wounded snake

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Originally Posted by mrs.fitswell

thanks already! i found a little coagulated blood goo thing in the tub that looks like a scale (although ive never seen that before). does anyone know about the zoo med reptile heal aid stuff? How often should i clean and apply neosporin?

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The Zoomed heal aid stuff works good, I used to use that a lot for minor cases. Never used it on anything that was open and bleeding though, so I would be unsure of that.

im using cypress mulch... will that be ok for her to be on or should i most definity remove it?

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Originally Posted by mrs.fitswell

im using cypress mulch... will that be ok for her to be on or should i most definity remove it?

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Like i stated put her on paper towel till healed

I would recommend putting the snake on a newspaper or paper towel substrate. It is alot better for the healing process and prevent and debris from getting into the wound.

Are you positive it's a wound from the rat's claws? I've never had rat's claws leave any mark on my snakes - snake scales are much tougher than that. Seems to me much more likely that the blood you found came out of the rat's nose and it's the rat's blood on the snake, and not their own.

After you cleaned your snake up - could you find any visible scratches or wounds?

thanks! the no mulch thing totally makes sense now.
I thought it was rat blood initally too because it was all over her. once i cleaned her up theres definitly a little hole where the scale is missing :(
Ive tried heating the frozen rats a before with hot water, a blow dryer, etc. and she has never taken one. I got her from a store where she had been for quite some time and always fed live. Even when she hasnt eaten in a while she wont have it. I've also tried killing the rat right before giving it to her and she wont eat those either so i kinda gave up and just fed her the live rats. Now I 100% understand and saw for myself (thankfully on a small scale) why everyone says not to feed live. Any suggestions for my attempted switch over? I dont want to have this situation again.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by mrs.fitswell

thanks! the no mulch thing totally makes sense now.
I thought it was rat blood initally too because it was all over her. once i cleaned her up theres definitly a little hole where the scale is missing :(
Ive tried heating the frozen rats a before with hot water, a blow dryer, etc. and she has never taken one. I got her from a store where she had been for quite some time and always fed live. Even when she hasnt eaten in a while she wont have it. I've also tried killing the rat right before giving it to her and she wont eat those either so i kinda gave up and just fed her the live rats. Now I 100% understand and saw for myself (thankfully on a small scale) why everyone says not to feed live. Any suggestions for my attempted switch over? I dont want to have this situation again.

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Everyone doesn't say to not feed live. I feed live exclusively to 50 snakes weekly. It's rare that I get even a scratch as a result.

Hopefully others who have successfully converted their live feeders can chime in with tips on doing so. I've never tried.

Minor injuries are always a possibility when you feed live--accidents happen, after all, and a keeper couldn't possibly be in time to intervene in every instance.

Switching snakes to FT just requires some patience in most cases--but in a few, the snake simply doesn't seem to want to compromise. If you can't get it to eat PK, FT is pretty much out of the question. Try offering a stunned rat, rather than a dead one. Get the snake used to a rat that is lying there and kicking a bit, rather than up and moving around normally.

Although bloody, this doesn't sound like any sort of serious wound...the rat just got in a hard kick, and its toenail probably snagged under the scale and tore it off. Rats can kick pretty hard, especially in death throes.
Be extremely careful to use neosporin without pain reliever--some antibiotics used for humans are toxic to reptiles, and so are the pain relievers used in antibiotic ointments. Don't be too concerned--snakes receive these types of injuries constantly in the wild, and recover from them without help.

ok well im happy to hear that its kind of a freak incident. I just dont want her to ever get actually beat up by a rat, i know they can do a lot more damage than this. I'll definitly knock some stars into them a bit before giving them in the future... to say the least ive learned a lesson.

clean the wound and use neosporin to facilitate healing