Meet my very troublesome jag!

This is Bernard, he is the gift that keeps on giving.
[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] by [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.], on Flickr

I had been saving up for this snake for some time when this happened, he came from a petshop, I wont go in to details though.

When the snake came to me he had two wounds, one on each side of his head, they were severely infected and his head was so swollen you could see the skin stretched all around his eyes, he also had the beginnings of a respitory infection. I can't find the photos right now but when I do I'll post them. Anyone that has seen him in that state can testify he was in bad condition. In the photo above you can see the "holes" left after he shed, that was when he was mostly better. I have to thank Jim, if he hadn't made sure the snake immediately came home with me for treatment there is a big chance there would be one less Bernard in this world. I also have to thank Mark who very patiently allowed another snake in the house (there was a three snake rule at the time).

Anyway, so Bernard is recovering in quarantine and I'm giving him daily antiseptic to the wounds and the inflamation goes down and he is improving steadily when another problem strikes, something that knocked me for six and I hope I never, ever have to see again.
The snake at this stage is due a shed, probably a couple of days away, when I need to do a water change, I move him out of the way and there's blood on my hand, I lift him up and in some places the outer skin is intact and there's blood pooling underneath, in other places the skin has ripped leaving it to flow. I call Jim in a panic and he comes over and we help the snake out of his shed, now we can see it looks like the skin is undeveloped, but anyone who has seen the setup can testify it's not an mechanical wound, burn or scale rot, the conditions were dry, the thermostat working well, this was something else.

Here are the photos once we got him cleaned up. The photos have been edited slightly to help make the injuries more visible.

[You must be registered and logged in to see this image.]

A trip to the vet is arranged in the morning. At this stage we are all baffled as to what this is, Mark is researching any and all skin conditions on snakes he can find but the symptoms just don't line up. To this day (my snake is fine now, he's very healthy) it was never like anything we knew of.
The vet had a look and agreed, absolutely no idea what this could be, but he had a feeling it could be something to do with the previous conditions the animal was kept in before I received him. I got a course of antibiotics to prevent any further infection and continued with the antiseptic topical treatment. Sadly the snake lost the tip of his tail, it just dried up and dropped off, but otherwise he has recovered beautifully.

So now Bernard is doing well, he will be fed today, I might get photographs of that. He's a great snake, when he got daily medication he was never aggressive, he has had it rough but from now on he is going to have a good life and a caring home for the rest of his days, he has a few months left in quarantine and I'm already drawing up plans for a large, semi-arboreal vivarium for him (he is a very active snake, so I think he could benefit from this) he deserves the best and I will make sure he gets just that. It took a lot of money and hard work and help from others to get this snake back to health and I'm thankful for everyone who helped me.

Firstly, dues, well done you for rescuing Bernard and giving him the care he deserved. Not too many people would go the distance given the expense involved and as many of us in here have rescue in our backgrounds, I think you just officially became one of us

After reading your post and looking over the images, I have no idea what could have been wrong with him. Viewing the images without the text would suggest healing burns and the tail tip does look burned with some retained shed. Did he acquire these injuries in the pet store or is this a mystery?

Regardless of what caused it, he is one super snake to not reacted in a completely forgivable way and shredded you for touching him, it must have hurt him so to undergo treatment and handling when I'm sure he would rather be left alone, shows what a lovely animal he is.

Please do get some more images and thank you so much for sharing your extremely touching story. You rock girl!!

First of all thank you very much for the kind words! Much appreciated :)
I have 3 rescued reptiles now (and yesterday we took on a goldfish so four rescues over all I guess lol) but Bernard is by far the most expensive, I could be paying him off until Christmas. It's worth it though, I'd rather be poor than see an animal suffer.

