Urgent answer needed for piece of mind

[sunny_girl]

Hi, I have had my diamond for approx. 4 weeks. She is about 6months old. She is my first snake. She likes to eat when she is alone and usually takes the mouse about 5-10mins after i put it in her cage, so this morning I thought it would be ok to put the mouse in as I was leaving for work. When I got home this evening she was only just eating it which means it has been in there for 8 hours before she ate it. Should I be worried or am I safe in thinking if it were spoiled she wouldn't eat it?
I won't be doing that again but in the mean time please help!

 

[souldoubt]

She should be ok. Do keep an eye on her though and if anything abnormal happens like she starts to show signs of depression (eg. not moving around much - keep in mind that she will probably be quite for up to a few days after a feed), if she has multiple abnormal defecations (diarrhoea, blood in faeces etc) or anything else out of the ordinary occurs then a vet trip may be in order depending on what it is.

It is better to feed snakes after dark, once they are established you can feed them anytime but personally I still find better results feeding pythons later in the evening.

 

[sunny_girl]

Thankyou... My next question was going to be what signs should I look for if something was wrong but thanks for reading my mind
I will now feed her at dusk and take it out if she hasn't eaten before I head to bed.
This evening I have also noticed that she might be in shed, her eyes are a little glazed and she was bumping into things, her skin looks wrinkly when she is coiled and she is quite dull, perhaps this is why she delayed her eating but she still ate.

 

[souldoubt]

A lot of snakes wont eat when they're coming up for a shed so yeah maybe it discouraged her a little. Oh and Im sure I dont need to say but multiple abnormal defecations was more in regards to the wet poos/diarrhoea - if blood presents in the faeces she should go to a vet ASAP because the sooner you get an infection like that under control the better.
I did also forget to mention that signs of a bacterial infection can be as subtle as her just growing really slowly, this happened with my Jungle carpet. She had a bacterial infection for quite a long time and the only signs were intermittent diarrhoea and slow growth - whenever an animals immune system is working hard they struggle to put weight on - so although in that case it isn't immediately life threatening it still does require treatment at some stage.
I think you'll find that she'll be right though, reptiles are generally pretty resilient. Good luck with her