I noticed yesterday that 5 of my ball pythons have some sort of infection or what I suspect is scale rot. All of them have it under the chin/neck area.
I have cleaned out all their enclosures, put them on paper towel and will start to do daily soak in betadine.
I am a bit worried that the rest of my collection will get this. I checked the rest of my collection and I can see that 2 of my others have 1/2 spots that look like they will develop into the same issue.
I might have overdone misting a couple of weeks, and this might been the cause of it? The weird things I find is how all of them got it under the same spot, under the chin/neck.
I don’t believe scale rot is something that can be spread around unless there is something else going on like a fungal infection. It is odd that they all have it in the same area though…
What is the humidity in their enclosures? Misting shouldn’t be necessary for Ball Pythons and their humidity range should be 50-60%. If you are having difficulty achieving that range I’d suggest using sphagnum moss that is only damp enough that if you squeeze it no water drips out and use substratelike reptichip if you aren’t using it already. I’d look in their enclosures and make sure there is no standing water or excessively wet spots.
That being said I will go back to the fact that since these spots on your snakes are all in the same area and there are multiple snakes being affected by this a vet visit should be done just to make sure this isn’t something else. And even if it is just scale rot they should be able to help you out on getting these spots cleaned up.
If you have to wait for a vet you can do a diluted betadine wash over these affected areas by soaking a cotton ball in the diluted solution (1 parts betadine to 10 parts water) and rub the cotton ball over these areas to keep the area cleaned and disinfected 1x a day.
So scale rot is kind of a catch all term (the actual medical name is ulcerative dermatitis), but this doesn’t necessarily look like infection to me. It’s more akin to scale damage. Is there any small spaces they try to squeeze their heads through? For example, I could see this happening if they were in a rack and there were a small gap they could fit their heads through but not the whole body. They would damage the scales pulling back into the bin.
Having them on clean paper for monitoring and betadine is a great start just in case. If they were mine, I would just monitor them for a bit first.
To me it looks more like tanins leaking out of coco chip bedding staining some scales that may have been a little scuffed or scratched from general activity. I had a batch of bedding turn one of my hatchling BELs dark orange because he flipped his water bowl.
Always better to be safe than sorry though! Obviously if anything else comes up or these scales worsen a vet would definitely be the best course of action! But with the possible extra water sitting in the habitats, this hopefully is just a temporary henna tattoo of sorts. Lol
I’ve always kept it quite dry in their enclosure, I don’t really measure the humidity anymore so I couldn’t tell exactly, I would say between 50-70%. I mist once or twice every week and dump their drinking water in the enclosure (half small cup) weekly.
Yeah I am planning on waiting, if I see any worsening then I will go to the vet. I will definitely do the cotton ball betadine swabbing, thank you!
I would say a few of them definitely is always looking to squeeze in the gap of the rack system, but this I have fixed already. 3 of the others don’t have that space to do that and they are mostly chill not trying to squeeze. I just find it really strange how all of them have this around the same area and within the same time.
I’m thinking if it’s something to do with bedding/squeezing/scratch etc how come 5 (potentially more) is affected within the same time frame. Never had this issue before with any of my 20 BPs. Also half of the affected live in separate racks. If this is scale rot then I know for sure it was my wrong doings.
Yeah for now I will just apply betadine solution on the affected area and keep the enclosure dry on paper towel
Since you are not sure of the humidity measure I would not be dumping water into the enclosures and misting too. Ball pythons do well at 50 to 60 % humidity unless shedding is a problem.
Hopefully scale rot is not the issue here but I just wanted to make mention of humidity.
After reading your replies, I no longer think it’s a gap issue. Gonna highlight a couple of things:
I wouldn’t call 50-70% “quite dry”, that’s more along normal parameters and 70% is getting a bit high if not in a shed cycle, especially if they’re in a rack without much air circulation. Realistically with BPs you should always be monitoring your humidity.
By dumping the drinking water in the enclosure, do you mean instead of dumping it out in a sink and refilling, you dump the old water in the enclosure? If so, this is likely part of your problem. If you’re dumping old, stagnant water in the enclosure, that’s absolutely chock full of bacteria. Are you regularly cleaning and sanitizing the water dishes?
Generally the substrate is quite dry and dry out pretty quick after misting. But I will for sure be monitoring humidity going forward to correct mistakes from my part regarding humidity.
Exactly I dump the old water in the enclosure when refilling/cleaning the water bowls, but only when the substrate is dry. This might been the issue, just never had this problem before and I’ve been doing this for at least a year now. I won’t be doing this now going forward as you mentioned with the bacteria in stagnant water.
I clean and refill the water bowls 2-3 times a week.
No other snake other than the 5 has gotten this issue, so it does not seem to be a contagious infection. 2 of the affected snakes has eaten with no issues. The infected area on all has not spread or gotten worse and they seem to be moving normally. One of them is going into shed so hopefully everything will be gone after shed. I’ll be updating more.
I want to thank all of you that have responded to my post!
Sounds like you’re cleaning the bowls often enough, but yeah, I’d avoid dumping the old water as it tends to have a lot of bacteria. How often are you cleaning out and replacing all of the substrate? It could be that the bacteria load just got too high and they were a bit damp for too long. Either way, betadine and keeping them on paper towel should clear up any minor scale rot. If it progresses to the point where you start seeing blistering or redness, then as previously recommended, that’d be the time to go to a vet for more systemic treatment.
