer to help ensure that the majority of her clutch will have the best chance for survival. Again just thoughts flying around in my head that I thought to share.

 

[Waterrat]

Chad, the big studies you are presumably thinking of are impossible to conduct. How would you study / observe feeding frequencies in wild GTPs? Half of the time you cant even see them (in the canopy), not to mention witnessing a feeding session. We don't know what the survival and mortality rates are in wild GTPs and how (if at all) it related to food intake.
Again, when it comes to body condition (skinny v well fed) you have to ask, which is the fittest (in Darwinian terms)? Just because the wild ones don't look to flash to us keepers, doesn't mean they're not a better / fitter stock. We know for a fact that obese snakes have low reproductive potential.

 

[Chadleystar]

Hehe.... I am always have been a big beleiver in nothing is impossible But what you says makes alot of sence, and seeing the challanges that this type of study if ever taken on would be huge. Remember we once thought walking on the moon was impossible as well *Sigh* I only wish I had the type of money to throw at a challange like this as the information gathered over an extended period of time would be invaluable to species and help us all better understand one of mother natures amazing and secretive animals. Come on Tuesday Lotto 20mil!!

 

[zuesowns]

this thread is very interesting. keep it up you GTP genius's!

 

[Pythoninfinite]

I'd venture to say that in almost every case, in all species, wild reptiles are far leaner & more racy than their captive counterparts. This is especially so with pythons - in the bush they have to work for their living, and they don't get fed every Tuesday night... They also universally carry some sort of parasite load as well.

Jamie

 

[Bushman]

Baden, what proportion or percentage of your study group (n=13) were Australian native Morelia viridis?

After a fairly extensive study of a group of adult GTP,s, l feel quite stongly the problem is a lack of fluid in the lower alimentary canal [bowel] also l believe GTP,s have a fairly weak peristalsis particularly when partially dry. I used an endoscope to check the bowel in all the cases [13] to check for colouration of bowel wall immediately after a bowel movement [not easy to organise on someone else,s critter] but in cases where the owner/s were 100% positive no prolapsing what so ever had taken place and they fed defrosted food items in ALL cases the lower tract of bowel was very red and appeared abbrazed although NO prolapsing had taken place, l believe the dryish urates which is the white chalkie part of the stool to be the culprit, this is very basically [the urates] a form of uric acid which is a crystaline product of protein metabolism [basically]......now when the test subjects, that were being fed thawed out food items [rats] had 15mls of very warm water [per kilo of snake] injected into the stomach of the rat then immediately after the next bowel movement [re-examined] the bowel remained a pale mushroom pink and after 2-3 feeds like this the bowel colour remained very stable [pale pink]........now for those feeding fresh killed food items the dose appeared to be 10mls per kilo of GTP........this gives the GTP approx. 20-25% of the bowel movement a brown water in appearance and volume and after speaking to some very long term keepers here and in the USA this is highly desirable, for a yearling green the dose l would suggest is a straight 5mls......now in the first instance some keepers were of the very firm opinion their Greens were "spot on" but after this study [call it what you wish] EVERYBODY agreed their GTP,s were better off and especially when they saw for themselves [through the endoscope] the different colouration in the bowel wall .....cheers solar 17 [Baden]

 

[JoMo]

Congratulations for one of the most interesting discussions I´ve read on prolapsing.

Some of you have already mentioned what I believe are the main causes of prolapsing: dehydration (sp?) and lack of exercise.

Bearing that in mind, and in order to avoid i, I have doing the following with my GTPs:

- rich environments (planted terrariums) since they´re a couple of months old (which caused some alarm in a US forum I go to in the beginning, but is strating to have followers);
example of neonate enclosures

and of adult enclosures

- always have a water bowl for them to drink (and they use it a lot);

- mist 2 days before and 2 days after feeding (feed on Mondays; mist on Wed and Sat).

So far, I haven´t had prolapses under my care. I have a GTP that prolapsed under the previous owner care but not (yet, at least) with me

I only feed f/t- usually defrost during the day and feed a night; once in a while defrost in hot water

Just some thoughts

 

[Waterrat]

It's great to see MoJo, unfortunately, the Australian trend is - plastic tubs, racks, PVC pipes for perches tied together with plastic cable ties. How boring to look at and how boring for a snake that has to live in it.
Your enclosures are inspirational.