My notes on Gut Extrusion

[etana]

Two weeks ago, one of my biggest and strongest snails came down with gut extrusion, also known as craw prolapse. 

Short version: 
I managed to successfully treat it with the ideas presented here and then discussed further here. I punctured the craw that was hanging out of his mouth, and both bright and brown liquid would come out. The snail didn't trust me enough to let me push the craw back in, but with the extra liquid gone, he swallowed it back in by himself and is doing well now.

Long version:
What I find curious here is that I saw this develop over time. The snail had started sleeping with his mouth open and his face stretched long months ago. A bit before the full prolapse, something blue (which I now understand was the tip of the craw) would show out of his mouth, but he would swallow it back in when awakened. The snail appeared massive for the size of his shell, and he was mean to other snails and also distrustful towards me, for example dramatically refusing to stick to my hands - possible signs of discomfort, especially now that I look back on it. 

I don't know what the reason could be. There are no other cases of this here, no one even sleeps with their mouth open at all. No parasites, a few harmless bugs and a couple mites but nothing that seems interested in the snails at all, definitely no Riccardoella mites. I make a point to not clean up too much, I only do very partial soil changes, and I only ever sterilize stuff that's going in the tank for the first time ever, so it can't be the loss of gut bacteria either. I don't know why he got this at all. My best guess is an innate tendency to have this happen.

I heated up a needle to sterilize it, then washed the snail under the tap as you can do that here in Finland. I placed him on a clean dish and with him making extremely intense eye contact with me, I punctured the craw where it looked the tightest. The first liquid that came out was bright, and it was with so much pressure that it squirted out. Then I took a spoon and tried to push the craw back in, but the snail just retracted and covered his face with his foot edge, so I couldn't do anything. I sat and waited for him to come out again, and when he did, I punctured another hole in the craw just in case, and then sat and waited again. The snail was a sorry sight and did everything very slowly.

Eventually the snail started to attempt swallowing the craw back in. This time quite a bit of brown liquid flowed out. The snail acted like he knew what he was doing, he would push the craw against his shell edge and guide it with his foot. However I couldn't wait till the end of it because I had some other errands to run, so I placed him in his home tank and hoped for the best.

The next time I saw him, he had several friends sitting with him. He seemed grumpy and tired, but the craw was completely in and the snail's mouth looked normal.

Since then he's been getting gradually more active and less grumpy, and I guess he connected my hands with the relief of the pressure, because he also acts more positive towards me. He isn't quite as keen to NOT deal with me anymore, in fact he reaches over for eye stalk pats and little touches of the lips. Or maybe he's just nicer because he's in less pain, but either way it's sweet. He looks thinner than he used to, but I've seen him eat, so his previous size may have actually been swelling rather than muscle.

So that's another anecdotal case of this horrid condition. I seem to have left with more questions than answers, but I'm glad my snail is okay.

[Cashell]

Ouch! A scary thing to deal with, but it's great to hear that you managed to treat it, using the knowledge that was shared here.

[etana]

The snail in the OP is doing well, he is eating and pooping normally and appears content.

However, looks like I have a second case coming. Today, a sibling of the parent of the OP snail slept with his face stretched long and his mouth open, and now that I awakened him, he appears unusually wide at the neck, he's grumpy and slow, he won't stick to my hand as tightly as usually, and he makes odd scrunched up faces like he's holding stuff in really hard.

I am taking many more pictures than I did with the first snail, and keeping a close eye on him, ready with my needle.

[Elesari]

Oh no! Please let us know what happens with both of them.

[etana]

All right... I will refer to the snail in the OP as "Snail #1" and the second snail as "Snail #2".

Snail #1 was doing well, though yesterday I saw him sleeping with a very odd facial expression. I grabbed him, he seemed more deeply unconscious than just sleep as he didn't retract, but then he woke up, sorted out his face, and I saw he had just pooped a big normal poop.

In the evening he was attached to the tank door and I offered him a super thin slice of sweet potato, and he felt it with his mouth for a couple of minutes but didn't rasp. That was weird, since usually snails can't resist thinly sliced sweet potato, and his earlier poop was mostly sweet potato as well, so it's not like he doesn't like it.

This morning (as we speak) he has the craw tip showing from his mouth again so I'm expecting a second full prolapse. I will do the same I did before, but I want to stop this from happening.

Snail #2 has been very active, running around the ceiling and all over the decorations. He had a big gunk of yellow slime inside his lung, but it fell out, and that's when he started running. I'm keeping an eye on him.

[seastar]

Ish! I've read that some people (I can't remember who) had snails acting like Snail #2 and they died after a few days... That's very worrying!

