• Hello!

    Either you have not registered on this site yet, or you are registered but have not logged in. In either case, you will not be able to use the full functionality of this site until you have registered, and then logged in after your registration has been approved.

    Registration is FREE, so please register so you can participate instead of remaining a lurker....

    Please be certain that the location field is correctly filled out when you register. All registrations that appear to be bogus will be rejected. Which means that if your location field does NOT match the actual location of your registration IP address, then your registration will be rejected.

    Sorry about the strictness of this requirement, but it is necessary to block spammers and scammers at the door as much as possible.

Wounds inflicted on snakes

well the stinking subsided so theres really no problem with festering wounds or anything. still waiting for her to shed, offered a tiny mouse today and she struck at it to keep it away but didn't try to constrict (i guess that's better than nothing!) since i know she doesnt wanna eat i think i'm going to literally hold out for 4 weeks or more just so i know she's hungry and hasn't seen a mouse in a while....

on a lighter/heavier note (depends on how you look at it) the guy that gave me this snake wants to give me 5 more...they were all from the same group he got from a guy and some have been problems with him in the past and he wants to get them out of his collection before the hundreds of babies come in this year for him. now this can be looked either as him dumping snakes he doesnt want on some sucker (me) or someone hooking me up with half a dozen free snakes. i'm looking forward to it, and trying to save as many as i can. 4 of the 5 he has are eating and i think are pretty much fine, but another one looks to either have mouse wounds on the lips or a really bad respiratory infection...i'm not sure yet. when i take the snake's cage out she constantly has her mouth open. its REALLY fat and puffy. she offered to bite an held her mouth wide open for a second and it looks all pink and healthy on the inside; so it's just swollen/red on the outside. in addition she seems to have some nasty bite/wound at her cloaca which is kinda black and nasty. if theres one out of this group which might not survive it would be this one. so i'm wondering if there are any groups/websites online about snake/reptile medicine. if it's possible i want to try to diagnose and treat this snake myself before the inevitable vet appointment. there's got to be a group of people out there that are as avid about snake medicine as you guys are about corn snakes.

ps. i made a post about building a rack in this forum...this is what im building the rack for..so if anyone can help me out with that i would appreciate it.
 
ok so some bad news...i guess good news? and some more bad news...

i finished up my rack and i brought home the 5 balls this guy was giving me. i knew he'd been having problems with the whole lot and that's why he's getting rid of them (either euthanize them or i can take a hit at trying to get them in good health) of the 5, 3 of them look pretty decent, and i know one for a fact is doing great cause she ate 2 mice yesterday..

now the other two:
This one has some HUGE lump in his stomach...the last 4 inches of the snake before the vent. i've handeled her and this lump is rock hard, her skin is all stretched out from it and right before her vent, like last centimeter, its really loose and empty. but only after having her in her new cage for 15 mins she took a tiny a poop (the kind thats just the white calcium deposit and that tiny green stuff that's pass after the "loaf") and theres a tiny tiny bit of blood smeared on the paper towels i have for substrate. she's a little red around her vent too:

<a href="http://photobucket.com" target="_blank"><img src="http://i15.photobucket.com/albums/a361/scottsphotojournal/sick/lump1.jpg" border="0" alt="Image hosting by Photobucket"></a>

<a href="http://photobucket.com" target="_blank"><img src="http://i15.photobucket.com/albums/a361/scottsphotojournal/sick/lump2.jpg" border="0" alt="Image hosting by Photobucket"></a>

<a href="http://photobucket.com" target="_blank"><img src="http://i15.photobucket.com/albums/a361/scottsphotojournal/sick/lump3.jpg" border="0" alt="Image hosting by Photobucket"></a>

ok so here's the story on #2 problem child:
she has a kind of puffy mouth that never looks like it's fully closed. she's kind of always in striking position when i take her out and she's got some funky stuff going on at her vent also. there is a hair or a thread sticking to her face but that was from the pillow case i transported her in.
<a href="http://photobucket.com" target="_blank"><img src="http://i15.photobucket.com/albums/a361/scottsphotojournal/sick/mouth1.jpg" border="0" alt="Image hosting by Photobucket"></a>

<a href="http://photobucket.com" target="_blank"><img src="http://i15.photobucket.com/albums/a361/scottsphotojournal/sick/mouth2.jpg" border="0" alt="Image hosting by Photobucket"></a>

and after all of that, the first snake (the one this thread is about) died sometime last night or today. i opened to tank to take her out and put her in her new home and she was dead as a door nail. i have absolute NO clue what happened. she was doing fine before and all of a sudden died.
 
