Light Green Urate & Foul Smell
 

Hi,

I picked up a 2 year old male hognose off of craigslist last week and have him in quarantine. He had mites and I've soaked him twice. His overall behavior is healthy and he ate last week. When I went to change his paper towel today. I noticed that his urate was a light green and his poop had a foul smell.

I have 4 other hognoses and none of their poop has smelled as strong enough to stink up the whole enclosure, but I don't know if that just has to do with the poop being on aspen.

I want to collect a fecal sample to give to my vet, but thought I would get your opinions while I wait for it in the coming days.

Hi Sam-
I'm not a hognose person, with that said, what I think I'm seeing are two different things.
1. Urate (green & white)
2. The dark mass appears to not be poop at all, but rather vomited rodent/meal.

It looks like your hognose vomited the meal you gave it and then by chance also left urate in the same area leading you to believe it was both together.
The vomited rodent would also explain the "foul smell".

Best I can see from the pictures. Good luck.

Uh oh that doesn't sound good. I just assumed it was dried out poop because it was over the heating side and his enclosure the CL ppl gave us had that same smell but more faint so I cleaned everything and threw out all the bedding. But now I'm noticing how different it looks to poop and I believe you're right about him pooping nearby cause there was another piece of smaller poop I didn't get a picture of.

I'll avoid feeding him but I still want to take him in for a checkup just to be safe.

Thanks for the response Robert!

1. Something is making him want to throw up: stress, temperature, sick? Even the stress of being infested with mites. A check up will help out.
2. No problem - good luck.

I believe it might be the mites and the temperature. I just got him a new thermostat because the one he came with would let the temperature drop ~8 degrees before quickly heating up the heating pad. I also found that he would push the probe off even when I secured it down w/ a rock so it would heat up too high.

Typically you place the probe 'under' the cage if possible. Then you regulate the thermostat based on it being under the cage instead. This will eliminate the snake's ability to move it.

Do you mean heating 'tape' or an actual home health care heating pad?

One other suggestion. Soaking 'helps' kill some of the mites but not all. Mites will travel to the part of the body that is out of the water and soaking doesn't kill the mites in the cages that are roaming around.
I used to lightly spray this on the paper towels in the cage and leave in there for about a week. This should kill the mites 10x better than soaking will. You can pick it up at Wal-mart.

He has a Zoomed U.T.H. I usually place the probe in the tank for my other snakes, but I'll try that for him just to be safe cause he's pretty active in turning over his whole tank.

I'll defiantly do that for the paper towels to avoid stressing him out more.

I made an appointment for him this Friday.

I agree with Robert that you should use a permethrin spray to treat the snake's environment for mites. Snake mites can also travel tens of feet fairly quickly, so keep on eye on your other snakes; their enclosures may need to be treated as well.

I also agree that the probe goes outside the enclosure whenever possible. Many of us tape the probe to the heat element; this works very well for me. Not all probes play well with moisture, either, even if they purport to be waterproof; Herpstat probes were recently upgraded to deal with moisture better (I had one of the old ones fail in a humid viv).

It is good that you're taking the snake to the vet. I'm not convinced that the mass in the picture is regurgitated food. It looks like what in my snakes I've assumed to be something-less-than-fully digested rodent; stress might explain why the snake's digestion is off (they're not so unlike humans, really). The smell is suspicious, though, so Robert may be right. I don't know what to make of the green urates, though. There is all sort of speculation on various herp forums about green urates, none of it based on any evidence so far as I found in a quick search. A good vet will be able to give you an accurate assessment.