Keep King Snakes Healthy

Video Transcript

"On behalf of Expert Village I'm Nicole and I'm here to tell you about king snakes. Some health problems that are common in king snakes will have to be external parasites. That is the most common complaint among hobbiest is buying their snakes with external parasites which include mice and ticks. Mites are something that you would find underneath the scales of the snake. What they will do is latch onto the skin and they suck the blood out and it will swell as they suck the blood. So lift the scales, are a good sign that your snake has mites. Ticks are easily seen and they usually don't adhere to themselves under the scales. They are a lot easier to be seen cause they are a little bit larger. So if your snake does have something like ticks you can easily pull them off with the tweezers and apply antibiotic ointment to the area where she has been bitten and that should take care of your tick problem. Now if your snake does have mites or ticks, you want to make sure to take care of this right away cause infestation that are not taken care of can cause disease and death in your snake. Another common problem with snakes are they retain shed. If your snake is not kept in a high enough humidity or it doesn't have access to water to be able to soak their body before they shed, they may retain some skin, the skin should come off in one solid piece. If it comes out patchy or if your snake has patches of skin stuck to it with the edges peeling up, then that's a good sign that your snake needs a good warm bath. Another problem with shedding is that often times the skin will come off from the body but will stay in the eye caps. Snakes do shed their eye caps and it's very important that those come off when they do shed. If they do not shed their eye caps, they can't see properly and this can affect their eating behavior, the deposition, their mannerism, all together they may be even given bitting because it scares the snake that can see is definitely to be prone to protecting itself."