Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Sorry for the crappy photos. Its an underwater camera, not really meant for anything close up.

This is the vent of my female Pastel. She's been breeding lately to my Spider Male, and there seemes to be one really p*ssed off scale right uderneath one of her spurs.

Anyone have any idea what it could be? Or how to fix it? Everything else on her is utterly and completely normal, including the rest of her entire belly, except for that one scale area. It was even bleeding a little. If I didn't know any better I would think its a tick.

The pair has been split up, and these pictures are before I ran her under luke-warm water. Think SSD topical ointment could help? Or maybe 50-50 Water-Peroxide?

I'm not really sure how to treat it, or what it is...
Thanks for the help...
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Cheers!
• Chelsea Lynn Gardiner
(and Frank M. Wood)

Looks like she's just a little worn from breeding. Giving her a break should help, as well as a little cleaning up. If you have betadine you could use a little of that as well as some neosporin, but otherwise it should heal up on its own.

It'll probably look perfect again after her next shed.

~jenny
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"We call them dumb animals, and so they are, for they cannot tell us how they feel, but they do not suffer less because they have no words."
- Anna Sewell (1820-1878)

Just looks like a litte sore area, probably not too big of a deal and it will probably be fine after the snake sheds. Antibiotic ointment would probably be a good idea since its pretty close to the cloaca. I would not waste any time with the hydrogen peroxide though.
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0.1 Normal Cornsnake
1.0 Sumatran Short Tail Python
3.3 Ball Pythons (2 normals, 2 pastel, 1 yb and 1 ?)

... Males will "tickle" the female with their spurs. It's not really tickling but you get the point. While they were locked up one of his spurs was most likely bent at an odd angle. If the spur catches under the female's scale it can cause irritation to the skin beneath or even break the skin (as in your case).

They can lock up for quite a while and after an hour or two it's not too much of a stretch to see how a spur rubbing against normally protected skin would irritate the area.

Follow the advice the others gave you and she should be fine. I wouldn't worry about reintroducing the pair at some point in the future. Just give the female a week or two between pairings to "heal up".