Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Bought a wc yellow ringer back in June of last year. Nothing really special looking about her other then having the yellow ring on her belly... Tonight she shed and I found this.

This was her before the shed.

This is what I found tonight when I walked in to the snake room.

Some of the skin is still stuck on her in places but it also looks like she has some yellowish coloration bleeding through in places.

Ronnie

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Luke Martin
Bronze Serpent Reptiles

OK, I guess we have to do it this way...

Before the shed

Tonight, after the shed...

Here is another one, not that great but you can see the white and silver coloration...

And one more...

If I recall Joe Compel has a ball in his collection that did this...I think he is tryin' to prove it out...I would def. hold it back and work on proving it out and see what happens...Very cool looking though indeed...
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From high gold to the best Axanthic you'll ever see...LOL. Very nice
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CB

"I'm a truckin bassmole, and proud of it"

You didnt accidentally drop her in bleach huh? LOL
That is kick ass looking. I hope she stays like that for you!

If you look at all 3 pics you wiped out the scale above the right eye on the 3rd pic while photochopping..

Wow thats quite the change.....
I've heard it happen randomly througout different balls....I think Bob Clark had a Spider do that last year.....
I'd like to have one of mine do that.....
It's weird and cool....maybe theres a reason for it....maybe there isn't...hmmmmm........
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Luke Martin
Bronze Serpent Reptiles

The camera really doesn't due justice since it's a $30 walmart clearance digital deal.. I'll be getting some better photos tomorrow with my 35mm. Basically, the saddles are bright white, her sides are silver and she has some yellow/gold blushing in some spots along her flanks... Patternless belly with 2 yellow rings..

Ronnie (not sleeping tonight =0)

I have seen others on this forum post that their BPs have done the same presto-changeo after a shed, and usually the animal looks totally axanthic except for some yellow blushing. Hopefully one of those people will catch this and post a pic of theirs. Either way, she's a very pretty snake! How old is she?
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1.1 Ball Python 1.1 corn snake 1.0 Bearded Dragon 2.0 Solomon Island Boas 0.0.2 fish 1.2 cats 3.1 kids 1.0 husband

She's about 14 months old, 540 grams.

went from bright lemon yellow to black and white, although, not quite as drastic as yours. Since last year, she has started to "brown" out. Her bright yellow never came back.
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Jay A. Martin

Then she got some color back and looks pretty normal now. I'd post a pic, but I took one with a regular camera and don't have a working scanner at the moment. Wierd. Maybe a reaction to environmental stresses? Who knows?

Does the current shed seem thicker than normal and has she experienced any skin problems lately (scale rot etc.)? One theory that was put out last time one like this came up was that some sort of skin problem might cause them to shed down to a deeper layer or something like that.

I would be very interested to know if her next shed has a visible pattern of dark pigment or not. I have an import girl (so I don't know how she started off) that looked a lot like yours at one point but at that time she was shedding clear. She then started to pick up a little pigment in her sheds and more lemon yellow on her body and even increased black speckling (IMG?). I'm trying to decide how likely it is that she started out normal looking and did one of these one shed changes by comparing her progression to known one shed changers.

Thanks, especially if you can post back about her next shed!

Hi Randy,

No previous skin problems or anything else unusal. This was a normal shed just like any other, except for the results =0) As best as I can tell her shed skin doesn't seem any thicker than any others I've seen from her or my other BPs. I'd be happy to post updates about her future sheds.

Ronnie

Here is what the clear sheds looked like right after I got her. I’m wondering if this is common with the ones that change with a shed or not.

Here she is a few sheds later. The sheds where still low pigment but you could definitely see a pattern now and she got a lot more dark speckling on her body. Maybe some sort of Increasing Melanin Gene like thing?

Unfortunately she didn’t quite make breeding size before starting her winter fast but should be ready this winter.

Now I see why you say IMG, although, from what I recall, this shed thing isn't common with them is it? She's a pretty snake. I like the darker color.

Ronnie

I don't know much of anything about IMG. I think the term came from The Ball Python Manual but I don't know what breeding was done with it. I have to assume it either never bred or wasn't genetic since I don't know of anyone having offered a line of IMG.

I believe that Ralph Davis' "Dirty Joe" followed a similar pattern to mine - starting out with clear sheds but getting darker. Actually I of don't know how mine started out as it was almost 700 grams when I first saw it but I believe Dirty Joe was imported as a hatchling. I'm trying to figure out how likely it was that mine changed via a shed vs. how likely that it was hatched black and white by looking for variations such as the clear sheds.

This happened to one of my 03 females last year, couldn't really explain it either, so it caused a little contraversy. But I've since found out that this extreme change as occured several times before in the US, Asia and Europe, seems to happen mostly to females. And referred to as IMG ball pythons. They vary a little but are basically all the same. This is a picture of mine before she changed.

Michael

Here is what she looked like eight months later after just one shed. This is what I found the following morning...pretty shocking, when your not expecting something like this. Glad to see others posting the event, perhaps with a little more study it will start making more sense, and be more understood. Either way sure makes for some amazing looking ball pythons. All the best with your snake, she looks AMAZING!!!

Michael

Wow, I really like yours. That blending of the colors is really COOL! How big is she?

Ronnie

I have a three year old CH bp that underwent a similar sudden change after a shed a couple years ago. He did not go completely axanthic like yours, though - he still had some color along his back. I described this snake to Brian Barczyk, and he immediately asked me if he has "unusually greasy stools". I was shocked, because I had noticed exactly that! When cleaning this snake's box, I often have to resort to dish washing detergent to cut through the grease. His stools (not the urates) are also gray in color. Have you noticed anything similar with yours? How this relates to the sudden color change, I don't know, but Brian (who has literally many thousands times more bp experience than myself) has obviously seen this before and was able to relate the two.

My snake seems to be having problems digesting fat. He always feeds heavily (unusual for a male), and now two years after his color change, seems to be slowly losing weight no matter how much I feed him. He always had decent body mass prior to the change.
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Regards,
Bob Garby

Nothing other than normal eating habits. The feces is normal, not greasy, nothing discolored or odd going on at all in that department.

I'm sorry to hear yours is loosing weight. I hope he starts to do better soon!

Ronnie

I spoke with 2 vets yesterday about this and they aren't familiar with any medical reason why this would happen, although they aren't ruling the possibility out. I have her going in for full blood work, another fecal, and whatever else may come after that pending the results of the lab work. If this is related to her ability to digest fat, we will know.

The color on her back is skin that didn't fully shed..