I would highly recommend a Dr. visit. Sorry to hear about the loss of the first snake, and good luck with the rest of them.
 
these two need to see a vet ASAP. the first snake looks like it may have some sort of blockage. maybe impaction or maybe a tumor/cyst of some sort...hard to say for sure.

the second snake looks like how my dog looked after he got into some poison oak! all swollen up...it may be an infection of some sort.
 
yeah but if i do that i'm still kinda lost. do i take both of them? should i take the dead one too? i know this sounds foolish...and everyone says this but i really DONT have money right now. i did a couple weeks ago but 1200 dollars of unexpected work i needed on my car changed that. i am seriously considering at least taking one to the vet but i know theres someone out there that has seen this before. the one with the lump reminds me of a thread that was around here a couple months back but i can't remember what it was called...
 
I agree with the possible impaction/tumour scenario on the first. The hard consistancy makes me think impaction. Pythons can become impacted quite easily as they don't poop as often as other snakes. My Green tree python goes about every 3-4 weeks on average and the droppings are quite large. They can also suffer from prolapse. The second one could have mouth rot, or any number of infections. Sometimes they get something stuck in the tissue in the mouth, especially if fed on a barky type substrate that can penetrate tissue. It's possible that she has had a mild prolapse and that is tissue sticking out. Hard to tell. By now it's probably infected or necrotic if it hadn't been reduced properly when it first happened. The guy who had these animals should be brought up on charges! For now, I'd just take the sick one and forget about the dead one. You could do your own basic necropsy if you know what you're looking at. I suspect if you opened the dead snake up, there would be large amounts of fecal matter hardened there, or tumour.
 
thanks, that's giving me an idea of what i'm dealing with...

but i think your a little confused cause the one with the huge lump is still alive, same with the one you think has mouth rot. there was a third snake that died that i don't have pictures of. as for the mouth rot one, she has opened her mouth and offered to strike at me and it looked pretty pink and healthy on the inside and i thought mouth rot started from the inside and worked its way out...is it possible they are wounds or abrasions?

i'm going to cut to the chase to say what i'm really trying to find out...which is if these snakes look like they are suffering from contagious diseases, or if they just seperately have problems. my reasoning for all this, is that i would take these snakes from this guy and give them more and better care than they were being cared for. if not, they would stay in their old conditions until they died. i'm looking for vets right now, because i don't have a vet (never had to take a snake to the vet before) so that's probably happening soon. but does that sound like a more fair situation than they were in earlier? or is not rushing them to the vet not doing enough.
 
yeah i re-read that and i definately made it confusing. the snake that died is the snake with the mouse bite wounds that is at post #1. the one with the bump is still alive as i just got her today..
 
I think they have seperate problems that need veterinary attention. If the mouth of the one is clean inside, it's most likely an external infection. I'm still thinking that the one with the hard lump is most likely a serious impaction. They can do enemas on them that will clean them out if that is what it is, but your best bet would be to find a herp vet to look at them. Where are you located?
 
i'm in baltimore, MD. there is a vet up the street, and farther up is an animal hospital. right now i'm trying to find out if they are just a dog and cat vet or if they have reptile specialists...
 
Scott, you are on luck as we have the best reptile vet in the country right here in VA. His name is Scott Stahl and here is a link to his clinic http://www.seavs.com/. He IS the best there is.....
 
Good news! the one with the impaction took a HUGE dump today. i think it had to do with i put a gigantic water bowl in her cage and she probably soaked and helped loosen it up. although she passed a pretty big lump, there still seems to be about 1/2 of it left which hopefully will come out soon. i cut the poop open with a razor and it was rock hard! seriously like how hard it is to cut through frozen rock hard ice cream. inside it was all brown but extremely fibrious. my guess is as good as yours but things come to mind are: a lot of dirt/clay mixed with a lot of brown paper towel that could have been ingested, but it very well could have also just been a TON of mouse matter tightly packed together too, i'm not sure. here are the photos:

<a href="http://photobucket.com" target="_blank"><img src="http://i15.photobucket.com/albums/a361/scottsphotojournal/sick/poop1.jpg" border="0" alt="Image hosting by Photobucket"></a>
<a href="http://photobucket.com" target="_blank"><img src="http://i15.photobucket.com/albums/a361/scottsphotojournal/sick/poop2.jpg" border="0" alt="Image hosting by Photobucket"></a>
<a href="http://photobucket.com" target="_blank"><img src="http://i15.photobucket.com/albums/a361/scottsphotojournal/sick/poop3.jpg" border="0" alt="Image hosting by Photobucket"></a>
<a href="http://photobucket.com" target="_blank"><img src="http://i15.photobucket.com/albums/a361/scottsphotojournal/sick/poop4.jpg" border="0" alt="Image hosting by Photobucket"></a>
 
Wow! That's quite a poop. I wouldn't feed her again until she's gotten all of that out. You could try a warm water bath and massage to help too. You'd be surprised how compacted it can be when they don't go as often. My Green tree's looks like a cat pooped in her cage when she goes!
 
i was thinking since balls CAN be problem feeders i wasn't going to attempt to feed 2-4 weeks from now...they all have pretty good weight on them now which is good. she probably needs time to rest and heal up from passing that huge "thing" anyway. i would REALLY like to know what that turd is composed of though...
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top