Spider girl

[alan12013]

I just picked up a spider female that has some strange scale issues. From my research on this forum I've narrowed it down to a bad shed due to lack of humidity and it will heal after her next shed. I saw this girl before I decided to buy her and did the research as I was worried. There is one dry patch of skin still attached by her tail and in a couple places along her side the scales are ruffled and almost pointing straight out. Visually it looks like it could heal but the worried pet owner in me is wondering if she had mites and the owner picked them off leaving her scales roughed up. I'm curious as to some possible reasons for this. I doubt that's the case (mites)but to be safe she's not housed in my reptile room right now and I washed my hands really good after handling her. She might be as nice personality wise as the snake Kyle gave me and that one is basically like my cat. She has amazing high white sides and some awesome colors. When the light hits her just right it's almost explosive with orange and yellow speckling that contrast the balck these pictures do not do her justice. The first thought that came to mind when I saw her was that she had lightning bolts instead of spider webbing. I think she'd be a perfect start in a spider "refinery/sustainment" program otherwise I think she has awesome characteristics that would really do good mixing with some other genes!

[alan12013]

Ok.... is there a chance she is a bumble bee? I know she looks like a spider but she has a lot of yellow in her and I just found a few online that look exactly like her but with lower white sides and less yellow. I can't say that I would be dissapointed but I was hoping she was a single gene spider that looked that good and not a bumble bee that looks bad lol

http://epfb.wordpress.com/ball-pythons/

[ElliotNess]

She looks more bee but get a good pic of her head. Thats a lot of yellow for a virgin spider.

[alan12013]

Also you can see that patch of left over shed I was talking about. I really hope it goes away soon. I have started a habit of feeding the snakes after about 2-3 days after I bring them home... So she just ate this morning otherwise I would soak her. I might give her a bath this weekend though if you think it will help. Her temps and humidity are perfect right now so this wont happen in the future. My guess is the previous owner had her in a poor living condition as do most aspiring breeders.

[bad-one]

Looks like a very nice high gold, light colored spider to me

[alan12013]

Awesome. One day I would like to have a bunch of little spiders like her. I'll be crossing my fingers when she gets bred down the road.

[kc261]

It's always a good idea to quarantine a new arrival, and many people make mite treatment part of their standard quarantine procedure just to be sure.

A small amount of stuck shed and a few roughed up scales don't make me particularly concerned. Snakes sometimes even fold their own scales just by how they choose to lay, especially when squishing into a tight hide or other tight place. I don't think trying to remove mites by hand would be the cause, but something like her having something rough in her enclosure could easily do it. If you are still concerned, try to get a close up of those scales and post it. As far as the little bit of stuck shed, she might possibly get it off herself once she's in proper humidity levels, especially if you offer her a humid hide. Or you can soak it off.

I think she looks totally spider to me, no bee in there. She doesn't have the brown-out line that would be caused by the pastel gene, and her head is not light enough. It is sometimes a little hard to see the brown-out line on a bee, because the white may come right up to it, but it seems to me that most have at least a row or two of yellow scales before the browner ones. Your girl just doesn't have that.

As far as just plain spiders go, though, she is lovely.

Not sure I understand the negativity towards aspiring breeders. Aren't you an aspiring breeder? Now, if you mean those that used to be aspiring breeders but have realized there is more work and less quick buck involved than they thought, so they are getting out, then yeah, I understand that totally.

[REBELLMORPH]

very nice Spider!

[alan12013]

Thanks for the info and I do want to incorporate some sort of mite treatment to the quarantine but haven't researched it enough. That is an idea though that I would like to work on this week is putting together a procedure and putting it in writing. In a day or so after she digests her food a bit more I will check out the scales again. When I just looked at her for that head picture the dry patch of scales looked worse than I remember. Her humidity is currently right at 70 percent but I will increase ventilation so it's like my others which all stay at 60 percent. I know that 70 is too high but I was worried when I first brought her home but now I'm thinking I should drill more holes tonight :/ I don't want her getting an RI!

Perhaps we are talking about the same thing with "aspiring" breeders. I should have elaborated more. I run into it more with leopard geckos then with pythons. People will sell animals that they have previously purchased and pawn it off like they bred it and that you should check out their awesome collection where every thing they have is for sale... because they have no breeding plans or true interest in the animals. Like I said though mostly with leopard geckos. They buy them at petco on sale for 15 bucks then say it's a morph they "produced" and try selling it for 60. The people I've ran into in the ball python community are a bit more honest about it but I still find ones on CL that I know wanted to breed them but found out it was too hard and lost interest in the animals and therefore the care provided to the animals goes way down. Then those people try selling the animals at a cost that you would pay a real breeder for a quality version of the gene. They lost interest and are not caring for the animals so they should be at a much lower cost to get the animal into a good home fast instead of rotting away. They watch some youtube videos and think that keeping the animals in tubs is cool instead of a tank but they cut all the corners. I've gone to pick up some geckos and when I see the set ups I almost feel obligated to buy the animals. It is this type of person that does a lot of things that upset me. I don't have a problem with tubs and I use them but mine have 2 hides, water, consistent temperatures and humidity and regulated belly heat. That is what my problem with "aspiring" breeders is. I have my snakes as pets and treat them far different then these people that I've met.

I also want to add that I have no intentions of big bucks in snake breeding. I love the animals and have some ideas about what I think would make an awesome company down the road 5+ years from now.

[ElliotNess]

Def spider from that last pic. Seems like you are making a lot of acquisitions here lately. What else you got planned.