Skin irritations

[Rorschach]

I over the past couple of weeks I have been keeping my corn on newspaper. Before this he was always on aspen. I just took him out of his tank for a cleaning and he has reddish pink almost sores on random locations on his body. About the size of a pencil eraser and smaller. On his head he has a tiny line of what looks to be dried green puss and has a couple of random scales where this puss is evident. He did skip his meal this past week, but other than that is acting about as normal as could be.

I just switched him back to aspen tonight incase this is something stress related due to not being able to burrow in the newspaper. I did think he was going through a shed earlier in the week because his eyes did get cloudy, but now they are normal with no skin to be found in the tank.

Any advice or suggestions?

[dr del]

Hi,

It is extremely unlikely to be caused by the newspaper.

I would put him on paper towels and get him to a vet fairly quickly to determine how serious the infection (if that is what it is ) could be.

Do you feed live?

Is there anything in the tank with sharp edges?


dr del

[Rorschach]

I do feed live.

I did put a rather small corner rock hide into his tank. He's a little over 4 feet and was really craming into this tiny space. Before I put that in there he was fine. When this was in the tank he did spend most of his time under newspaper. I could imagine he may have scraped his head on this as I did use something similar on one of my BP's and he hurt his head. I should have learned from my past mistakes.

Do you think this could be the problem? Now he is on nice soft aspen and in a large hide

[dr del]

Hi,

I can't say for sure without knowing how rough the inside of the hide was.

I can say a non-particulate substrate like paper towel is a far, far better idea when the snake has open wounds and sores on its body however.

And that any animal with multiple areas of what might be infection really does need to see a vet to find out if it is somthing topical taking advantage of blisters or wounds or is a side effect of the whole snake being septic.

Can you get us some nice clear pictures of these areas?

And when you feed live do you always supervise the feeding until the mouse is dead?


dr del

[Rorschach]

I am afraid I do not have pictures. I feed with tongs, I know to never leave a mouse in his tank for any period of time. I saw the mouse bite him, he didn't strike him in the face leaving it exposed and the mouse took a desperate bite.

I did take him to the vet today, Dr. Dutton here in New Hampshire. Which I would highly recommend to anyone in the area. He said the wounds look like they could be from him scraping his head on a jagged object, but wasn't too sure because he hasn't seen my set up. The red spots seem to be a spreading bacterial infection.

So now I have my little guy on anti-biotics BAYTRIL 22.7 mg/ml which I am injecting via syringe for 5 days. The visit and prescription were not at all expensive and even if it were, it would be considered money well spent.

Thanks for the advice on bringing him to a vet, I almost wanted to wait it out to see if any changes would occur.

[ajsnoopy]

Sorry to hear about the spreading infection It's good that the vet was able to diagnose the problem, though . And I'm glad there's a reputable vet in your area that takes care of reptiles. I hope he has a speedy recovery

[Rorschach]

Thank you for the kind words, I will be sure to pass them along!

It is good that there is a good vet here in New Hampshire. I only know of two in the whole state. I drove 80 miles total to get there and back with my little fella. I think he enjoyed the car ride, I looked over at the box he was in and he had his face and about six inches of neck sitting on top staring at me. He even climbed out at one point while I was driving. He's a good little bugger