Does anyone know what this could be?

[IMG]http://ball-pythons.net/gallery/file...in_1_thumb.jpg[/IMG]
I went to clean out my ball pythons tank today and found this on my male, I was just wondering if anyone has ever seen this before and where he could have gotten it from.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by neeceytc04

[IMG]http://ball-pythons.net/gallery/file...in_1_thumb.jpg[/IMG]
I went to clean out my ball pythons tank today and found this on my male, I was just wondering if anyone has ever seen this before and where he could have gotten it from.

---

Well a number of things. How are you heating the cage and do you have a thermostat? I'm just taking a wild guess here because my other guess would be like cancer or some wild guess, but then it wouldn't be red like that.

I'm heat them with a lamp, it almost looks like a bubble but he also has some other spots on him. I'm trying to download that picture also.

Honestly it looks painful to me so I'm pretty sure it's painful to the snake. I would honestly take him to the vet, but that's me.

[IMG]http://ball-pythons.net/gallery/file...in_3_thumb.jpg[/IMG]
Here's the other photo were you can see the other red spots

Yeah that's what I was thinking also, thank you for your advice

Whatever this is, this is not one of those time when you should look for answer on a forum, this is one of those times when you need to make appointment with a herp vet ASAP.

I thought cyst at first, but the red inflammation reads burns to me. Vet needs to be seen.

That doesn't look so good. :-( Please visit the vet ASAP. Keep us updated, and good luck with your baby!

Take him to the vet straight away. It looks like it may have pus in it under the skin. Only a vet can give you the meds he needs for that. Good luck!

sent from my incubator

Although I don't know much, my common sense tells me a couple things.

1. You said you use a heat lamp to keep them warm
2. The marks are NOT on his belly and they are on his top.

Conclusion- Your heat lamp burned the heck out of him and gave him red swellings. (Use a underbelly heat mat, and get a thermostat)

Go to vet.

Wow, that is really strange. I agree with the vet visit since it could be infected.

i agree, vet.

but arent burns usually flat? i mean, the burn wounds i have seen in pictures so far have all been relatively flat. but this kinda sticks out.

i dont know what it is, im just saying, i think its either something completely different, or its more than a regular burn.

please keep us updated, whatever it is i hope its treatable and heals well.

Just a wild guess, but could he have fallen or had something heavy fall on him maybe? I am leaning more towards a burn or some kind of bad infection/cyst. But no matter what it is, I would take him to the vet asap!

It looks to me like a severe burn. You know how if you get a minor burn, it's just flat red? But a really bad burn blisters and swells? That's what I am thinking this is. Heat lamps are bad news, a lesson I had to learn the hard way.

Keep us updated, please. I hope whatever it is heals quickly with meds from the vet.

Gale

?Blister Disease? http://www.reptilechannel.com/reptil...r-disease.aspx

I just wanted to say thank you to everyone who sent a reply, I did get him to the vet and they weren't sure what it was either but they felt he was suffering so I put him down. I will say that it was not a burn as I saw someone said, he in no way had any contact with the heat source and what ever happened to him came on quick cause he in no way looked like that the other day when I had tried to feed him.

I just want to say that I have always used heat lamps because I have had problems with the heat pads with my snakes and my cat who had a dental at the clinic I was working at, he suffered a severe burn and had to have half of his skin removed on his side. Everyone has what they feel works best

Sorry to here....

Wow, so sorry. :-(

They are not burns.

They are not from a heat lamp.

They are not blister disease. Blister disease looks nothing like this and is normally ventral - not dorsal.

Folks, please watch what you post. Looking at a picture of a snake and then inferring husbandry do's and don'ts, throwing out WAGs and jumping to conclusions about how the OP may or may not be caring for his snake are pointless and frankly, insulting.

Good advice is to take the animal to a vet. It would be great if the OP could spring for a necropsy to see if there was a systemic cause or to find a definitive diagnosis.

Necropsy would be great...let us know what you decided in that regard. Sorry for your loss :(

I have seen a snake with body-wide blisters like that from an unregulated heat lamp at the veterinary hospital where I work. The snake had no direct access to the lamp, but was still burned.

I'm really sorry to hear :( I'd keep a VERY close eye on all of your other snakes. You never know... It could have been something contagious :(

How do you know 100% for sure that they were not from either of the 3 things you listed? That seems to be jumping to conclusion as well.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Skiploder

They are not burns.

They are not from a heat lamp.

They are not blister disease. Blister disease looks nothing like this and is normally ventral - not dorsal.

Folks, please watch what you post. Looking at a picture of a snake and then inferring husbandry do's and don'ts, throwing out WAGs and jumping to conclusions about how the OP may or may not be caring for his snake are pointless and frankly, insulting.