Yeah so far I have spoken and shown pictures to a lot of snake keepers and given the context, no one had any idea. The vets are sure it's not a burn too. It's weird, the way the skin has healed looks like a mechanical wound rather than heat. A few people kicked around the theory of a bacterial infection, perhaps the stress of being ill the first time caused his immune system to weaken bringing something else to the surface, at least, that's one theory. I guess we may never know, but I know my safety and bio-security procedures are tight enough it wont happen again.

Yeah he's lovely, he is only dangerous when there is food, I don't know no matter how much I wash my arms with smelly soap he always tries to eat me when I open the box if there's a rat a meter away LOL

I'll be sure to get some photos of him feeding later today!

Very very nice. Pity about his bad start in life........Now he has the home he deserves

Food is serious business for this little guy!

[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] by [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.], on Flickr
I took them today,

Super Jag Sofia, its always great to hear an animal like this finding a deserving and caring home. Unfortunately lack of basic respect for an animal's welfare is becoming more and more common, thankfully there are people out there - like yourself - who have the dedication to put things right.

And of course, its a Morelia, so its that wee bit more special than most (but then I'm unashamedly biased).

Congrats on turning around this stunning Jag, is he taking mice or rats for you?

Regarding the burns.....did anyone rule out the use of pine/ cedar substrate? The oils in pine and cedar chips or shavings can do nasty things to herps such as irritate the airways and skin.

Another possibility is the temperature of snake's favoured resting place / perch.....if it was dark in colour and close to the basking spot, it may have overheated even though the thermostat and basking light may have been set at a safe enough temperature. A warm perching spot would cause a combination of physical burning (albeit slowly, which may therefore produce sores uncharacteristic in appearance for a burn) and some mechanical damage (as scales are like hair, they bend and fold when warm).....combine the two together and the result is a nasty malforned area of scales and some underlying tissue damage which is open to infection from bacteria such as Pseudomonas.
I've seen this happen in cornsnakes and a Coastal carpet python, and both of those were also in petshops.

Thank you, your words mean a lot to me. Hopefully the more of us that set a good example, the more people will follow!

He's taking rats, with great enthusiasm I might add, he's not going to give me any trouble feeding that's for sure.

There could well have been, I don't know. :(
He has been on newspaper for the duration of his time with me so at least there's that.

You are getting me paranoid! If an animal can sustain an injury with thermostats and bulb guards in place what can I do to prevent something like that happening to me?! I thought having thermostats, thermometers, bulb guards and frequent checking would suffice, what more could I do to prevent such a thing?
I'm still not confident him having a burn, mostly because I have never heard of a burn bleeding underneath unharmed outer layer of skin, but I'm sure you know better than I. Mostly I'm just freaked out at the thought that all the methods put in place to protect my animals might not actually be enough?

The thing I failed to mention is it's on just a small on his tummy and the tip of his tail, is that of any importance?

No need to worry Sofia, thermostats and bulb guards are life savers and prevent many, many reps from being burned and overheating. I know you'll have the Jag in a much better set-up than it previously had.

I thought I'd list some of the possibilities that may have contributed to the poor state he was in then you rescued him, although the actual cause(s) are unknown its likely it was a combination of factors e.g. poor temp control and poor biosecurity / hygiene measures.

I can't recall the details of how it was kept previously and thats whats really being questioned.....its possible that a thermostat might not have been used or, if it was, the temperature was checked incorrectly. This is actually a common oversight and I've been guilty of it myself in the past.
A lot of people put a thermometer on the viv wall somewhere, and the thermostat probe somewhere equally random, I used to do this with all my snakes until I sat and thought about reptile thermoregulation and how my reps were using their vivs.....

- I place the stat probe on the warmest basking / resting spot in the viv, that way the warmest temps within the viv are constantly being monitored and so the risk of overheating is minimised. My reason for this probe position is one of safety - excessively warm temps will kill most animals well before excessively cold temps, this is especially true for cold-blooded animals like reps. So now I cable-tie the probe to the perch / branch closest to my overhead heat source, which is usually a forked branch where arboreals like to bask. By setting-up perching areas in this way, you can control where your rep goes to bask, retreat to a cool spot etc.

