Very very worried about baby ball python (Alice)
I got a female baby normal (alice) at the beginning of septemeber. When i went to see her the first time i checked her for mites and her eyes and all, she is stunning looking. she was freindly too. I put down my deposit and arranged to pick her up in a week.
When i went to pick her up she looked a bit duller, like blue and the guy in the shop said she looked like she was going into shed. He said she'd been eating very well-2 baby fluffies a week.
All was well, she has always fed well on two fluffys a week and she strike feeds. The only issue is she never did shed. On closer inspection i held her up to the light so i could see her eye better and realised that the haze in one of her eyes is in fact an old eye cap that has not shed properly( i thought the haze was behind her eyes in the shop lighting). I decided to leave her to shed it right the next time instead of stressing her out trying to get it off. Her viv is in my bedroom and in the last week and a half i began to notice she was very active all the time. I thought it was odd and checked her over and she seemed ok and still eating well.
Then last thursday i looked into the viv and was staring at her when i noticed tiny specks moving on her. She has mites. They were hard to see and i sort of had to relax my eyes a bit to see them because of her patterns made it difficult. They were crawling into her eye sockets and everything! That night i noticed she was going insane, she was actually rolling herslef round and round to scratch herself, rubbing off the sides of the tank and then that night was horrible as i kept hearing a thud which was her climbing the side of the tank and throwing herself down. I had nothing to help but water because it was the middle of the night.
I went to another reptile place the next day to see the 'local expert' were i live. He explained what to do. He gave me stuff for the mites and said to spray the snake, and let her sit for a short time, at the same time wipe the inside of the tank, spray it from top to bottom and let the stuff sit for a while, then wipe it down. Meanwhile everything i took out of the tank i have sprayed, boiled in water and was told to put everything in the freezer for 24 hours. defrost and then spray and boil again-and to keep it all out of the same room as the tank.
I went home and took the whole viv apart to get into the cracks, vacummed the whole thing and around it, sprayed everything and the snake. I was also told then to let the snake soak for 1/2 hr and then put her into an empty viv with kitchen roll for substrate. I have to do this for 10 days at least- everyday.
However, i can still see the odd mite on her. she is not going crazy like she was but im worried its because she is weak. I noticed on saturday the scales under her chin look as if theyve been bleeding-its like a brown dirty patch. Her vent is looking better thankfully. I tried to get her to eat today and it was stressful! She did strike the fluffy but the whole feed was like an effort, she tried to eat it sideways and then when that was taking too long she gave up and it took another three attempts at me dangling it for her to go for it again the right way around (i had to position it the right way for her). What has worried me most is how she ate it-she seemed too weak to hold her head up. She had rolled onto her back with the mouse and instead of holding it up lay on the floor eating it with her belly facing me and her head flat on the floor-that cant be natural, an animal i assume would want to see around it while its eating for predators.
I wanted some advice on what you guys think-is there anything else i can do? there is no reptile vet here. I have a corn snake also and i checked him and he's fine. To be honest i have had an uneasy feeling about alice like something just wasnt quite right since i noticied her eye caps. She wobbles a bit in my opinion-but shes a normal not a spider. I was not sure if its the difference in the corn snake next to a royal, just cos im used to the cornsnake being fast wheras Alice seems more chilled and slower.
sorry this was so long-im freaking out a bit-this is my first royal and i adore her.
thanks
Reply With Quote