Please help. Sudden injury to scales on my snake's neck!

[xStatic]

I'm probably overreacting to the situation. I just feel nervous since she's not to the 6 month point and she hasn't been eating and now she has this injury. The scales on her neck are slightly raised and bent looking. You can see the pink flesh between each scale and some aspen dust is firmly stuck inside of the wound. This injury has to have happened in the past 2 nights as I tried to feed her a couple days ago. I already took all the aspen out. I don't have any paper towels right now but I have a lot of newspapers that I use to line the bottom of all my snake vivs. She's on newspaper and has been out climbing around quite a bit tonight.

Does anyone have any information on sphagnum moss? Is this moss indeed safe for reptiles or did I make a bad mistake?

I haven't actually noticed her eyes cloud over but it's getting close to the time that she usually sheds each month. She's fairly regular in her shedding habits. I've also been able to predict every singe time both my albino garter and albino corn snake were about to shed. Their eyes always turn violet. I actually have a harder time telling when my normal rosy boa is going to shed. So I'm not sure if she will shed soon or not, but I can't really imagine the skin being able to come off of these injured scales very well.

Neosporin with painkillers is indeed harmful to snakes, or at least corn snakes. I made that mistake once with my snow corn and ended up scarring some of his scales (they fell off after being treated with it).

I'm going to try and get some pictures up in the next few minutes. I contacted the breeder to see if she's ever experienced this and ask her advice. My aunt is a small animal vet and some of her coworkers work with exotics. I'm going to email her tomorrow with pictures before I dish out $60 to my local vet which has a very minimal knowledge of exotic animals.

I raised her basking area to 90 and I'm letting it drop to 78 at night. Hopefully this will encourage healing and prompt her to eat as well. She wouldn't accept any mice, worms, or fish today as well.

Thanks for all of your concern and input!

[chris-uk]

Does anyone have any information on sphagnum moss? Is this moss indeed safe for reptiles or did I make a bad mistake?

I'm not aware of any problems with sphagnum moss. We have it in each viv in the cold hide to provide a moister area in a hide.

[EasternGirl]

When my Eastern Garter, Selena, had a slight mouth infection last year...a friend of mine on here recommended cleaning the area with Hibiclens antiseptic cleanser and water...just put a couple of drops of the hibiclens (you can buy it at any drugstore) in a cup of water and put it on a cotton swab and apply to the area a couple of times a day. It worked very well for Selena's mouth. The Betadine bath sounds good too. And keeping the snake on paper towels and away from any substrate that could get into the wound while it heals is important. As far as your substrate goes, I prefer Boxo and Carefresh to Aspen because there is less of a chance of the snake ingesting it. I think it is more expensive than Aspen though.