Good advice is to take the animal to a vet. It would be great if the OP could spring for a necropsy to see if there was a systemic cause or to find a definitive diagnosis.

---

@OP - I'm sorry to hear you had to put him down.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Skiploder

They are not burns.

They are not from a heat lamp.

They are not blister disease. Blister disease looks nothing like this and is normally ventral - not dorsal.

Folks, please watch what you post. Looking at a picture of a snake and then inferring husbandry do's and don'ts, throwing out WAGs and jumping to conclusions about how the OP may or may not be caring for his snake are pointless and frankly, insulting.

Good advice is to take the animal to a vet. It would be great if the OP could spring for a necropsy to see if there was a systemic cause or to find a definitive diagnosis.

---

Yea, this is why I said I had no idea and just took a wild guess from what I think it could of been but I said wild guess so he knew that I wasn't sure. I only asked about the heating just in case somebody else had more insight so that question would be answered already.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by ATTFighter

How do you know 100% for sure that they were not from either of the 3 things you listed? That seems to be jumping to conclusion as well.

---

Skip is probably one of the most knowledgeable people on the forum, and I would never question his judgement on this. I've learned this from years of being here.

Aww...i am so sorry to hear that. Did the vet give you any inkling as to what it could have been? We had a snake that had cancer....cant rule that out, i guess. My condolences.

sent from my incubator

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Neal

@OP - I'm sorry to hear you had to put him down.


Yea, this is why I said I had no idea and just took a wild guess from what I think it could of been but I said wild guess so he knew that I wasn't sure. I only asked about the heating just in case somebody else had more insight so that question would be answered already.



Skip is probably one of the most knowledgeable people on the forum, and I would never question his judgement on this. I've learned this from years of being here.

---

Oh trust me I do not doubt that at all, however just from seeing pictures you can NOT just rule out those things 100%. It is possible that maybe something went wrong with the heat lamp and spiked in temp for example. I am just saying you never know. If you look a few post back we have someone who said they work at a vet hospital and have seen something that looked like this before from heat lamp. So to say it is NOT any of those things without knowing circumstances etc. Doesn't mean it could not have been.

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I537 using Tapatalk 4

Skip is extremely experienced and usually right.


about burns: sure, really bad burns can "stick out" by forming blisters, but then the discoloration would be waaaay more extreme and these blisters would be directly under the top layers of the skin.

thats also where the superficial blisters from that blister disease would be.

all i can see from the pics is that this is deeper, completely under the skin, not just below the top layer. thats why i said i have no clue what it is but that i dont see it as a burn.

@OP: sorry for your loss, that really sucks.

For any one thinking that this could be either a contact or other type of burn, please share with us of your experience in dealing with necrotic, vesicular or ulcerative dermatitis that presents dorsally/laterally and/or heat lamp burns that occurred without direct contact to a heat source.

Please explain how thermal burns from a heat lamp result in various raised blisters along the dorsal side and the flanks of the snake.

While I can't really rule out anything, I'm also not throwing guesses into the wind. The message here should be to encourage the OP to go to a vet and to encourage him to have a necropsy done.

For all those people who think it's a burn, did you ever suppose for a minute that the attending vet would have recommend euthanasia if those were burns? Even severe burns in reptiles are fairly easily treated with silver sulfazidine, antiseptic baths and sterile cage conditions.

When reptiles suffer thermal burns, they present in several ways depending on the severity of the burn.

What I would classify as first degree burns are largely superficial. First degree burns in reptiles rarely, if ever, blister. The skin reddens and sometimes bruises. These are very easily treated and a vet would not recommend that the animal be put down for these burns. No way, no how.

A more severe or second degree burn in a snake does result in blistering - but also fairly significant oozing. There is widespread discoloration from bruising and color changes in the epidermal layers. The blistering from a second degree burn does not present without discoloration to the edges of the burn. The blisters shown in the photos do not support second degree burns.

In the most severe burns, whatever skin is left turns either black or white. I have never seen blistering associated with third degree snake burns. They always looks like the skin has been either charred or melted off of the animal. There is also a lot of discharge associated with these burns.

Burns from overhead heating sources are extremely hard to contract unless the animal has contact with the source. If it's an external heat lamp as the OP has described, contact burns could conceivably come from the superheated screen on the enclosure (if used), but those burns would present in a pattern and size consistent with the pattern on the screen, not a series of raised, cutaneous swellings on the snake. As some of those burns occurred on the sides of the snake, it would make direct contact burns with an overhead heat source even more difficult to explain.

Now what I have seen are fungal infections in both captive and wild snakes that present in many ways - as subcutaneous reddened nodules, as separations of the outer layer of skin from the inner layer (patches that redden and then separate).....etc.

