Reptile & Amphibian Forums

my rat snake has some funny looking and feeling scales they are dull and ruff compaired to the rest of his scales this just started occuring in the last couple of weeks what could this be? The scales in question are about half way down his body and only on one side. the shining top part of the scales were flaking off onto our fingers when ever we handled him. I will post a pic of this as soon as i get batteries for my camera. the pic i am posting with this question is from when we first got him.

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2.1.0 ball python (aragorn, frodo, arwen)
2.0.0 columbian boa (wiggles and squiggles)
1.0.0 rat snake (alabastered)
0.1.0 corn snake (baby)
3.3.0 cats (rockie, bs, brownie, lerrado, kole, camie)
1.3.0 kids (dilyen, dakota, chyanne, sierra)
Brian n Chrissy

here is the pic of al's owie

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2.1.0 ball python (aragorn, frodo, arwen)
2.0.0 columbian boa (wiggles and squiggles)
1.0.0 rat snake (alabastered)
0.1.0 corn snake (baby)
3.3.0 cats (rockie, bs, brownie, lerrado, kole, camie)
1.3.0 kids (dilyen, dakota, chyanne, sierra)
Brian n Chrissy

I'm stumped. A hands on exam would be most benificial as this problem is hard to handle with pics. I don't think it's anything serious provided your snake's behavior and appetite hasn't changed.

Ian

we think the scales could be some form of bacterial dermititis if that is the true problem. we are using neospotin on the patches daily as treatment we got this information from the ball python manual by david barker. is there anything else we should be doing and is this possibly an airborn contagion. the book also states that we should check for mites which we have and have not found any.
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2.1.0 ball python (aragorn, frodo, arwen)
2.0.0 columbian boa (wiggles and squiggles)
1.0.0 rat snake (alabastered)
0.1.0 corn snake (baby)
3.3.0 cats (rockie, bs, brownie, lerrado, kole, camie)
1.3.0 kids (dilyen, dakota, chyanne, sierra)
Brian n Chrissy

I think that a bacterial dermatitis would show with a more obvious skin condition but there is no defined perameters here. Since there is no immediate concern here because your snake is otherwise doing fine, continue with the polysporin twice daily for 7 days. Wait until the snake sheds next. If the problem doesn't show signs of improvement, or gets worse, then pursue with veterinary treatment. If there is indeed an infection, bloodwork will be able to see how the immune system is responding. Unfortunately skin cultures are not very beneficial due to the numbers of bacteria normally present on the outside of the scales. A full thickness biopsy might get around this.

Ian

ok will do thank you for the help. we just looked in on the snakes to do cleaning and saw that 4 out of 7 are going in to what looks like rapid shed. when befor they were on differnt shed schedules.
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2.1.0 ball python (aragorn, frodo, arwen)
2.0.0 columbian boa (wiggles and squiggles)
1.0.0 rat snake (alabastered)
0.1.0 corn snake (baby)
3.3.0 cats (rockie, bs, brownie, lerrado, kole, camie)
1.3.0 kids (dilyen, dakota, chyanne, sierra)
Brian n Chrissy