Hello.
I'm looking for some advice or help because I'm extremely concerned about my snake. He is a male ball python and I believe he is somewhere around 4 yrs old. A few months ago, I picked him up and noticed that his underbelly was brown and sunken in. I brought him to the vet that day and they told me it was a burn, but wasn't an extremely severe one... at least, not the worst they had seen. We figured that his undertank heater had probably caused the burn, so I removed it and replaced it. I gave him shots of baytril to prevent any infection and applied silver sulfadiazine cream directly to the burns.

He has not eaten since about a week before I noticed the burn..... this was around 3 months ago, I am estimating. I've noticed that he's lost a lot of weight. My main questions are:

1. Should I be concerned or is this just something snakes do in order to heal from an injury?

2. Should I force feed him immediately?

3. Does anybody know about a healing process for burns on snakes? The burn burnt and damaged his scales and I've noticed that the burnt scales are shedding off of him. I'm just nervous that they could have possible gotten an infection or something.


Any help is greatly appreciated!! Thank you so much!