Rehabilitating abandoned Darwin

[dangles]

Rubber thimbles or fingers from rubber gloves can be used to remove retained shed. Give snake a bath then rub with light pressure in direction of scales.

 

[Gruni]

I have never measured the temp, I just put my hand in the water and treat it like a baby bath. It just needs to be warm. I needed to do it once for my girl when se retained the very tip of her tail but my much more experienced friends have been doing it for the better part of 20yrs on a variety of types of snakes and swear by it as they have done both with the tea and just water.

As you said it depends on whether Hecate has flakes of skin or if it is a band of skin which can restrict his belly. If it's just flakes I wouldn't worry overly as the next shed will take care of it and the correct humidity possibly would mean it would fall off before then. If there's a chance of restriction I would make the bath a priority even though we have suggested minimising the amount of handling. When I did Skittles I just grabbed a large kitchen container and clipped the lid on as it had plenty of air for the sake of a 20min soak.

 

[Emilie]

the fact that anyone thought of feeding the snake three days a week shows that not one bit of research has been done... Unless the Darwin is taking really tiny feeds every few days but still maybe some research needs to be done because all the information is accessible online... Good luck with getting the snake back to health but in future maybe some research needs to be done... It would only take five minutes to research the husbandry requirements of a python...

Seems like the advice have been taken in good faith from a vet. Might not have thought about questioning a vets advice until now then. Seems to me he's done good so fare, and will continue on with all good advice give.

 

[hnn17]

ok i have to ask, where is this vet clinic that gives away albino darwins ? and who in their right mind paid $1000 for an albino snake, fed it til it was a year old will abandon it at the vet because it was too scarey ? doesn't make sense in this economy.

OP: yearling darwins can eat small rats, i dont know about your spotted but snakes can eat preys that are slightly thicker than the snakes' widest girth.
please stop handling this snake everyday you are stressing it out so that is why it's not eating.

 

[ronhalling]

I think this thread has gone so for off track now that the original plea for help is mostly being ignored except for a few like Gruni and Emilie, instead of brow beating "Spiral" for what she does not know we should be patting her on the back for taking on this poor neglected critter and congratulating her for applying what she does know, as a whole it seems like she is mostly doing a lot of the right things to help Hecate back on the road to a healthy and happy life. Ok she might have been given some advice that the "EXPERTS" here don't agree with but i don't think we should be attacking her for doing what she was told by a vet (which most of us would do) instead we should be educating her on what we have found works best, remember it is the people who look after the reptiles so we need to think about how we offer the advice to these people if they are to be expected to learn from the "EXPERTS"..................................................................Ron

 

[flt13]

Is dehydration a factor? Soak in Pedialite etc. (used for babies)