Home Herpetarium

It seems to be shedding season in our Reptile Room right now.  The other day I walked in to check on things and Mittens, our veiled chameleon, looked like a creature right out of a nightmare.  She was a mess of flaky white skin, and in no mood to let anyone try and help her peel it off.  We misted her and that seemed to help a bit, but it still took the rest of the day before she wasn’t quite so creepy looking (and I mean that in the most affectionate way possible.)

While Mittens was doing her thing, our female Ball python Esper was doing her own.  She is the snake that recently got over a respiratory infection, and while she hasn’t been eating since then she seems to be growing just fine.  She began to shed and managed to get crispy old skin off her face, before giving up and letting the rest of her old skin just sit there.  About this time my partner decided to go in and help out.  First he gave her a soak in warm water, and then he began the lengthy process of peeling the softened skin away.  

In the wild reptiles can have problems shedding by themselves, even after soaking in puddles and ponds or scratching themselves against rocks and trees.  They can end up with retained eye caps or layers of hard skin on top of other skin.  So with our captive herps we take extra care to make sure each shed goes as well as possible.  My partner will pick loose skin off the toes of the geckos, and peel it off the backs of the snakes, and sometimes even assist in removing it from eyecaps.  This is the hardest one, as it takes a very skillful hand and either tape (rolling the sticky part gently over the eyecaps to lift them away) or tweezers (though we don’t recommend this as you can accidentally injure them by poking them in the eye.) 

Most snake owners will find themselves faced with the all important question at some point:  should they feed their reptile live prey or already dead prey?  If you have gotten your snake from a previous owner who only fed frozen mice or live mice, the choice could be made for you.  Ball Pythons are notoriously picky eaters, and if they were raised on live prey they may refuse to eat anything else.  Choosing what to feed based on price may not always help, as live mice from a pet store can cost about the same or even a little less than frozen mice from the same place.  If you are purchasing from a company that deals in feeder mice, you may find the price difference a little more helpful, as oftentimes dead rodents are quite a bit cheaper then the live ones.  

Some people have no problem with the idea of their pet snake killing another animal that has been handed directly to them, while other snake owners can’t stomach the idea of being an accessory to any animal’s demise.  It can be a brutal and sometimes messy experience when a snake kills its prey, and it isn’t surprising that some people just can’t handle it.  In many cases the choice to feed frozen mice over live mice comes down to the personal preference of the owner of the snake.  If a person can’t handle watching their snake kill prey every few weeks, going the frozen route is a much better option.   

At my house it is frozen all the way.  When it was just me and my Ball Python, Eva, I was a live feeder.  She only eats every three weeks so it was not too expensive or difficult to procure her a live mouse when necessary.  But now that I have a whole herpetarium in my house, with 16 snakes all needing to be fed on a regular basis, live mice are not the most cost effective option.  My partner and I choose to buy frozen rodents in bulk, and in several different sizes, to meet the needs of all of our animals.  Feeding frozen mice also cuts down on the risk of any of our snakes getting injured.  The larger the prey animal, or the smaller the snake, the more chance there is that a struggling rodent could scratch or bite your reptile.  By feeding our snakes mice and rats that are already dead, we take this possibility out of the equation.

Around March of last year I noticed a funny whistling sound coming from the tank where my Ball Python Eva lived.  It didn’t happen all the time, but seemed to occur most often in the early morning or late at night.  I had never experienced this problem with my first Ball Python, Apophis, and wasn’t sure it if was a cold or a respiratory problem or had to do with the environment.  When I discussed it with my partner, he said it could be a humidity issue and I should remove Eva’s water dish for most of the day so that it wouldn’t cause more moisture in the tank.  I began trying this immediately, taking the water bowl out except for an hour or so a day, and within a few weeks the whistling seemed to disappear. 

This winter we had a new Ball Python, Esper, come up with some whistling, which quickly progressed into actually runny sniffling.  We moved her into a tank that did not hold in humidity to see if a drier climate would help but she just worsened.  When nothing we tried worked, and when her problem progressed to the point that she couldn’t eat or breathe without releasing a large amount of snot, we took her in to the vet. There we learned that Esper had a respiratory infection and the only way to get her better would be to inject her on a daily basis with antibiotics.  This was not an easy task, or a particularly pleasant one, but we managed to make it through all eight of the at-home injection treatments.  And now I’m happy to say that Esper is no longer sniffling, wheezing, or whistling.  

All reptiles are very different in their requirements for habitat, temperature, and humidity level.  If you have just one of these things off you could end up with a sick animal.  Be sure to keep track of the habitat your herp lives in, and if you see any signs of illness you need to speak with a reptile expert or a vet as soon as possible.