Surprise! GTP decided to shed

So our new Aru has decided to surprise us with a shed tonight. "She" was showing no visual signs outside of slight wrinkled skin and clicking when vocalizing. Well I came in tonight to find her on her lower perch in full shed. She should be finished by morning and I get to see how complete it is.

https://i.imgur.com/1skigce.jpg

Such a wee one! How big will she get as an adult? I like the way adult pythons look, so I am lookin forward to see this one progress. I almost got a GTP as my first snake, but it was an adult in a very fancy display cage and the price tag convinced me to adopt a cheap little royal instead.

If she is a she then maybe 5+ feet if lucky. Anywhere between 4 and 6 I would guess is possible.

So had a nice little ordeal and I fully blame myself for this even though it could be any number of factors. She had a minor prolapse after shedding and passing a huge urate and feces pretty much all at the same time. We took her to a most amazing vet and the vet was able to get the prolapse back in after two attempts. She did not need stitches and has been recovering fine since then. We are now increasing her humidity above 70% as much as we can and misting daily. She looks good and is active. Thankfully we caught the prolapse right away and it was not really that extreme. I managed to get her soaking while we waited for the appointment time. We will refrain from feeding for the next month and limit her to every 2 weeks for a month longer just to get her a chance to fully heal.

This was my first snake prolpase but while I did not want to reinsert it myself, after being shown how to do it by the vet, if it happens again, I feel so much more confident in performing it. I feel the combination of stress from the move, over feeding (fed her once per week but I think that was too much during her adjustment), and possible dehydration from stress and move contributed to the large urate and prolapse.

If anyone deals with this, don't hesitate to take to a vet and make sure to find an exotic before hand. It was only $50 and worth every penny. We even got a call this morning to check up on her to make sure she was recovering. If you catch it early and keep it moist with a soak, it has a great chance of full recovery.

For GTPs, the recovery is limited to no perches, paper towel substrate, proper heating, soak weekly to keep hydrated, keep fresh water daily, and avoid feeding for 3-4 weeks.

Very scary !!

Gtp's are just a bit more fragile then what we are used to from BP's . Its wonderful you have a great vet on hand, and chances are that everything will heal up beautifully because you got it taken care of so fast.

Soaking the prolapse with sugar water or putting a thick sugar water paste on it can help it shrink up some before one can get to a vet.

Hope your little baby will recover quickly and problem free :)

I wasn't at all comfortable touching her prolapse to do sugar paste but after going to the vet, she helped explain how to do it and it seemed far less like I would break something :D

Did use sugar water for a soak and while we didn't see it go down in size, I think it helped a little with inflammation. So far she has been resting well and active at night and fingers crossed no relapse yet

Super happy that this morning I checked in on her and found a small urate on the ground. No relapse of the prolapse and it seems her kidneys are doing their thing! I hurt when my pets are hurt but it is such a great feeling when little good things happen. Still crossing my fingers this is not a long term issue and she isn't out of the woods yet but at least she isn't getting worse.