Ball python acting strange

[JaceyB]

Hello,
Today I noticed my ball python acting strange. Last week he ate perfectly fine and pooped and yesterday he was doing good when I checked on him for his water and make sure lights were okay. He's very lethargic and he had his head in his water bowl and wasn't moving so I checked to see if he was cold and he wasn't. I have the warm side at 93f and 85 on the cool side. I took him out a bit to check to see if he had anything visible and he looks okay. I put him back and he was moving around like usual then as soon as he got to his water dish he froze and just sat there and wasn't moving. It's scaring me and I will be taking him to the vet as soon as they are open. But I would like other opinions on what it could be? Is it maybe just the season?

[Caali]

Your enclosure is pretty warm. The cold side should be around 78 to 80 degrees and the other should between 89 and 91. That could definitely be a reason. He might have tried too cool down.
What are your humidity stats? Do you use a thermostat? Did you recently change food size or anything else? What morph is your snake? How old is it?
Before anyone can guess at what it is (and none of us are vets) we would need to know a lot more.

[JaceyB]

Humidity I usually keep from 50%-60% when not in shed and bump it up and he turned 2 in September. He's a vpi axanthic lesser. I keep a thermostat in there to regulate the temps and he's been on the same size food for a while now.

[Craiga 01453]

A) your temps are a bit high.

B) You said you keep a thermostat "in there ". Does that mean your t-stat is INSIDE the enclosure???

If the tsat, or just the probe, is INSIDE the enclosure your setup is incorrect. Probes placed inside can be moved by the snake, peed/pooped on, etc...which can cause inaccurate readings.

C) What are you using to measure temps? And where are you measuring?

[Jus1More]

Hello,
Today I noticed my ball python acting strange. Last week he ate perfectly fine and pooped and yesterday he was doing good when I checked on him for his water and make sure lights were okay. He's very lethargic and he had his head in his water bowl and wasn't moving so I checked to see if he was cold and he wasn't. I have the warm side at 93f and 85 on the cool side. I took him out a bit to check to see if he had anything visible and he looks okay. I put him back and he was moving around like usual then as soon as he got to his water dish he froze and just sat there and wasn't moving. It's scaring me and I will be taking him to the vet as soon as they are open. But I would like other opinions on what it could be? Is it maybe just the season?

You said "lights". BP's don't require lights from above, like those dome fixtures. They only need belly heat... I agree with others, I think you have it too hot in the enclosure, especially if you have belly heat and heat from the lights above. I would be sticking my head in a bowl of water too...

[Jus1More]

Also, what type of enclosure are you using? Is there plenty of ventilation?Just a thought!!

[Trisnake]

I think what you’re referring to as a thermostat is a actually a digital thermometer; I can’t imagine how you have an actual thermostat in the enclosure itself.

A digital thermometer (inside the enclosure) monitoring temps is NOT the same thing as a thermostat, and a digital thermometer (while keeping track of temps) does not regulate heat and will not prevent your snake from overheating or getting burned. If your heat pad isn’t plugged into a thermostat you should unplug it, especially if you have lamps as a secondary heat source, just until you get a t-stat. You can get sheep ones online on Amazon for like 35 bucks, with Prime. Also, if those lights aren’t on a thermostat, you should at least put them on a lamp dimmer so you can change the amount of light/heat output, instead of having to choose between off or 100% power when using them.