Garter Snake Birth Defect, Failure to Grow
 

Hey
I have two juvenile garter snakes from the same clutch born on the 8th of July. One is perfectly healthy and growing quickly. The other was born with a bulging eye which has since gone down and regained partial vision, but it hasn't grown any noticeable amount since birth. Here's a couple pictures (sorry they're just quick snaps from my phone):
http://www.juliagracearts.com/storag...JuvieSize1.jpg

http://www.juliagracearts.com/storag...JuvieSize2.jpg

As you can see there's a huge disparity between the sizes of the two. If I were to come across them in the wild I'd say they were from different clutches! The larger one is around 11" long, maybe 12" by now and the little one is maybe just 7". I weighed them earlier in the month, the larger one was 7g and the little one 2g. I am sure the larger one has gained more by now, but the little one seems to remain the same size.

I also noticed that it appears to have some internal deformities that are really hard to convey via a picture, since it mostly just "feels" different than my other snakes. Here's a picture of its belly where you can kinda see some lumps and bumps (especially down by the tail):
http://www.juliagracearts.com/storag...JuvieBelly.jpg
(It also has a spot of scale rot, being treated with neosporin. The others are free of scale rot.)

The large one is eating pinkies and the little one is eating pinky parts. They also get guppies, tuffies, earth worms. The little one is an eager feeder and is a less shy and more active than the large one, but just isn't growing.

I did have a 3rd from the clutch that had even worse birth defects (these were the only 2 out of 30+ babies that had any issues), but it didn't make it.

I'm fairly certain there isn't anything I can do, other than feed it, and I'm honestly surprised it's survived this long. If anyone has any theories on anything I could do for it or how long it may live I'd love to hear them. It would be interesting if it lived a long life at this size, but I'm sure the chances of that are pretty slim. If it doesn't grow soon I will have to remove it from the cage with the larger one and the northern water snake that also shares their cage since they'll probably eat it eventually.

Anyone have this happen with any other baby snakes?
- Julia Grace

Tons of babies are born with defects for example: missing eye, bulged eye, kinks, no tongue etc.. But its usually pretty common to cull the babies at birth (AKA freezer babies) since the babies will not live a normal life they are put out of misery shortly after birth. Hope this helpped.

It's nice to hear it's normal. I guessed as much, but wasn't sure. It was my first clutch of snakes (from a gravid female I rescued), so I've never culled anything before. I debated about culling the other one that ended up dying, but it died before I really made up my mind. This one is perfectly happy though and eats and crawls around just fine, so unless it starts to show some sign of being in misery or of its body just shutting down I'll just let it live out its life with me. I've grown rather fond of it and am rather intrigued. Heh. Thanks for letting me know it's normal to have a couple deformed ones!
- J

As long as it's an eager eater, active and shows no sign of distress or manifestations of illness, I would not cull it either.

I definitely would move it into a separate tank though and keep a close watch on that eye - I can clearly see the bulging eye in the first pic. It's very interesting to me, as well!

Actually in that first picture, the eye that appears to be bulging is the normal eye. It appears to bulge because the other eye has sunken in some. Actually, here's a close up of it's eye shortly after birth so you can see the difference. I'm pretty amazed myself, especially that it has some vision in that eye. I thought it'd be permanently blind.
http://www.juliagracearts.com/storag...bySnakeEye.jpg

I'll make sure to get it a separate cage soon. I'm playing musical caging at the moment, but once that's done I'll have a nice 12x12x12 exo for it, which considering it's size should be just fine.

Thanks!
- Julia Grace