Reptile & Amphibian Forums

hello, i have a female that has dry scales .. i have raised the humidity and i spray her more but it did not affect the scales in anyway .. she has had this problem for a while and she is perfectly healthy and eats fine .. she just has dry "skin" ...what can i put on her to help her? thanks

Can you measure the humidity in the cage?

What type of cage is it?

If it's an aquarium you can cover about 80% of the top with
cellaphane wrap to increase the humidity.

You can change the bedding or allow it to soak. If you get a
clay cave/hide you can soak the cave in hot water...

Use a larger water dish, and refill it with hot water...

Keep the humidity up to at least 65%
Then lightly coat your hands with cooking oil(not grease) and then allow the snake to crawl thru your hands until completly coated(not dripping) just coated. Works like hand lotion and wont hurt the animal in any way.Be careful not to load the animals vents,use your finger tips to get the oil on the head.
Repeat after 2 weeks and or twice a month.
Some snakes never get over it and always have dry skin but most do. Nutrabac(sp) loaded prey wouldnt be a bad thing for acouple months(every other feed)to increase vitamin intake.I dont recall the dose,but it was something like 1 gram per 5 lb body weight ??
Someone else can chime in on that one ......

Best Of Luck

M/

>>hello, i have a female that has dry scales .. i have raised the humidity and i spray her more but it did not affect the scales in anyway .. she has had this problem for a while and she is perfectly healthy and eats fine .. she just has dry "skin" ...what can i put on her to help her? thanks

what you are describing is typically caused by damp or dirty caging, well both. I would put the snake in a clean cage on dry newspaper, feed it well and see how it looks after it sheds. Adding more humidity at this point will only make it worse.

Valid Point,but I wasnt assumeing such a history.
Hopefully not the case.

M/

>>what you are describing is typically caused by damp or dirty caging, well both. I would put the snake in a clean cage on dry newspaper, feed it well and see how it looks after it sheds. Adding more humidity at this point will only make it worse.

hello, thanks for replying but i can assure u thats not the problem .. she is already on newspaper and i clean all my ensloures out on a weekly basis regardless if they deficated or not ... i also disinfect their enclsoures monthly ... if anything its more dry then wet ... i raised the humidity but it did not do much ...

We had a male that had this problem and it was corrected by injecting his rats with vitamins every other week for a couple of months. We used Nekton-rep. Just a SMALL amount mixed with water and then injected into his rat right before feeding.
We had tried everything and even spoke with the vet about it. We now use it for all our snakes a couple times a year.

It goes to figure that there could be "holes" in their nutrition, eating the same prey, that is fed the same rodent diet, month after month, year after year. In the wild they would consume a variety of prey that feeds on a variety of things.

Just be careful because it is possible to give too much and do more harm than good.

Kathy

where can i get Nekton-rep??

http://www.arcatapet.com/category.cfm?catnum=209

esential fatty acids, that's what the problem is. It's difficuilt to get enough in their diet.

Caden

where can i get these essentail fatty acids to inject the rats with???thanks

Soaking in water and rubbing with oil is good treatment. But what's causing this. There might be a parisitic infestion causing this. Can't say much more about it, some people think it's against the law to give professional advise