Rescue/Rehome of 2 BPs

[pretends2bnormal]

To prove out any genetics that are questionable I always look for a mate that has a morph that will throw something obvious. You can always breed to a normal and hope for less ambiguous offspring, but it's easier to prove out a gene with something that will completely change the color or pattern of the animal and won't take insurmountable odds to prove.

So for a Fire, you could pair to either a known Fire or a Pastel, to you'll get either a very obvious super fire, or a pretty obvious dragonfly.

To prove pastel, you could use another pastel, a spider, a calico, a fire, a pinstripe, really anything will change completely when pastel is added.

If I were trying to prove enchi or orange dream though, that's a little tougher. For Enchi, I'd pair Mojave, because a Mochi is a pretty obvious combo.

For orange dream, you could use spider, as a dream bee is reasonably obvious, I'm sure there are some other obvious combos, but I don't work with orange dream so I'm not really the authority on combos.

But if they are just pets, I wouldn't worry too much about it, they'll still make great pets no matter what morph they are.

Thanks for the thoughts! I feel like spider may also work for proving enchi; all the ones I see with both the enchi really breaks up the connections of the spider pattern, so it seems like it would be obvious there. (Though some of them are listed as poss super enchi, if I remember right). I think those also end up lighter/more yellow/gold than a normal spider, though not on par with bumblebee.

I'm considering doing a few pairings to sell locally in a few years once the animals I have are old enough and I've had time to research it well and fully decide, but that wasn't the plan for these two, so probably won't pair them.

If I happen to wind up with a male fire, I may try to prove out the girl if I find I enjoy breeding for a hobby, but I'm not counting on it.

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[RXLReptiles]

Spider can work to prove out enchi, but I feel like the spider enchi, aka stinger bee, doesn't always look obvious enough in a low expression animal. But if you have a regular spider to compare it to, it should be a no brainer.

And I understand what you mean, breeding is a big decision, and since they're still young you've got a while to see how colors change as they mature.

[pretends2bnormal]

Spider can work to prove out enchi, but I feel like the spider enchi, aka stinger bee, doesn't always look obvious enough in a low expression animal. But if you have a regular spider to compare it to, it should be a no brainer.

And I understand what you mean, breeding is a big decision, and since they're still young you've got a while to see how colors change as they mature.

I have a male spider het pied, so I'd be covered for spider vs not comparison if I did choose to. I think he is somewhere between "average" spider pattern and reduced spider pattern. He has only a few spot markings near the front and not as many marks down his sides as I've seen in a lot of other spiders at expos.



Unfortunately male possible enchi can't be paired to a male spider, hahaha.

You're right that it is a ways off, so I'm not going to worry about it much now. I'm keeping a marker by their morph (listed as normal in my tracker) with the ones it might be and a "?" Just so I can keep track of what was speculated for them each.

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[pretends2bnormal]

I don't have a bunch of pictures, but as of Monday both of them went blue within 24 hours of each other!

The boy is being difficult about F/T right now, so he's getting live intermittently with F/T attempts in between. Because of this, the girl seems to be catching up in weight. Hard to be certain since she's been holding the last 2 meals; now I know it was in preparation for this shed.

She's definitely not skinny anymore, but her scales still have this really weak and odd sort of texture to them. I'm really hoping that they improve more with this shed. Last time they improved some, but she had hardly had any extra nutrition, so I hope it will be more improvement this time. (I think it was only 2 pretty small meals before shedding, if memory serves)

She seems to hold onto poops longer than most of my others and gives herself sausage butt from it, but she has gone several times now, so I'm not too worried about it just yet.

Here's the boy when we spotted him in shed.


And here's the girl.



I'm considering adding some vitamins or something to the girl's prey for some extra nutrients, especially if this shed doesn't improve how her skin and scales feel by much.

Any thoughts for how to go about it or what to use (or if it would be beneficial)? I've got some nutribac and general gecko insect dusting vitamins along with pedialyte which I've added to her water, though she doesn't seem to drink out of the bowl much.
Actually doing it would probably work okay to lightly mist the next rat with water and "dust" some onto its fur before feeding. Not sure if it is worth it or if any of those would be something good for her, though.

I'm sure it will probably improve more with time without intervention, but after seeing the thread on here with the pet store rescue BP who ripped skin open while shedding due to fragile scales/skin and how eerily their descriptions of how the scales feel matched how she felt on day 1... it is a bit off-putting.

