We agreed to take 2 ball pythons from the irrate mother of a teenage girl who stopped taking care of her snakes. My 10 yr old has 8 other snakes in his room, but he takes care of them and we have never had any serious health problems to deal with.

We have had these two additional snakes for almost 5 weeks now. The oldest ball pyton is about 2 yrs old and 2 1/2 ft long. This one is having a serious health problem. Yesterday we noticed that his skin is tearing is several places. Splitting and tearing right down to the white meat.

Now when we got him we were told he had only been eating mice, so we fed him one large live mouse which he ate right away and we fed him another one 4 days later which he again ate. The following week we fed him a small rat and 7 days later fed him another small live rat. [we feed weely] He ate all of these and kept them all down with no problem.

Yesterday was feeding day, but we noticed the torn skin in the morning when my son woke up so we did not feed him fearing what could happen if he was bitten by his food while he is in this condition.

I soaked him for 1 hr in water in case he is dehydrating, then I tried to spread neosporin over the exposed white meat but stopped as his skin is very loose and pulls right off from the body. This is happening in several areas.

I called University of Florida small animal hospital where they treat reptiles, but we cannot afford this. I was told that the emergency weekend visit costs $150. Monday, they are closed and it would cost $70 to see someone on Monday and $50 to see someone on Tuesday and these fees are just for the office visits and does not include treatment.

According to our snake reptile book this skin condition is caused from being severly malnurished. I am confused as this snake had been eating for us, but he may not have been fed for a long time before we got him.

According to our book, this snakes skin needs to be stitched up? I can't see this happening as he has so much skin coming off.

Any advice please? I completely cleaned out his 60 gallon tank removing all bedding, branches and plants so he will not catch his skin on anything else. He just has plain news paper in there now.

What can we do for this reptile? We tried to do the right thing by giving him a good home, but did not realize the apparent poor health condition he was in from neglect when we rescued him.

I am going to call a reptile store today to see if they have any advice. [today is Saturday] Any and all advice would be greatly appreciated. We can't afford a vet bill especially for what it appears it would cost for what this snake needs.
Thank you, Teej