A rat bit my snake during a feeding and he's bleeding what should i do??

Question

i fed my boa and he instantley locked on the rat but the rat found a way to bite my snake really good. he is swollon a lil bit and has a lil blood dried on the wound he bit me after the fact but i know he just swore. do i need to get the snake medicine?

Answer 1

Gently clean the site of the wound with some hydrogen peroxide. You can put Neosporin on it, but don't use the painkiller variety because it might have ill effects on your animal. If you notice any pus or other signs of infection you need to take it to a vet familiar with the care and treatment of exotics.

Until the wound heals, you might want to put your snake on newspaper or paper towel bedding to avoid any possible infection from the substrate.

Aside from that, I think you should consider switching over to frozen/thawed food items for your snake. If you don't want to buy or store frozen animals at least pre-kill the rats before offering them to your snake to prevent problems like this in the future.

Good luck with your animal.

Answer 2

I am going to say this but not with malice. It is never advisable to feed any captive snake live prey items for this reason exactly.

Below I have attached some websites with wonderful care sheet on Boas from people that have years of experience. None of these websites recommend feeding live prey.

http://www.vpi.com/publications/boa_cons...

http://www.anapsid.org/boa.html

You should see a veterinarian and most likely need to place him on antibiotics. Rodents harbor lots of bacteria in there bite. Even though it may look healed for now, reptile metabolisms are slow going and it may not abscess for months. Find yourself an exotics veterinarian

( www.ARAV.org )

Answer 3

STOP feeding him live . Your going to kill him. He can get a very nasty infection and yes it can be life threatening. I would get him to a vet.