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[Bogertophis]

I've supplemented the meals of rescues or breeding snakes in the past with reptile multi-vitamins. I just put a little powder into the dead rodents mouth, the snake
doesn't know the difference, & I think it may help &/or couldn't hurt. I've also heard ppl talk about using bird vitamins (Avitron, I think?), very similar to herp. vits.
Snakes that have skin issues heal very slowly...hang in there. (-the skin doesn't seem to get the priority nutrients when it comes to survival-?)

[pretends2bnormal]

I've supplemented the meals of rescues or breeding snakes in the past with reptile multi-vitamins. I just put a little powder into the dead rodents mouth, the snake
doesn't know the difference, & I think it may help &/or couldn't hurt. I've also heard ppl talk about using bird vitamins (Avitron, I think?), very similar to herp. vits.
Snakes that have skin issues heal very slowly...hang in there. (-the skin doesn't seem to get the priority nutrients when it comes to survival-?)

The vitamins I have were bought for our geckos, but are probably fine for reptiles in general. I forget the name, but I think it is the ZooMed brand multivitamin. I've got calcium also (with and without D3), but I wouldn't have any idea if that would help at all. General vitamin seemed like a better way to go.

That sounds way easier to add in with dead rodents... I think sprinkling a little onto a slightly wet live feeder would probably work out okay. If nothing else, the extra water would be good for her. Her prey drive with the live ones is strong enough I would be surprised if it deterred her.

I'll give it a try when she eats after this shed and update how that goes. We intended to skip this last meal after a slightly large one the prior week (sizing at the store is not always ideal...), so them both going into shed was oddly convenient timing. We usually feed on Monday, so they may eat this week or not till the next week depending when they shed for us.

I haven't tried swapping her to dead ones yet; her muscle tone is much improved, and I think I would attribute at least some of it to the extra workout subduing the rats. She definitely doesnt feel like holding a wet noodle anymore; which is a somewhat generous description of how she handled at the start.

I didn't realize that skin and scales were that slow to recover; after what I had seen posted on burns and bite injuries healing after a few sheds (or less on minor ones) I had thought it would be closer to that time-frame; 2-3 sheds or so to get close to normal. Wow. You would think scales and skin would be a priority since it would be one of their defenses against further injury in the wild, guess not though. Good to know!

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[WhompingWillow]

I'm sure it will probably improve more with time without intervention, but after seeing the thread on here with the pet store rescue BP who ripped skin open while shedding due to fragile scales/skin and how eerily their descriptions of how the scales feel matched how she felt on day 1... it is a bit off-putting.

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I know exactly which thread you are talking about and have been following it since first posted. I wanted to give you a link to this post they started, as they have some very good info in here. There's also a link about halfway down the first page specifically about a different person's experience with their snake's fragile skin and supplementing with Vitamin C.

https://ball-pythons.net/forums/show...sion-with-pics

[Bogertophis]

...
That sounds way easier to add in with dead rodents... I think sprinkling a little onto a slightly wet live feeder would probably work out okay. If nothing else, the extra water would be good for her. Her prey drive with the live ones is strong enough I would be surprised if it deterred her....

I didn't realize that skin and scales were that slow to recover; after what I had seen posted on burns and bite injuries healing after a few sheds (or less on minor ones) I had thought it would be closer to that time-frame; 2-3 sheds or so to get close to normal. Wow. You would think scales and skin would be a priority since it would be one of their defenses against further injury in the wild, guess not though. Good to know! ...

That's a challenge to supplement live feeders: you might do better if you can "gut-load" the feeders themselves- restrict food to something saturated with liquid vitamins,
& then feed soon after. Two problems with dusting powdered vits onto a live rodent: the odor of the vitamins can cause a refusal, & then even if wet* the powder mostly
falls off as the snake grabs & swallows them. *I've tried putting powdered vits onto damp f/t prey, & live prey moves a lot more than f/t. Just doesn't work very well...

Yes, you'd think a snake's skin would be a priority??? but have you ever noticed, when they get injured, they don't bleed a lot. They may have evolved to conserve blood
this way, since injuries aren't rare in the wild; I have a hunch that the slow healing is because their skin just isn't that vascular. What do you think?

[pretends2bnormal]

First.. Thanks WhompingWillow for pointing out that thread! I saw it before, but must have completely forgotten about it. I was referring to their main thread, but didn't remember the spin-off one there.

That's a challenge to supplement live feeders: you might do better if you can "gut-load" the feeders themselves- restrict food to something saturated with liquid vitamins,
& then feed soon after. Two problems with dusting powdered vits onto a live rodent: the odor of the vitamins can cause a refusal, & then even if wet* the powder mostly
falls off as the snake grabs & swallows them. *I've tried putting powdered vits onto damp f/t prey, & live prey moves a lot more than f/t. Just doesn't work very well...