As for Snail #1, he's having gut extrusion AGAIN? I didn't know it was possible... I didn't know gut extrusion at all...

[etana]

Snail #1 had his second prolapse today. Odd thing is it was not identical to the first one. It was as though something else was swollen. Also the liquid that came out was more like slime.

I treated it the same way, and the snail was such a good sport about it. This time he even let me help put the craw back in. There appears to be a lot of pressure inside him and I don't know why. I almost want to donate him to science just so we'd get some answers about this horrific condition. I just don't know (yet) of anyone local who'd care.

The snail is currently wrestling to put the craw in its place, but I think he's winning this time, again.

morningcoffee are you aware of any research on this?

[morningcoffee]

Apr 19, 2018 12:54:03 GMT etana said:

Snail #1 had his second prolapse today. Odd thing is it was not identical to the first one. It was as though something else was swollen. Also the liquid that came out was more like slime.

I treated it the same way, and the snail was such a good sport about it. This time he even let me help put the craw back in. There appears to be a lot of pressure inside him and I don't know why. I almost want to donate him to science just so we'd get some answers about this horrific condition. I just don't know (yet) of anyone local who'd care.

The snail is currently wrestling to put the craw in its place, but I think he's winning this time, again.

morningcoffee are you aware of any research on this?

I'm really sorry, but I'm not. Unfortunately it seems it's not something that is well understood or studied. I'll see if I can find anything or if muddydragon might have any ideas.
Really hope your snails improve and it doesn't keep recurring - you're doing a great job of caring for them.

[etana]

Apr 19, 2018 11:42:08 GMT seastar said:

Ish! I've read that some people (I can't remember who) had snails acting like Snail #2 and they died after a few days... That's very worrying!

Yellow gunk falling out and then running? Yeah I don't know what happened, but when he's not asleep, he still keeps on running and he's surprisingly fast too. His face looks good and his body doesn't look swollen at all, so a prolapse doesn't look imminent, but I'll continue to pay extra attention. 

Snail #1 has had his craw stay in for 20 hours now since the second prolapse and its treatment. I haven't seen him eat yet, but it's understandable. Of course he might have eaten a bit at night, so I'll watch for when he poops again. 

Thanks morningcoffee. I really wish I could do more than observe and stay ready to treat the symptom instead of the cause. 

[etana]

Snail #1 is very grumpy (who wouldn't be in his situation?), but last night he started eating again. He seemed to be a bit tender in the face and unsure about rasping on things like sweet pepper. I prepared some watery spirulina, and to my joy, he immediately drank a whole lot of it. So good so far, again.

[seastar]

Phew! Hope Snail #1 will be okay!

[etana]

Well... Snail #1 seemed to be on the mend. He ate, pooped, and was very positive about being on my hand. However, tonight I went out, and when I came back, his craw was hanging outside his mouth again.

Again, it looks strikingly different than it did the first two times. 

I punctured it again. So much liquid comes out. The snail seems quite exhausted, but once again fights to suck the craw back in.

The liquid doesn't have a noticeable smell, it's clear and slightly slime-like. But this just seems so wrong. I wish I knew if I'm making things worse somehow, or really anything at all. What the body part is that keeps coming out, what is happening, and if he's suffering so badly that it's not a snaily life worth living anymore.


Snail #2 isn't currently showing any symptoms of craw prolapse. I don't really know if he even has that uniquely high activity level anymore. The other day he was in a romantic mood and tried to woo Snail #1, who wasn't interested.


Edit 20 minutes later: The snail has squirmed, retracted, came out again, pushed against his own shell and also my finger, for these twenty minutes. Now the craw is completely in again. Poor guy is so tired. I guess I'm staying up with him for a while longer. 

[etana]

One more update tonight. Snail #1 got the craw to stay in and appeared happier, so I returned him to the home tank. Right now he is kissing one of his friends right on the face. I've seen dying snails do that many times, as well as amorous ones. I hope he is just happy to see his friend and not saying goodbye.

[etana]

I need to do something. I'm going with a wild guess that there is a some kind of inflammation, and rub castor oil on his skin. That is, if he still has time.

[seastar]

Ish! Poor snail! 3 gut extrusions! Hope it'll get better and not worse!

[etana]

Yeah he's been through so much!

Today, he appears very happy, if a little shrunken by dehydration. I got countless snaily kisses and eye stalk pats when I was checking on him just earlier. He keeps on getting tamer.

I now have medical quality castor oil, and a syringe and needle combo so that I can help much better and with less damage to the snail if another prolapse happens. I will start applying the castor oil once I've studied up on it and decided on a dosage.

