Skin Improving after Parasite-related Dermatitis! (with pics)

[ConcinusMan]

Interesting. I bet that's what it was then...

I don't think so. By your description it just sounds like normal poop to me. Unfertilized eggs just look like a lump of yolk and it dries hard like yolk because that's what it is. And yeah rumor has it they can drop a load of slugs whether they have mated or not but none of my snakes have ever done that. Not even the female I had for 20 years. She had 3 litters but never just a load of slugs in between mating years/litters. Only time I've ever seen slugs is just one or two with a litter of babies.

Snakes produce eggs mostly by converting body mass reserves and she has plenty of that it appears. I think as long as she heals completely it probably wouldn't hurt a thing to brumate her this winter and breed her in the spring.

So did you just have to give her an oral anti-parasitic course or what? I would think that if it was hookworm (that's the usual nematode that causes dermatitis in people) that you and/or other exposed people would also be carrying them as well as the immediate environment in which case you could easily just keep re-infecting.

In any case snake skin takes quite a bit of time to get back to normal once the culprit is gone. Next shed she could be totally back to normal.

EDIT: somehow missed an entire page of updates before I posted that ^^^.

T
As far as weight goes, she's still eating like crazy and has actually gained weight since this started.

They'll do that. Many people think they eat a lot when they're preggo to feed the babies when in reality the babies have their own food supply already. The reason she's eating (and gaining) so much now is to replenish her own reserves which were spent producing those eggs. So by all means let her pound the food and build back up so she can make more eggs and you can breed her next time.

[d_virginiana]

So did you just have to give her an oral anti-parasitic course or what? I would think that if it was hookworm (that's the usual nematode that causes dermatitis in people) that you and/or other exposed people would also be carrying them as well as the immediate environment in which case you could easily just keep re-infecting.

In any case snake skin takes quite a bit of time to get back to normal once the culprit is gone. Next shed she could be totally back to normal.

EDIT: somehow missed an entire page of updates before I posted that ^^^.

Yeah, we gave her an oral antiparasitic course. I believe the parasites may have come from some mice we had been buying from a local petstore. I stopped feeding them shortly after she got sick because I got some that had clearly not been properly frozen. I don't think they were freezing them long enough to kill all parasites. It'd make sense too, since Houdini doesn't eat a lot of mice (he prefers fish) and the baby was only getting legs/tails at the time, so Harley was the only one actually eating those mice whole and getting the gut contents.

[Sonya610]

That's Harely?!! Holy crap.. she's grown..

glad that all worked out

Yeah I agree. She is two years old? Holy Sheesh she seems large for her age!

[d_virginiana]

Yeah I agree. She is two years old? Holy Sheesh she seems large for her age!

Yeah, I think her birthday was in May, so she's almost exactly 2 now. She's the first female I've owned so I didn't have anything to compare her size to.

[ConcinusMan]

I've had concinnus' get that big in just 2 years. The Clark Co. WA ones anyway. They also seem to have very long lifespans. A male at 18 and a female at 22? yeah, that's old.