Yes, you'd think a snake's skin would be a priority??? but have you ever noticed, when they get injured, they don't bleed a lot. They may have evolved to conserve blood
this way, since injuries aren't rare in the wild; I have a hunch that the slow healing is because their skin just isn't that vascular. What do you think?

I would definitely try that, except I recently got some really good rats for breeders but they're not up to size yet. The store nearby doesn't breed themselves, they just ship in from one of the bigger breeders around here (not sure which one), but they're kept in an ARS rack at the store with Mazuri 6F, so I know they're well-fed. I'm not as sure if they may have any illnesses, though. One of the breeders nearby that vends expos always has some pretty sickly-looking rodents and I have been trying to feed them off ASAP to prevent my future breeders from getting any illnesses (especially any RI). There's not really a way to keep them out of the same air supply most of the year, so I've been picking them up in the evening and feeding right when we get home. Since we're experiencing spring weather for the next while, I may be okay to keep those for a day or two in the garage, but the real issue is she's eating rat fuzzies or extra small rat pups (12-18g, her weight is around 160g when I weighed a few weeks ago). Neither of those are weaned, so I'm not sure gut-loading them is even possible; fuzzies would mostly still be drinking milk and it would be cruel to semi-starve them just to try the gut-load approach unless you think a few hours would be enough for it.

I wonder if the reptile vitamins are water-soluble... it may work a bit better if a bit is dissolved in water and sprayed onto the rodent that way it isn't just powder falling off. Doesn't prevent the smell being off-putting, but I'm willing to give her a try. I could just wet the back of the rodent so the head still smells normal. She spends just enough time to make sure she's pointing at the head before she strikes, hardly any tongue flicks to smell it, so I think I may get lucky with the smell not bothering her. (And if it does, I feel like worst case, I remove the rat, rinse it off, and offer with the smell gone)

I suppose I could go for adult mice to try and gut-load, which she has taken without issue before as well, but I've been sticking with rats for the smaller size which have less developed teeth and seem less likely to manage a serious bite if something happened. She's enthusiastic, but likes to grab the neck rather than head-on, which is a bit worrisome some days. I also felt like the extra fat of a younger rat was helpful to her putting on some initial weight.


From the other thread that was posted, it seems like it may be a good idea to try vitamin C, possibly instead of the multivitamin. She really is in much better shape than the other snakes in those threads (thank god), but that may be a more targeted and helpful supplement than a general one. I might be able to entice even a fuzzy rat to eat some of a ground up vitamin C tablet with some baby food or something else appropriate as a gut-load for that. Her condition seems good enough as-is compared to the others; she doesn't have any actual skin wounds, just weak-feeling skin and scales. It may not be a huge deal either way, but I might try that instead.

I have been lucky enough to not see any really major injuries in reptiles (that weren't.. y'know.. actual road kill). The only one we've had was a baby giant day gecko we had shipped to us must have panicked during part of the shipping as he had managed to tear some of the skin and scales off of his throat. He healed up good as new in a few months with no intervention, but there was no blood at all on him or the paper towels in his deli cup. That was something we were aware was a risk; they're such flighty and nervous geckos and in addition to tail-dropping, they can also sheer off skin if they feel like they were caught by a predator to escape. (Sheering off the skin more easily than other lizards or geckos, anyway.)

That sounds like a reasonable explanation for the slow-healing of the skin to me. I would have somewhat assumed that it was tied to snakes having slower metabolisms leading to many bodily functions being generally slower, but I think I like your reasoning better.

If her skin and scales don't seem to be improving much (or really, not enough to be noticed), I'll try gut-loading a feeder with vitamin C or the multivitamin, but if there is some good improvement, I may just leave it be. There doesn't seem to be a very good way to get her feeder size to reliably take in enough to be beneficial, so it may be better to just let her take her time getting better.

I also owe you all a photo-shoot on the boy once he has shed finally; maybe we will have a better idea if he really is a low-quality enchi or just a nice normal.

[Skyrivers]

Lets talk about the girl.

Here is what I would do and why.

1. Large water bowl. Higher humidity. Can submerge herself for rehydration. Will help with shed.

2. (some will troll me for this) Get a pillow case that you use and smells like you. Place her in it and sit her in your lap and spend a few minuets every day holding her till she gets use to your smell and being handled. (Not feeding day or the day after) You will get to know each other. Leave the open end of the pillow case open. When you feel her moving around just let her but don't let her get into anything. This is a trust building activity. (I would do this with any new BP or snake for that matter)

3. Inject water in her food if she is eating FT. Will help with hydration.

4. Start tap training them now. You will be happy later you did this.