Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Do mites ever lay eggs on the snake or just in the bedding?

I'm almost positive they lay 'em on the snake, just because I've bought snakes with no visible mites only to have an infestation a few days later. I could be wrong, though.

(P.S. that was a while back, and I used provent-a-mite)
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Peter: It's OK, I'll handle it. I read a book about something like this.
Brian: Are you sure it was a book? Are you sure it wasn't NOTHING?

Agreed. I have never had mite problems except for once with a ball python a friend bought me for 15 bucks from a rather gross herp store. About a week or so later, my friend Scott who was caring for the snake while I was on vacation calls me and tells me my snake has mites. He had never had problems, I had never had problems. And they just randomly appeared on that one snake. So there must have been eggs. Havn't seen a mite since it passed either. Andy
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Andy Maddox
Houston Herp Key
The Reptizone

Burgundy baby, With your blue eyed soul, You play the hits and I'm on that roll, Capricorn sister, Freddie Mercury, Jupiter Child cry

That is another big reason I dont buy snakes from pet stores anymore! I have seen mites on a large percentage of snakes in pet stores. I have had to deal with mites 2 times since I have gotten into snakes. Both times were from pet stores. The first was a Tangerine Honduran that I bought, and as with you, he was mite free, but a few days later he had the little nasties crawling on him. I guess I caught them soon enough, because after disinfecting the enclosure and erradicating them from the snake no more problems. The other time was from some aspen bought from a pretty dirty store. Thankfully I had only changed the bedding for one snake when the next day I noticed he had mites. So I dumped the rest of the unused bedding into a large plastic tub and started checking it out. Sure enough, there were mites in it. Needless to say I had to treat my whole snake room to make sure there werent any mites that had gotten loose and could reinfest any of my snakes. Took the aspen back, got my money back and havent bought anything from that store since.
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Good luck and Happy Herping
Brian