- all thermostats need calibrated to actual, measured temps using a good thermometer. Years ago I inherited an infra-red thermometer from a friend who was leaving for the States (Hi Warren!) and its proven to be one of the most useful - and reliable - pieces of kit I have. Most importantly I'll use it to check the temp of the BASKING SPOT where the probe is positioned, and I'll fiddle with the dial on the thermostat until it reads the temperature I want it to read at the basking spot. I've found that on stats with temps marked around the dial, they can be a few degrees out and so always calibrate them with a thermometer.

I've seen a lot of people read temps from the viv floor or viv walls, even the roof LOL......the most important temp to get right is the one which is highest i.e. rght below the basking spot, where the rep will be resting for a period of time. Snakes have rubbish temperature sesnsitivity along their belly and so can sit quite happily on perches that are too warm. Doh!
After that, I'll monitor temps elsewhere in the viv to find out e.g. what the temp is above the heat mat, at the cool end of the viv etc. so I can build-up a 'thermal' map of the viv. It sounds a lot more complicated than it is. With a nice temp gradient across the viv and various spots of varying temps, Morelia pythons will develop predictable daily and seasonal movements around their vivs which is fascinating to watch.

The rule of thumb I always use is.....check the temps at spots where your rep will be resting, rather than just checking ambient viv temps and sticking a thermometer on the viv wall somewhere. I know you'll be doing this anyway Sofia, but thought I'd stick it in here so it can get other peeps thinking.

Bear in mind that the above suggestions are what I do and what I have found to work for me, and there are plenty of other ways to keep reps using other methods.

Oh that is SUCH a relief to read (I literally had a big exhale, like PHEW), I do all of those, putting the probe on the spot where the snake actually basks (I really don't understand why instruction leaflets told me to mount it on the top), using a thermometer (though the type I use are digital, they're not infra-red ones, though I plan to get one like that when I'm not poor) to measure the basking spot and making sure all the parts of the viv are the right temperatures. I'm glad you posted, because I could actually feel a tide of relief flooding over me, I'm a bad one for worrying and just knowing whatever the problem could have been, I wasn't a contributing factor, at least that I know of, I have done everything common sense has allowed so I can stop feeling so bad.

Great bit of work you've put in there and looks to have really paid off for both yourself and a very handsome looking jag there... ....Well done you

It's unbelieveable that someone could let an animal get into that sort of condition, but well done for taking him on and nursing him back to health..

Marty

Well I finally found the pictures of Bernard the day I got him and his recovery, I also have pictures of his tummy as it is now and in both cases it would be nearly impossible to tell he was ever ill!

[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] by [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.], on Flickr

[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] by [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.], on Flickr

As you can see he was in a very sorry state, he had the beginnings of a respiratory infection and the swelling on his head was shocking, he was not a happy python at all. Jim gave me some fantastic advice so I proceeded to fix poor Bernard, I cleaned his wounds daily with a topical antiseptic, kept humidity super low and raised the temperature a bit and slowly but surely he showed signs of improving.

Soon afterwards he shed, the scabs came off with the shed leaving him with big, open wounds, he still had a little swelling to get over too.

[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] by [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.], on Flickr

I continued the routine with diligence to ensure he didn't get a follow up infection and it paid off, he looks absolutely spectacular, no swelling, no signs of previous injury, he is totally healed and I'm sure you will agree he is such a stunning snake.

[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] by [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.], on Flickr

As for his tummy, well, it's all better now.
[You must be registered and logged in to see this image.]
That's the same stretch of belly that not long ago as such a horrible mess! He took a lot of effort to fix, but hopefully that's the end of his health problems now, I'm so happy he has healed up so well and I honestly can't imagine life without him, I'd rather lose a finger than lose this snake!

Job well done

Thanks, WAMA, it has been both emotionally and financially draining but so worth it, going to start planning a really big vivarium for him, I will build it as soon as I can afford it.