ty for the info black.

i'll defaintly be useing frozen/thawed when I get another bp

You're right merlin, it probably would have been very skinny. I guess it's hard to say in this case.

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i still miss him dearly.
this summer i'm going to get another one.
his name will be Orochimaru II

Zaroba.. So sorry to hear about your BP, it's very hard to lose a pet and perhaps even more difficult when you don't know the cause.

Firstly, I seriously doubt that a food item could have caused such a prompt death, unless, as Merlin said, it had ingested poison, but since you purchased it from a pet shop I also sincerely doubt this is the case either. Since several people have mentioned the dangers of feeding live, so I won't go into that, but do be aware of the cruelty aspects and the danger aspects to your snake.


Having covered that, it's a shame you didn't have an autopsy done when the snake died. I would recommend that you do not buy another until you can perhaps find the cause of your first BPs death.

Someone said you had owned the snake for three years - is this correct? If not, how long did you own it?

Basic questions; what were the temps?, what was the housing like? humidity? and so on.

Another thing to note is - your feeding pattern was fine. An older, sub-adult/adult, Royal is fine to be fed every 2-3 weeks; their metabolisms are slower and they aren't growing at the rate they did as young snakes so they don't need so much food. Young snakes should be fed weekly if they will accept it, although one of our sub-adult females is a bit funny and will only eat every two weeks, even if offered weekly; she is quite capable of eating larger food items or more often, but she refuses so we have to feed her what she will take. Therefore starvation would not be a cause.


I understand where Ken is coming from, but with inclusion body disease there are often very obvious symptoms, one being a "star-gazing" tendency, another being the inability to control their body properly. We had a boa with suspected inclusion body disease, and she would flip upside down and not be able to right herself, and had severe lack of her head movements; it was difficult to miss.

Such a quick, unexpected death, with no symptoms, is quite a mystery and I'm intrigued as to the cause.. perhaps illness, parasites, etc. Do you know how old the snake was? And also, was it captive bred? Captive farmed? Wild caught?

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"If you know everything you may as well blow your brains out because the reason for existence is to learn more everyday." - Mark O'Shea, 2004

no clue on where it came from.
don't remember what the exact temps or humidity were, had read a few different BP guides when setting up his encloser and went by them.

yea, he was atleast 3 years old and think he was around 1 and a half feet long when I got him, had him until he was a little over 3ft long. also followed the one guide about the feeding. mouse or two every week when smaller, then when hitting 2 or 2 and a half feet (don't remember what the exact measurement was) go down to every two weeks. he was funny like yours often as well and sometimes he'd go a month without eating. or would only eat one of the two mice.

he was in a 20L with repti-litter bedding that had a log hide in the end of the tank with the heat lamp, some fake sticks and small pieces of sandstone around the middle, and a water bowl big enough to get completly in at the other end. fed him in a different container to prevent ingestion of the bedding.

seemed like a happy healthy snake.
he was strong enough to squeeze my wrist enough to put my hand to sleep.