Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Hi,

I have three wild caught ball pythons that I need sexed and examined. They have visible ticks and more than likely, internal parasites as well.

Will the vet remove the ticks for me or might they charge me extra for doing this? What else might happen at the vet as I've never taken any snakes to the vet before.

thanks!

Make sure you do not just take them to a dog and cat vet. Make sure they see reptiles and you can ask spacificaly snakes(ball pythons) how many they have seen or do they see snakes in there office regulary. They will take the weight, size norm stuff and make sure it dose not have any RI. They can do a fecal to see if it is carring parasites. You do need to get the ticks off a.s.a.p. they can and will cause problems. They do make safe sprays for reptiles that gets rid of them and you can use that till you can get it to a vet. Mites and ticks WILL and DO travel so if you have other reptiles you should check them often to make sure they are not carring any as well.

Wild caught balls as well as any other wild caught snakes can carry things unknown and it is always a good idea to get them checked out just to be safe. Hope all goes well and good luck with them.

I sprayed the rubbermaids very thouroughly with 'provent-a-mite'. In addition to that, I sprayed the snakes with 'reptile relief'. I spoke with the folks at provent-a-mite and they said that once the tick falls off and touches the rubbermaid, they will die.

They are in a rack system by themselves whereas my collection are in tanks "in the same room". I don't touch the wc's and then handle my snakes at all.

thanks

Mites (and other nasties) can and will crawl across the room to the other tanks or racks. I would reccomend removeing the new snakes to a different part of the house. Quarinteen should be conducted as far away from the main collection as possible.

As far as what to expect from the vet...I dont know...my vet is just awesome (the last two visits were $19 dollars for an xray and $12 to remove a stuck egg) so I cant base what to expect from my experiances. Honestly I've only met my reptile vet once...because our scheduals dont match at all I allways end up dropping my animals off early before he gets there and picking them up after he leaves. The key though is good communication (we spend a lot of time on the phone) so if you have a vet that isn't willing to explain things to you and talk to you about your concerns (and answer ALL questions) then I would find a different vet.
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Tegan

You could probably expect him to call you a dumba** for expecting them to be CB...

...j/k...email me if you decide you wanna get rid of em.