wounded snake

well its feeding night and my snake (with multiple attempts) has never taken frozen rats. When the rat was dying in the tub it clawed my snake with its death kicks. Shes bleeding and im pretty freaked out to say the least. Please let me know what i need to do to take care of this!!!


http://i799.photobucket.com/albums/y...6/IMG_2071.jpg

this photo makes it look a bit worse because the blood spread and dried on her

clean it up good. put neosporin on it. keep it clean to prevent infection. she should be ok. thats y i dont feed live, im too much of a worry wart

It looks to me like the rat might have pulled a scale off ? You can clean the wound with plain warm water to get a better look at it.

I think if you keep it clean and apply neosporin {the kind without pain reliever } it will most likely heal on it's own.

I've seen pictures here of some pretty drastic wounds that got better with proper care.

Someone with more experience will chime in with more info.

Gale

When feeding live, if the motion of the animal is not needed to entice the snake, you might want to knock the rat unconscious before feeding or next time use hemostats to stop such things from happening.

If you use neosporin, just make sure that it does not have any pain killers in it. I hear that the pain killers in it are not good for them. I don't know personally, because whenever something happens to my animals, I'm at the vet that day. Not saying you have to go to the vet, that is just what I do.

if you have povidine iodine or betadine give it a warm 10 minute bath to clean the area. just enough iodine to make the water look like it has something in it like 1 part to a million water. Neosporin daily would be fine(as long as it is clear, not pain plus (white)) but i dont use it because long term it can be a carcinogen. even cheaper is a triple antibiotic ointment. Silver sulfidizine would be good if you have some. Use the topical daily and the snake should correct it with one shed (pic doesnt look serious)

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Originally Posted by angllady2

It looks to me like the rat might have pulled a scale off ? You can clean the wound with plain warm water to get a better look at it.

I think if you keep it clean and apply neosporin {the kind without pain reliever } it will most likely heal on it's own.

I've seen pictures here of some pretty drastic wounds that got better with proper care.

Someone with more experience will chime in with more info.

Gale

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You beat me to it about the neosporin. But I also don't think it is any thing serious. Just keep it clean and it should heal perfectly on its own.

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?

Clean with Betadine and put on Polysporin 3 times daily. Till it heals keep on paper towels.

DO NOT USE RUBBING ALCOHOL OR PEROXIDE

daily with the topical , i wouldnt clean it after the initial time unless you use topsoil or sand or fine coco as substrate :gj:

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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