Crusty vent?

This is what it looked like the night I found the pus.
http://i26.photobucket.com/albums/c1...s/boovent2.jpg
Sorry for the poor quality of the picture. If I could have gotten my husband to hold the snake while I took it instead of him being such a sissy..

Like I said, more reason to look them over regularly from head to tail. I caught this early enough that a couple good cleanings and some bacitracin on the area had it looking much better. There appears to be an abrasion on some of the tissue just inside the vent. Monday morning a visit to the vet and a shot of Gentocin and hopefully he's well on his way to healing completely. I'm continuing the cleanings and keep a bit of bacitracin on there. He's being kept on paper towels. The external vent area is back to looking normal, and damage can only be seen when you pull the scale back and open it a bit.

One thing you might want to check for is that if you had him on aspen while breeding sometimes they can pull a piece of aspen in when they pull their hemipene back. I have had it happen quite a few times. I would try popping him to see if that may be causing the problem. I usually pop all of my males every couple weeks just to check.

That's exactly what the vet and I think happened. As much as I love keeping snakes on aspen for the absorbency and less cleaning I have to do, it just isn't worth the risk to me anymore. I've changed everyone back to newspaper.

When I cleaned out the area I was able to massage a bit of material up out of the penes. None of it looked like aspen, but I'm sure it probably doesn't take much to irritate such a sensitive area.

It appears that he has been breeding even if you didn't see the locks. Give him some rest and some fresh water. Maybe even a waterbowl for him to soak in.

Brock

I'm kind of partial to daily Chlorhexadine soaks myself. You can also clean a lot of the crusty stuff off by working at it with a Q-tip.