Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Worried about the area around my girls cloaca.

She's on her 4th shed here within the last 2-3 months, with 3 of those occurring in about a 6 week period or so. During that 6 week period, she wasn't ever really interested in eating, but is eating fine again.

About a week prior to these pics, I gave her a good soak, and removed what appeared to be several layers of skin that never came off during her molts. I thought all of that discoloration would come off with it, but it stayed.

Other than that, she appears to be very healthy.

It doesn't really have any odor.

I'm thinking that it may be some sort of fungus- what do you guys think?

Thanks,
//Todd

I'm not sure what it is, but I wouldn't be to worried yet. I had a similar thing happen with a Thai bamboo rat hatchling. She had some skin irritations on various part of her body(although, not around her cloaca) and she shed three times in about a month and a half period. The rapid shed cycles corrected the problem. Just keep her dry and you may want to dab a little neosporine around the area, but don't over due it. Some may suggest to just leave it alone(I know that's contradictory), lets see what others suggest. Removing the stuck skin should make an improvement, but it doesn't answer what caused the problem. Keep us posted, and good luck.
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Matt Kauffman

Thanks Matt.

Forgot to add that I did dab on some Neosporin after removing that old dead skin and drying well.

Hopefully, it will diminish over time- if not, I could care less as long as she's healthy...

//Todd

I think the neosporin suggestion is a good idea. My vet told me to apply this to skin irritations on a Ball Python I have and I did so about 2x a week and the skin irritations cleared up. I used a generic CVS version which was cheaper and it worked just fine. One of my Bulls also had a sort of irritation on her mouth in the form of a few brown edged scales for a while and they eventually went away, and she ate like a Bull the whole time.
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