New BP and burn question

[marlee12002]

Hi I am a new member today but have been checking out your site for a little while now. I just got a new female BP and thanks to info from all of you I have a nice set up for her. We named her Eithne (pronounced Enya) and she is very friendly and we love her already. However, I have a couple of questions that I am hoping you can help me with.
First of all, we got her privately from someone who wanted to breed her but decided she was too small. We do not have any intentions of breeding but I am wondering why she is under only about 2.5 feet long at 3 years of age... I was under the impression that females were usually larger. Also, she has a terrible scar from a burn along her back on the lower half of her body. I was told this happened over 2 years ago. Is there any way that this burn could have caused her growth to slow and if so, has her growth been slowed or is she as big as she is going to get.
I have looked all over the internet but I can't find any info on the aftermath of burns. I can't even figure out how she got burned on top of her back. I read that ball were heat sensitive there and rarely got burned except on their stomachs. Any knowledge anyone has would be appreciated.

[joyful girl]

She could have gotten burned from a heat lamp if she was able to touch it with her back.

Do you know what the previous owners were feeding and how often? The amount of food being fed can really make a difference on the snakes size.

[marlee12002]

I still can't figure out how to post pics here but I did post some in my gallery. If you click on the one titled "Eithne" so that it enlarges, you can see a little bit of the scarring on the part of her body that's wrapped around fingers. I have never burned any snake before to know what to expect with a scar but I think her looks like it must have been a bad burn and it is quite a long scar too. I think it is awful that someone allowed and/or caused this to happen to her.

[joyful girl]

she's tiny!! I honestly don't really see a scar but the pictures are a little fuzzy.

if she really is 3 years old I'd guess that the previous owners were rarely feeding her.

[marlee12002]

Joyful girl... thanks for the reply. The previous owner was feeding f/t mice... one a week but she said she tried twice a week for awhile to see if she could boost her growth quickly but it didn't help so she went back to one a week. I thought it might also be that she was keeping her in too small a tank... couldn't that affect her growth? She told me I could keep her in a 20g or less which I think is too small.

[joyful girl]

the size she is now a 20long would be ok although most people use tubs around here..myself included

I can't imagine them actually feeding her that much.. I have a 06' male and female that are both bigger then yours

[marlee12002]

Well I fed her one f/t mouse and I plan to give her one every 7 days. Do you think her growth has been stunted now or if fed properly might she get bigger?

[frankykeno]

Welcome to BPNet Marlee.

I couldn't get a really good idea of the scarring but here's one of our mature, breeding size females that carries quite extensive dorsal scarring from an incident during her time with her previous owner. From what our vet can surmise this was probably from exposure to an overhead hot bulb left unprotected, Orlah would have curled near it, become burned and when she moved away, stripped off a huge amount of her skin leaving this major scarring behind. It likely happened when she was a quite young snake.



As far as burns causing a retardation of growth I can only tell you it has not done so with Orlah. She was over 1,000 grams when we found her dumped by her owners at a local pet store, she is easily twice that now. She is also a proven breeder having laid 5 eggs last season. Neither can a small enclosure restrict a snake's growth, that's a bit of a myth that they only "grow to the enclosure". They grow based on genetics, gender and a proper feeding routine.

I would suggest first that you have the snake re-sexed to make sure it is in fact a female, then have a decent herp vet do a fecal float to make sure you aren't dealing with a snake carrying a load of internal parasites. Once you know what you have as far as gender and health then basically it comes down to a good, weekly feeding program, proper husbandry and time.

We have another female here, Kyna, who came to us as a very undersized 18 month old female snake that was barely bigger than most 6 to 9 month old snakes. Healthy, just very undersized due to a sparse volume of prey offered to her. We got her settled, upped her to 2 good sized mice every 7 days (which she aggressively snarfed down) and began to pretty quickly see some nice, steady and healthy gains in both length and weight. It wasn't long before 2 mice wasn't enough and Kyna was transferred over to appropriately sized rats (though on the right volume of mice they do just as good growth wise).

Kyna is the female on the right, Rionnach the female on the left is almost a year younger. This photo is from January 06. She had gained a lot in these pics and was already bigger than Ri who she once was the same size as in those first months. These days Kyna is much larger than Ri and completely caught up with her growth potential. She's big enough now that she's in her first breeding season.




Best of luck with this lovely snake!

[marlee12002]

Thanks so much for all the info and for sharing your experience. Sorry my pics are so bad. I will definitely take your advice and hope that we can improve her size. Thanks again!!

[frankykeno]

Your welcome hon. There's tons of great folks here that helped Mike and I so much when we were totally new to all this and fairly quickly ended up with a few snakes with "issues" (I can't refuse a snake in need of a home it seems! lol) so I'm glad if I can pay it forward in any way. Biggest thing I've found is consistency and patience....seems to be the best thing when it comes to ball pythons.