A headache ball python

[Lucas339]

Here's a little story of the ball python that could!

I hatched this female out back in April of '09. She has been a headache every since! An acquaintance of mine worked for an importer/exporter in town. That month, they imported a ton of adult gravid balls. They were selling them as such but some started laying eggs. They didn't have an incubator so they were just going to hope for the best. I asked about buying a clutch or two and they sold me a clutch for $20. They thought the clutch was just laid but it seemed older than they thought to me. The eggs were dry and didn't look too great. I took them home and put them in the incubator but they all went bad quickly. They then gave me a second clutch that had been laid that day. It was a 5 egg clutch 2 of which went bad quickly. The other 3 i thought were good up until I cut them. Only 1 of the animals was alive in the egg and it was this female:



I was excited for 2 reasons. One, this was my first ever snake that I hatched and two, her pattern and color are really nice (IMO). This animal took 2 months to go into her first shed! After the first month, I started offering food. She never took anything. I tried every combo you could think of once a week from mice, rats, ASF, braining ect. I ended up force feeding her to jump start her. After a few force feedings (2 or 3 i think), she shed and started taking food on her own but is still took a few weeks. In the end, she took a ASF hopper with the lights out and me hiding but not right away. It took 3 feedings like this for her to actually take it. The first feeding she would strike at it in defence a few times. The second one she actually hunted it. The third, things fell into place.

The story doesn't stop there! A year later she was having issues defecating in that it was a few months since she had gone. Sometimes, not an issue but I could see swelling in the tail area just before the vent. I started to feel around and I could feel hard urates in her. Now, at this time I had about 10 balls and kept them all the same way, same condition. She was in a rack with 4 others (seperate tubs of course). None of the other ones gave me any issues like this so I am discounted a husbandry issue at that time. I was able to work out the hard urate and she defecated. Things were fine for a few months. Everything normal. She defecated a few times with no issues. Then she developed it again. I started to soak her this time to see if that would help. After a week of soaking every day and her not passing anything, I decided to work out the urates again by hand.

After the second time I decided to change up her tub. Hard urates are either a sign of dehydration or kidney issues. I feed f/t that have been thawed in water. I offer the feeders soaked not dry to add water to my animals system. And of course she had a water bowl filled at all times. So I didn't think it could be a humidity issure. She even shed in one piece everytime. I kept her on news print like all my other balls. I decided to switched her to cyrpess and misted it once a month to see if an increased humidity would help. It worked and every thing fine until this month.

I just switched her to a larger tub. She went into shed and her head and throat swelled up. I was not worried because my GTP does this sometimes (head swelling....not throat though). It looks really freaky if your not used to it. She shed, and the swelling went down. I fed her, and the swelling came back the day after feeding. I looked her over really good and there was not excess mucus or labored breathing no bubbles or any other signs of a possible RI. I looked over my records and saw that she hadn't defecated in about a month. This is normal for her so I wasn't too worried. I bumped her temps up and waited to see if the swelling would go down. After a few days, it still didn't so I inspected her even closer. I decided to bump the humidity up to see if she would go on her own as she was looking a bit plump. I didn't feel hard urates like before so I figured she would be ok oh her own. She defecated and the swelling went down immediately. I checked her really close this morning and checked her stool (just looked) and everything looked normal. No swelling, the stool was normal in consistency, and the urates weren't super hard as they were before.

This animal hatched in 09 and is just now 500 grams. She has been problem free for about a year but then this month she gave me issues again.

Anyone else have stories like this for their animals?