First aid for head rubbing

chairman · 07-26-20, 10:00 PM

Several months ago my male ball python decided to bruise the top of his head cruising around his rack. I believe the bruise was caused by pressing his head upward against the shelf above his head. It was probably the result of him being the lone male python in a rack below 3 female pythons... I moved him to the top bin and he quit rubbing. We occasionally get head rub-related injury questions here, so I thought this simple application of snake first aid might be informative.

Anyway, the bruise:

It is difficult to see but he managed to rupture some blood vessels below the surface, causing a small amount of blood to form under the bruise.

I treated the area by cleaning it daily with a chlorhexidine solution followed by treating it with pain reliever-free neosporin. After the first shed the area looked improved. With the second shed, a scab containing the blood came off as well. After about 2 months and a third shed, he started looking about like this:

If you can't tell, he's missing a couple scales that came off with the scab. It looks like they may be coming back but I'm not too worried about it (scaleless ball pythons being a thing and all).

poison123 · 07-26-20, 11:28 PM

Wow never seen that before. What kind of racks were they? Ive always used metal shelving with the tubs on them as a bootleg rack with the tub lids still on but getting some pvc racks in the mail this week for ground dwelling, burrowing species as well as babies.

ClockwerkBonnet · 07-26-20, 11:49 PM

Poor little guy. I'm glad the wound is healing.

chairman · 07-27-20, 11:57 AM

It is a homemade PVC rack made for seven 41 qt tubs and one 28 qt tub. (Top tub is smaller because the thermostat sits in the back of the shelf.) The shelves are spaced to allow me to have the lids on or off. I put the lids on (and the water dish over the heat tape) when a snake is in shed to bump up the humidity. At the moment only 4 of the tubs are occupied. I actually plan to move those snakes into AP cages when they come in, not because of any issues with the rack, but because I'd like to see my snakes more.

poison123 · 07-28-20, 12:40 AM

Maaan good luck on ever getting you ap to come in. I had to cancel my order and look elsewhere they just take waaaaaaay to long. Great quality and prices though. But i found some small businesses trying to make a name for themselves so we'll see how that goes later this week.

kudzu · 07-28-20, 05:01 PM

Gee, poison, I don't know what you're talking about. It only took 8 months to get my AP Cage.

It is a good quality cage with excellent assembly instructions. I knew when I ordered it that it could take a while, like 3-4 months, but it took twice as long as expected.

chairman · 07-28-20, 08:55 PM

The wait is a little frustrating. I placed my order in April and the cages should arrive by the end of August. You certainly need to plan well ahead if you plan to go with them.

If these were my first cages then I might have gone with another company, but I already have 6 AP cages and I like things to match.