[etana]

I decided to put 0.3 ml of castor oil on the skin of Snail #1, and lightly massage him as I do, every night for now.

At first he made such grumpy faces at me, I almost felt bad for doing it after he'd just started trusting me. However, the third night he took a sip of it off his skin right after applying, and sat calmly for the short massage. I'd like to think that it means he finds it positive.

He looks thin and sleeps a lot, but his muscles are strong and his craw has stayed in for 5 days now.

Someone I know who has studied nursing said that this sounds like the type of sterile inflammation that causes "watery knees" in humans. Fluid builds up and eventually causes other problems, and in the snail's case it causes a huge prolapse because he has no internal bone structures to keep his organs in their place.

[etana]

A boring update, but in a good way. The craw of Snail #1 has stayed in for nearly 7 days now, which is longer than there was between the second and third prolapse. Last night when I applied his 0.3 ml of castor oil, he was even more eager to eat it - he even made the big round face that snails do when they find their favourite foods, and after licking it off of his foot, he ran around the tank looking energetic.

Snail #2 is a bit mean to other snails, so he's possibly in some discomfort, but not showing any signs of prolapse, not even the small signs that I could see earlier. I might give him some castor oil too just to give him a boost.

[etana]

I may have spoken too soon, Snail #1 was sleeping with a weird expression again. Sigh.

[etana]

Ok... I'm just going to keep updating everything even though it's slightly boring, which is good I guess.

Snail #1's weird expression went away again. He's not pooping normally as far as I can tell, but castor oil is very nutritious and he is active, so I'm not awfully concerned. I upped his dosage a little bit (by 0.1mm) because his original dose was calculated by how much humans can eat, and he only eats a bit of it, though his skin may absorb it better than human skin does.

Snail #2 definitely had the pre-prolapse face this morning, so I gave him his first dose of castor oil just now.

I also rubbed some onto an old snail who has a lot of nasty scarring and has taken to sleeping a bit retracted.

[etana]

Another boring update: Both snails look good tonight. Snail #1 is definitely interested in food again, and Snail #2 doesn't look like he's going to prolapse at any moment.

I'm obviously not sure that I can attribute it all to the castor oil, but I'm going to keep rubbing it into the feet of both snails as it doesn't seem to be doing any harm.

[etana]

All right, 5 days since the last update. Slightly against what I said in the update above, I stopped administering the castor oil for three days, just to see if anything would change when they were off it.

Today Snail #1 had the pre-prolapse "swollen mouth" expression again as he was sleeping. 

Good news is, he was sleeping on a big colourful poop so he'd definitely been eating merrily just before. Anyway, I gave him some castor oil immediately and observed him on my hand. When he woke up his mouth looked more normal, but he was very slow, looking wider behind the head than normal, and very easily startled. The easily startled bit can be partly attributed to me waking him up though, even my healthiest snails are that way for a while if I wake them up.

I put him back into the tank, and he just fell over, retracted a bit and didn't care to correct himself. However, I placed some rotting sweet pepper in the tank so that he could reach it, and from his position, he stretched out and started sucking on it, so he's definitely not the worst he's been. It's also been 15 days since his last full prolapse, which is promising.

I'll go back to giving him the oil regularly and seeing if the swelling goes away again, and also if the prolapses stay away, since without the oil they recurred, and it's appeared to be different since I started giving it. I'm hoping to see more evidence for my hypothesis that castor oil might help with this condition, as long as it's not in the most acute phase with the actual prolapse that needs puncturing for pressure relief asap. 

Snail #2 has been busy trying to woo everyone and sitting on smaller snails, no weird swelling since he last got castor oil, but I am continuing keeping an eye on him too. Might give him a drop of the oil too once he wakes up tonight.


I was worried earlier that all this prolapsing might mean that it's not a snaily life worth continuing, but between the prolapses and especially since the last one, Snail #1 has had some very good days (well, nights) full of good food and play, and days of sleep without any obvious problems in the mouth. I think I've made the right decisions after all.

[etana]

Boring update. There hasn't been another full prolapse. There was a third snail with a swollen face, but it went away.

The pre-prolapse facial swelling appears to come and go, and I'd like to say that it goes away when I apply the castor oil, but I can't be certain as I have too few snails with this condition.

All the snails are interested in food and also poop normally when their faces aren't swollen.

[agrif01]

very useful and interesting discussion! how are they now?

[GailTheSnail]

I looked but didn't see it mentioned - what species are the snails this post is about? One of my garden snails came down with gut extrusion, the first and only time I've ever seen it, and I'm wondering if this could help if it happens to another one- it seems you may be talking about another species though because there wasn't anything to push back in (I don't think)