Ticks

[kjc]

i recently bought a female ball at a pet store and when we got home we saw she had a tick on her,dont ticks usually only come on wild caught snakes?

[Shelby]

Not always.. if the snakes weren't kept quarantined from wild caughts, they can acquire ticks. -or if the keeper isn't careful.

[snakebitten69]

yes they do. if they were on a captive it was kept in some pretty bad conditions! we just bought two balls from a local pet store and both had ticks and mites. the ticks we got off, and u can treat the wound with neosporin. we were very upset with the treatment of the petstores snakes and wanted to do something about it, but come to find out the aspca, cant do anything because there are no laws in texas pertaining to this! (sorry kind of got off topic)

[elevatethis]

are you sure that they are ticks or are they mites?

Either way, get yerself some provent-a-mite and reptile relief and that should take care of it. It takes just a few weeks to competely erradicate them...but time is of the essence, because you don't want those mites or ticks getting established in your enclosure and thus making them harder to get rid of.

While you wait on your provent-a-mite, you can kill off most of the adults by soaking your snake in a small container about "chin" deep in a water/soapy solution. You can use hand soap, dish detergent, whatever, as long as its HEAVILY diluted. Mites will live under water for some time because the properties of their exoskeleton create surface tension and make a little air bubble for them to survive in underwater. The soap breaks that surface tension and drowns the mites.

That won't kill off the eggs and larvae stages though, but will kill off most of the breeding adults until you get your insecticides.

[kjc]

well we have provent a mite on hand in case,thank you for your quick responses too.she is very snappy though and we rarely go near her without gloves,the problem with the tick is that its right near her eye and we cant do anything cos shell hiss or snap.our other snakes have never given us the cold shoulder like she does...lol.ithinkimight just take her toa vet tomorrow too see what he says,just incase

[elevatethis]

Not a bad idea just in case, but otherwise, just blast their enclosures with provent-a-mite and try not to change the substrate for a week or so. Remove the waterbowl though, and allow the enclosure to COMPLETELY dry out so the chemicals aren't dangerous anymore. Replace the waterbowl after the cage is completely dried out.

[Razaiel]

So ... out of interest (long story under Corns - but as I have a corn which is being treated for an abcess which I was told was caused by a bite from its cage-mate - and later told it could be from ticks which were eradicated) - could a tick bite be confused with another snake bite? Would the wounds look similar?

[tigerlily]

I don't think if you saw the original wound you would mistake a tick bite and a snake bite, but once the wound abcesses it's just a big pocket of puss. (that just sounded lovely didn't it, sorry)

[rabernet]

I don't think if you saw the original wound you would mistake a tick bite and a snake bite, but once the wound abcesses it's just a big pocket of puss. (that just sounded lovely didn't it, sorry)

Yeah, especially as I was eating my Lean Cuisine 3 cheese ravioli......mmmmmmm!!!!!

[tigerlily]

I have some great stories about ticks too!! BLEH! (actually I still have nightmares about those poor dogs - sorry they're not snake related!)