Weird Behavior

[Zincubus]

Hey guys,

My 4 year old ball has been acting odd lately. He is constantly trying to escape the viv and I cannot figure out why. I have him in an Animal Plastics cage and he keeps shoving his head in the crack between the glass and PVC. He has been pushing super hard on the glass and I can see it sometimes moving his mouth from pushing so hard. He has been really healthy up till now and everything has been great.

I have him in an Animal Plastics t3 with RHP for heat. He has two black hides from LLLreptile. Warm side is always 86-88F and the ambient is 79-80F always. Humidity is 60% usually.

He has been eating normally and fed every 10 days on small rats. Consistent weight. Has not been fasting. All feces and pee is cleaned and he gets a full cage disinfectant and cage breakdown every 30 days.

One thing I've noticed recently is the cage has an odd smell.. It almost is chemically smell mixed with wood chips.. I have had him in the SAME cage with SAME decor for two years and it has never been a problem..

For the life of me I just cannot figure this out. I am worried he will hurt himself.

Have you checked the surface temps with a digital temp gun or a probed thermometer??

Quite often the behaviour you've described can simply be that they're far too warm .


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[Zincubus]

Hey guys,

My 4 year old ball has been acting odd lately. He is constantly trying to escape the viv and I cannot figure out why. I have him in an Animal Plastics cage and he keeps shoving his head in the crack between the glass and PVC. He has been pushing super hard on the glass and I can see it sometimes moving his mouth from pushing so hard. He has been really healthy up till now and everything has been great.

I have him in an Animal Plastics t3 with RHP for heat. He has two black hides from LLLreptile. Warm side is always 86-88F and the ambient is 79-80F always. Humidity is 60% usually.

He has been eating normally and fed every 10 days on small rats. Consistent weight. Has not been fasting. All feces and pee is cleaned and he gets a full cage disinfectant and cage breakdown every 30 days.

One thing I've noticed recently is the cage has an odd smell.. It almost is chemically smell mixed with wood chips.. I have had him in the SAME cage with SAME decor for two years and it has never been a problem..

For the life of me I just cannot figure this out. I am worried he will hurt himself.

Have you checked the surface temps with a digital temp gun or a probed thermometer??

Quite often the behaviour you've described can simply be that they're far too warm .


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[maausen]

Yes I use a probed thermometer and a temp gun as well. Surface always stays 85-88F.

No visible plastic melting or anything like that. SO CONFUSED...

[maausen]

I decided to take out my plastic fake plants from the viv. I now only have a grapewood branch and two black hides in there. I am going to monitor the situation and see how this pans out. He is currently just starting a shed cycle so I am not planning to do anything drastic. I will keep this updated.

Please let me know if anyone has had this experience or can think of any underlying reasons. Thank you!

[elleon]

The proper search term for information on material safety is "PVC safety data sheet." If you read any of these, they say that PVC is generally regarded as inert, unless ground into a powder that becomes airborne or if subject to thermal degredation, which occurs at such high temperatures that your poor snake would have much bigger problems.

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[zina10]

He could also be feeling the urge to "wander and breed" . Its the time of the year. Even if he has never done it before, sometimes something sets them off and males will try to wander.

That doesn't explain the weird smell of course , so double check your husbandry.

Are there any female snakes close by? Could it be you handled a female and then him and he smelled her?

Not so far out there then it sounds. My male didn't seem to even care about females or breeding for years. 2 years ago I decided to breed some of my BP's (all were 7 years old) I didn't use this male for breeding though. I remember I showed off one of the females to a family friend. Right afterwards I took out my big male (the non breeding one) and noticed how he was very intent on smelling (with his tongue) my arm where the female had been. For the first time ever he started cruising a lot while also refusing food. He ended up taking a 8 month break from eating !!

The next year he took a 6 month break from eating. No nonstop cruising, though.

Never know, hormones can be a funny thing..

[maausen]

I definitely would usually say his wandering is up to hormones but since there was an odd smell I never smelt before, I was worried this was upsetting him. However, after a few days WITHOUT plastic fake plants in there, the smell has vanished .

No ladies in the house for him. He's got the life of a bachelor!


However, Zina and Zincubus, I believe I remember you two using PVC caging. What do you think about this "PVC safety" stuff?

[jfmoore]

This is the time of year when male ball pythons "thoughts" begin to turn to sexy time and they try harder to get out of their enclosures. While this is going on, the females are trying to lie cooler than usual.

[CALM Pythons]

How would I go about making sure it is not a RHP problem? I bought mine from Bob at ProProducts..

I did a deep clean and it definitely made the smell go away. However, now its starting to come back again and I am worried.

I know what the smell is.. I posted last year on something similar.. you mentioned LLLReptile. Last year Reptile Basics was out of hides so I bought a Hide from LLL who is a RBI distributor. After one day one of my AP enclosures stunk to high hell... it was the Hide. I called LLL and argued they were NOT RBI HIDES. They disagreed. I called RBI and talked to Bob. He explained his process of molding for his Hides and the ones I got were Not his hides even though LLL lists them as his. I sent them back, got a refund and Bob sent me his. Boom NO SMELL. There are replica’s all over the internet calling then RBI hides. Ebay, amazon and over seas’s distributors and manufacturers are using a different plastic/pvc that stinks once it hits 85 degrees. RBI called LLL and I dont know what came of it but he sent me a free shirt and didnt charge me shipping because of the problem. Even though some people have great experiences with LLL I will never do business with them again. Of course the customer service department new nothing about what happened and I don’t blame the girl that answered the phone however that was a straight up lie and misrepresentation of products. Get a RBI hide and id bet the smell goes away. Also I use all Pro Products RHP’s, there is nothing to cause a smell in them. Ive taken them apart to see how they are made. Simple manufacture. I do smell the “new smell” everytime i get another one, but not a chemical smell.
As far as Skating the glass.... you didn’t say what time of day or night this is happening, my ball pythons come out in the evening around 8 PM until 5AM climbing and searching. This is normal behavior and you will never see mine out during the day.
If what you’re explaining is day time searching that’s another story. I’d still start with those hides since that was my personal experience one year ago.


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[maausen]

Thank you very much for sharing that. I definitely will look into the hides. I can't believe people can sell fake hides with a brand name and get away with it