However, what I'm NOT going to do is throw guesses at the OP. Unless the attended vet was complete idiot, I would find it hard to believe that he would recommend euthanasia for either thermal burns or blister disease.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Pythonfriend

about burns: sure, really bad burns can "stick out" by forming blisters, but then the discoloration would be waaaay more extreme and these blisters would be directly under the top layers of the skin.

---

True.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Spiritserpents

I have seen a snake with body-wide blisters like that from an unregulated heat lamp at the veterinary hospital where I work. The snake had no direct access to the lamp, but was still burned.

---

I'm also in the Bay Area and would love to know more about both the vet who saw this animal and how the animal was treated. Can you describe what type of snake it was, the lamp set up, etc. Both vets I use will take photos of burns and other skin issues - especially ones that do not fit the "normal" presentations - but also to document the healing process.

The severe burn that we saw (The entire snake was like one of those jelly-filled stress balls. Almost the entire dorsal and lateral surfaces were a single giant blister) included signs of sepsis and 'bruising'-type color changes. The owner had no money for medications and did not want to euthanise, and elected to take the snake home. It died that night.

She had a relatively shallow tank for her snake and a dome lamp for heat. The snake couldn't escape the heat source.

Could other things have been compounding? Absolutely, considering the snake was 6 years old and barely bigger than a new hatchling. He weighed all of 120 grams.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Spiritserpents

I have seen a snake with body-wide blisters like that from an unregulated heat lamp at the veterinary hospital where I work. The snake had no direct access to the lamp, but was still burned.

---

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Spiritserpents

The severe burn that we saw (The entire snake was like one of those jelly-filled stress balls. Almost the entire dorsal and lateral surfaces were a single giant blister) included signs of sepsis and 'bruising'-type color changes. The owner had no money for medications and did not want to euthanise, and elected to take the snake home. It died that night.

She had a relatively shallow tank for her snake and a dome lamp for heat. The snake couldn't escape the heat source.

Could other things have been compounding? Absolutely, considering the snake was 6 years old and barely bigger than a new hatchling. He weighed all of 120 grams.

---

Was it several blisters or a single giant blister?

Thanks in advance.

We're not sure if it started as several that merged, or was always the giant one. When you tilted the snake, all the fluid would pool in whichever end was lowest. It was probably a combination of factors that led up to it. The vet was pretty certain it was mostly from the heat lamp, but as I said there was a multitude of things being done wrong for that snake. It was close to a year ago that we saw this snake, I think, and I can't remember if they were feeding it only pinky mice, or fuzzies. The whole appt was sort of a trainwreck.

If you still think it was something other than a burn, I'd actually love the information so I can provide it to the vets where I work. I had to tell them about the spider wobble (we had one in from a pet store), and about stargazing in corns (brought in my 'gazer so they could see the corkscrewing he does) and they're always interested in learning more about reptile diseases that don't get much study in academic papers.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Spiritserpents

If you still think it was something other than a burn, I'd actually love the information so I can provide it to the vets where I work. I had to tell them about the spider wobble (we had one in from a pet store), and about stargazing in corns (brought in my 'gazer so they could see the corkscrewing he does) and they're always interested in learning more about reptile diseases that don't get much study in academic papers.

---

Without seeing the snake and looking at it's "blisters", it could be a couple of things.

I've had imported animals come in with fungal dermatitis that presented as raised red blisters and separated skin - eventually concluding with crusty lesions. They have been successfully treated with antifungals targeted at the causative agents.

I've also seen reddened fluid filled bumps form on the ventral and lateral sides of female snakes that I swore were skin disease but which turned out being oviduct infections that were oozing fluid into the subdermal areas adjacent to the ova.

That's why assuming it's something is fruitless. The direction should be toward a qualified herp vet and a necropsy or histological sample if applicable. Then a definitive diagnosis can be made and if these results are shared with the community, the community becomes wiser.

Thank you everyone, I really wish I could say what had happened but even the vet said she had never seen anything like that before so at least now he is not suffering anymore and believe me I'm keeping a close eye on my other snakes.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by neeceytc04

Thank you everyone, I really wish I could say what had happened but even the vet said she had never seen anything like that before so at least now he is not suffering anymore and believe me I'm keeping a close eye on my other snakes.

---

Did you request a necropsy?

just asking: what is the price tag for a full necropsy?


i would maybe just have requested the affected area to be cut open to see what the heck was under the skin there. just a cut to see what it was after the snake has been put to sleep.

actually no, i probarbly would have requested a puncture or cut with the snake sedated to see what it is, and have the snake put down while still under sedation if its something incurable.

That would have required a biopsy, not a necropsy, and several days to get results back. A necropsy is a few hundred dollars, I'd want one to put my fears to rest about whether it was a problem specific to that animal, like cancer, versus some weird contagious disease.

I wish I could have done a necropsy but I really didn't even have the money to what I did but I didn't want him suffering