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Unexpected Death
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by virgilblack on August 1, 2008
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Maybe someone on this site can help. I HAD 4 south american rattlesnakes that were healthy. They were eating and moving as usual. Three days ago, they all just died. The young (babies from last spring) are all doing fine. There was no sign of any infections or injuries. The enclosures were cleaned regularly. I'm thinking some sort of virus...but no other snakes are showing any symptoms. I've disinfected everything. Complete sanitizing. Does anyone have any thoughts or ideas? Have this happened to anyone before?
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RE: Unexpected Death
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by Cro on August 1, 2008
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Lightning ?
Three healthy snakes do not just die on the same day from a virus.
Most likely some sort of Contamination or Poisoning.
Food, water, substrate, pesticide use, mites ? electrical shock, etc.
What changed ? When were they fed ? When was the water changed ? When was the substrate changed ? Was the cage where incoming sunlight could have overheated it ?
Look into things like that first.
Best Regards John Z
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RE: Unexpected Death
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by virgilblack on August 1, 2008
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More information....the cages were cleaned 5 days prior to the death. The water in all my enclosures are changed every other day...if there is no problems. I change the water immegiately if the snakes crap in it or use it to take a bath. I try to keep the water as clean and pure as possible. I use bottled water...no tap. There was no way that the sun is the culprit. Electric shock is out...checked everything. My entire collection uses the same substrate, water, heating elements....thanks for the thoughts.
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RE: Unexpected Death
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by Cro on August 1, 2008
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Any chance the food was contaminated ?
Did you get mice from a pet store, or use frozen thawed, etc. Were they all fed the same day ?
Best Regards John Z
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RE: Unexpected Death
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by BigBend66 on August 1, 2008
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Mice would be my guess. It has happened to be a few times where a group of mice carry some sort of disease and kill the snake or snakes. I know of a guy in N Carolina who lost his entire Crotalus collection to a bunch of bad mice....
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RE: Unexpected Death
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by virgilblack on August 1, 2008
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I raise my own mice...all the snakes are fed the same day...now that doesn't always work...but the last feeding for all the snakes were in 2 days. All my venomous was fed one day and all the natives were fed the next.
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RE: Unexpected Death
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by virgilblack on August 1, 2008
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To further the delima...all the mice came from the same lot...i.e. same freezer bag...so they were all frozen at the same time...from the same cage...and were all the same size...go figure...I'm at a loss.
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RE: Unexpected Death
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by jared on August 1, 2008
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I had a batch of "poisoned" mice kill off a large amount of snakes in my collection awhile back. Everything that ate that batch died except my cottonmouths, go figure. I always wondered if the poison mice was intentional but never necropsied the snakes, though they are all still on ice if i want to.
Jared
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RE: Unexpected Death
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by FSB on August 1, 2008
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RE Jared's response, I too have noticed that cottonmouths seem to have a resistance to disease and infection, and an aquaintance whose collection was almost entirely wiped out by the dread paramyxovirus virus reported that his copperheads all survived unaffected. I wonder if they might have antibacterial peptides in their blood similar to those recently discovered in the blood of alligators and Australian crocodiles?
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