Rescues

I posted a few days ago about two snakes that needed rescuing and my friend purchased them. They are now here with me. The ball python seems to have scale rot and possibly a burn or two. She also has stuck eyecaps and is possibly blind in one eye. I saw no evidence of mites, though I will be keeping a close eye on both of the snakes. The ball python weighs around 1000g and is estimated to be around 5 years old.

Is there anything I should be watching out for. Because of the possibility of scale rot and mouth rot (I could not get the snake to let me see inside her mouth) we will be taking her to the vet. She seemed rather dehydrated (droopy skin) but she didn't drink readily when offered.

She was housed with a corn snake for 5 years and their only heat source was a heat rock (which I threw away! Those things should be illegal!) She now has fresh bedding (it appeared the cage had not been cleaned in months), a good heat source, and fresh water (water bowl was full of algae).

I rescued a couple balls about a year ago, both about 5 years as well. The female was VERY dehydrated. I gave her a few good soaks and eventually she would drink while in the bath tub. Many ball pythons really hate the water but it's all about the individual snake... You could try using a tub with a locking lid if you're worried about being tagged.

Also, I've heard of people soaking them in powerade because the snakes can soak the electrolytes up through their skin. I've never done this though. If they're taking food you could soak the prey in water to give them a little extra hydration.

If you really want to look in her mouth you could take a wire coat hanger and cut one of the shoulders off. Hold the snake behind the head and use it to open her mouth (STERILIZE). Mine had mouth rot as well as a RI, so this was the method the vet gave us to administer the pills and also to clean her mouth.

So far she has no signs of an RI. She is not head shy in the slightest. I can simply hold her head between two fingers and she doesn't really budge. I will be giving her a nice soak soon. She has a lot of stuck shed and I really want to try getting those eyecaps off, especially to see if the eye is indeed blind, or if there are just so many layers of eye cap on it.

Definitely check out her mouth if you can.

Mine showed no signs of respiratory infections until about a week after we got them the proper heating devices and bumped the humidity. Their previous owner kept them with a twenty watt fluorescent bulb on 24/7 and no heat sources for over a year and they did not have respiratory infections when we got them. I think it was just a huge shock to their systems.


She may become a little head shy after her eye caps are gone especially since she has so many layer of stuck shed. It will be a huge shock for her to be able to see again....

Keeping my fingers crossed that she's hasn't gone blind for you!

Due to the scale rot you might want to put her on papertowels. Also you can take a qtip and hold it sideways....use the part without the cotton (the middle)to open the snakes mouth. This seems to work really well!

Good on you for saving them...poor babies!! I am glad they are in a good home now.

I will try to use the q-tip and see if I can get her to open her mouth later. I ran out of paper towels today (today of all days :P) but she is on newspaper. I took some pictures of her earlier, so I'm uploading those now. I will post them soon. I am not sure if she is male or female since I have no probes (I'm hopefully getting a set when I go to the next show), but the corn snake I suspect to be female.

Here is Nyoka, my friend's new python. In the first picture, I tried to get a good shot of her belly. You can see redness and you can just tell it is irritated. I will try to get some better shots with a better camera as soon as I can. I'm not sure what burns look like on snakes, but many of the belly scales look really irritated. The second picture focuses on her eye. This is the one we are not sure is blind or not. The other eye is fine. It just has an eye cap stuck to it, but it is a working eye.

http://i144.photobucket.com/albums/r...nyokabelly.jpg

http://i144.photobucket.com/albums/r...e/nyokaeye.jpg

yikes :(

Are you going to be taking care of this one?

That's horrible! Kudos for rescuing them.
Makes me sad to see them in such bad shape:(

It is so hard to see snakes that have been suffering for SO long. I have personally rescued 3 large ball pythons in the past couple months. I think it is actually surprising how easy to feel the need to bring them home and take care of them. It can be a pain with quarantine, and medications, vets, etc, but it just needs to be done. I think something deep inside us needs to help the helpless.
Good for you. One good deed is returned with another.

ok i hate to say this but my snake are all healthy but one has eyes like that and i asked in the new thread but thats what they look like

I will be getting a better picture of her eye. It is a dark silver in color, so that is either from so many layers of eye cap, or she is blind in that eye. Nyoka is the same ball python as mentioned in the first post of this thread. My friend paid for them and they are technically hers, but she can't take them home yet due to her not having her own apartment yet. She she technically rescued them. I'm just caring for them.

I love rescue. One day when we have our own house and I have the room for it, I will start up a reptile rescue. We have a ball python here named Ross that came to us as a rescue. He just looks 100x better than he did when he first came home and he is a great snake. Great feeding response and doesn't mind chilling out on my arm while I watch t.v. :P It just makes me feel so happy and so accomplished to know we took him from a bad situation and turned his life around. :D

Oh and I am not sure if I mentioned this, but each snake has been eating two mice every 3 weeks. The corn snake seems to be in good shape and a good size, but the ball python is only around 1000g. I'm going to start her on 2 mice every 7 days and then try and switch her to rats. I'm going to give her a week to relax and see a vet, and then begin feeding her.