Reptile & Amphibian Forums

One of the '06 Florida X Hondurans that I bought is all dry and withered after a shed. He shed all in one piece, but after the shed he's in bad shape. Is it possible that he had too much humidity in the little peat moss hide? It was right next to the heat pad, so it dried out pretty quickly.

Or could he have gotten dried out because I ran the air heating system in the house a few times? All the rest of my snakes are fine, so I suspect he may have a skin rot condition or something. His head looks pretty shiny, but his skin gets progressively more dry towards the tail.

Is this blistering, or something else? He seems to be craving heat, so I switched his heat pad from side to belly heat. He wasn't interested in the moist hide, so maybe he did get too much humidity. I've moved the moist hide away and put a dry hide over the heat spot. There's about 2" of aspen bedding over the heat pad. It took him a minute, but it looked like he was burrowing into the aspen towards the heat pad once I changed the setup.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

So I guess he's not feeling too bad. I put a moist paper towel over his hide, and I got a small ultrasonic humidifier for the herp room to combat this dry winter air. I've already got a humidistat, so it won't get too moist in there.

If he doesn't look better in two days I'll take him to the vet. If it is some type of infection or fungus, all those pinkies should boost his immune system.

I think it's just a combination of a few factors that caused his skin to get dried out towards the end of the shed. The dry air, house heating, etc....

The doc shot him up with some Baytril and B12. Said his throat was all red. I'll be giving him a shot every 24 hours for the next 10 days. I don't know if it was the needle or the B12 (or both), but that was the fastest I've seen him move since I got him! He's been acting pretty sluggish compared to his siblings.

We won't have the stool sample results for up to a week. Hypo Sunset should be well on his way to recovery by then, but I figured it was worth the extra $50 for lab analysis. If one of my other snakes develops the same problem, at least I'll know what the culprit likely is.

He took over 150 gulps of water (purified) this morning, and he doesn't seem to be getting any worse. I'm confident that he'll be back to normal in a week or two. I've sprayed him with Natures Reptile Vita Spray a few times, which appears to help his skin, but it's still pretty dried out and wrinkled.