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Scale discoloration on brumating corn

gluttony32

gluttony32

New member
I was changing out water dishes and inspecting my brumating corns today, and noticed my butter corn male had a dry patch on his back. There is no moisture in his hide boxes and the room he is being brumated in(wine cellar) is 55 degrees with minimal fluctuation. This has never happened before to any of my snakes, any Ideas as to how to treat it? Or what caused it? Thanks
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How much longer are you planning to keep them in Bru?

You may want to go ahead and bring that one out. It certainly could be scale rot.

Get it on a paper towel substrate and see how it looks after a shed.
 
ty

I pulled him from brumation into a sterile 28 quart tub,and have him on nature bark with 2 moist hides. I already swabbed it with mineral oil. The temp now is 61-65, I figured I would warm him back up slowly. There was nothing rough in the tote I had him in, He had 2 dry hides, aspen and a plain water bowl. I am not sure how this happened. thanks for the suggestions
 
It does look a lot like scale rot to me as well.

For scale rot, you need to reduce humidity rather than increase it. It's a bacterial infection, so I'd put him on newspaper and ditch the bark. Basically you need to take away anything that can harbour residual bacteria and make conditions hostile for the bacteria whilst treating for them every other day.

Mineral oil won't help - you need something that will kill the bacteria. I used Betadine when one of mine had it. You also need to disinfect the tub and all hides/bowls etc as well as wiping the snake down with it, every couple of days. Stick to a very basic setup with no nooks & crannies. Disposable temporay hides are ideal -things like old cereal boxes that can be discarded with the newspaper substrate every couple of days as well.

When mine had scale rot she refused food, so I can imagine this might be an issue in one coming out of brumation. I'd offer smaller food items than the snake is used to, and see how it goes. You can also expect the snake to go into a rapid shed cycle as the scales recover. It can be a bit of a juggling act keeping it dry enough to discourage bacterial growth but humid enough for the snake to shed properly. Humid hides are an ideal environment for bacteria to proliferate, so I'd suggest not using them.
 
Just out of curiosity, what kind of enclosure have you had him in? The reason I ask is because I've seen almost identical pictures of an injury to a snake that was kept in a Sterilite underbed box, which can be found in any Walmart. These can be turned into nice tubs for snakes, with one caveat; if your animal crawls up on the ledge on either side (where the handles are), he can wedge in there so tightly, it can lead to bruising and some scale damage on the back. Is this a possibility?
 
sterlite

He was and still is in a 28 quart ster-lite tote, with a pop on lid.
It could be a possibility the way you described. I checked on him bi-weekly during the brumation process, and he spent 95 percent of his time in the hide. He was disturbed a few times during this time though, come to think of it, I had to move them twice, due to a hurricane in the begining of the process and when I moved to my new apt. after the storm.
Out of six adult corns though he is the only one to have it, idk if that means anything.
He is on news paper now and I left the 2 moist hides, I'm not sure, or at least I'm hoping that its not scale rot and its just stuck shed. He has not shed since November.
I plan on a betadine bath tomorrow after I procure some.
 
Mine absolutely hated the Betadine. As a tip, I gave up trying to bath her and just made an old flannel sopping wet with the diluted solution. I let her run through the flannel head-to-toe, a couple of times instead.
 
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