CarpetPythons.com.au
Well-Known Member
- Joined
- Apr 27, 2008
- Messages
- 935
- Reaction score
- 15
We have been deliberating about wether we should post the following topic for quite some while. I am sure there are some of you that will have an opinion about doing these types of things at home but under the circumstances it was neccessary to save the animals life regardless of the right protocol. I would just like to start off by saying that we are strong advocates of taking animals to veterinareans for professional help if an animal shows any signs of illness. I do think that this topic for educational purposes is a must as it might become handy if an accident does occur.
I will start off by saying that we seem to have one hatchling every year that seem to be hell bent on making our life a missery for as long as it is possible. This year was no different and it happened to be a small albino male that i shall call "Lucky" from now on. This little snake has turned out to be one of the most difficult hatchlings that we have ever tried to establish.
It hatched in mid november of 2009! At first it had issues shedding its out of egg skin. He eventually decided to shed and then contracted blister disease because of the constant humidity we had to supply to help him shift the shed. We managed to get him back to health after a few weeks of warmer dryer conditions. He then decided to not eat till June by wich time he had really become very frail and skinny. We do not like to force any snake to feed and have found that hatclings usually start feeding by themselves after some time. They even go for as long as 11 months and then only start feeding.
It got to the point where we felt we needed to get some form of nutrition into him. We never get rid of snakes that we have had a history with. I started to force feed Lucky a rat pinkie per week and he started to shed and put on some weight. In mid June i had a defrosted pink rat left over from a feeding session so i decided to use it instead of throwing it out. I had only one snake in mind and Lucky it would be!
It all started off really well, same procedure as always, Not! I suddenly felt no resistance from the snake, i also heard a tearing noise, when i looked the pinkie was sticking out through a tear about 2.5 inches long from the side of the snakes neck.
I went into panick stations as this was life threatening. it was on a thursday afternoon and when i started ringing around i realised that my regular snake vet was not in the office till Monday! I had to make a decision and fast. I decided to pull out the old sowing kit, i sprayed the torn area with F10 solution and asked a friend who was over at the time to help me restrain the animal while i started to apply sutures to the wound. I applied F10 topical ointment to the wound and started the long wait.
I received a phone call the following day from Shane Simpson and we discussed at length the proceedings of the previous day. I was more concerned about the tear in the esophageal wall than the skin tear, the skin of reptiles heal really well after accidents. He has only ever had to stitch up an esophageal tear in a 6 foot carpet python. I have never liked the idea of placing hatchling reptiles under anaesthesia as in my experience the animal usually ends up dead. We decided to wait it out for the 6 weeks that it would take for the wound to heal. There was some swelling around the neck area originally but that started to subside after about 2 weeks.
Here are some photos after three weeks.
Well 6 weeks passed last friday. I managed to get a hold of some mouse pinkies of different sizes and tried to offer him a few last night. He took them by himself and unassisted. I guess the near death experience might have had something to do with his change of heart attitude to feeding.
I guess the moral of the story is to try and avoid force feeding for as long as possible. Keep the little snake hydrated as i am sure dehydration and being malnourished had something to do with the skin being so fragile.
There was not one moment that went by that i did not want to kick myself in the head about this accident.
I hope some of you might learn something out of my mistake.
I will start off by saying that we seem to have one hatchling every year that seem to be hell bent on making our life a missery for as long as it is possible. This year was no different and it happened to be a small albino male that i shall call "Lucky" from now on. This little snake has turned out to be one of the most difficult hatchlings that we have ever tried to establish.
It hatched in mid november of 2009! At first it had issues shedding its out of egg skin. He eventually decided to shed and then contracted blister disease because of the constant humidity we had to supply to help him shift the shed. We managed to get him back to health after a few weeks of warmer dryer conditions. He then decided to not eat till June by wich time he had really become very frail and skinny. We do not like to force any snake to feed and have found that hatclings usually start feeding by themselves after some time. They even go for as long as 11 months and then only start feeding.
It got to the point where we felt we needed to get some form of nutrition into him. We never get rid of snakes that we have had a history with. I started to force feed Lucky a rat pinkie per week and he started to shed and put on some weight. In mid June i had a defrosted pink rat left over from a feeding session so i decided to use it instead of throwing it out. I had only one snake in mind and Lucky it would be!
It all started off really well, same procedure as always, Not! I suddenly felt no resistance from the snake, i also heard a tearing noise, when i looked the pinkie was sticking out through a tear about 2.5 inches long from the side of the snakes neck.
I went into panick stations as this was life threatening. it was on a thursday afternoon and when i started ringing around i realised that my regular snake vet was not in the office till Monday! I had to make a decision and fast. I decided to pull out the old sowing kit, i sprayed the torn area with F10 solution and asked a friend who was over at the time to help me restrain the animal while i started to apply sutures to the wound. I applied F10 topical ointment to the wound and started the long wait.
I received a phone call the following day from Shane Simpson and we discussed at length the proceedings of the previous day. I was more concerned about the tear in the esophageal wall than the skin tear, the skin of reptiles heal really well after accidents. He has only ever had to stitch up an esophageal tear in a 6 foot carpet python. I have never liked the idea of placing hatchling reptiles under anaesthesia as in my experience the animal usually ends up dead. We decided to wait it out for the 6 weeks that it would take for the wound to heal. There was some swelling around the neck area originally but that started to subside after about 2 weeks.
Here are some photos after three weeks.
Well 6 weeks passed last friday. I managed to get a hold of some mouse pinkies of different sizes and tried to offer him a few last night. He took them by himself and unassisted. I guess the near death experience might have had something to do with his change of heart attitude to feeding.
I guess the moral of the story is to try and avoid force feeding for as long as possible. Keep the little snake hydrated as i am sure dehydration and being malnourished had something to do with the skin being so fragile.
There was not one moment that went by that i did not want to kick myself in the head about this accident.
I hope some of you might learn something out of my mistake.
