Once Tame BP Now Aggressive

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Posted by RedCoolAid on May 06, 2003 at 12:05:30:

In Reply to: Once Tame BP Now Aggressive posted by fredhammes on May 06, 2003 at 11:19:22:

:A good shed is a good sign. And yes, retained eye caps certainly could cause a defensive attitude. A snake is nearly blind when eyes are capped over. That would have to make anybody nervous! A good way to tell is to open the shed and look at the head. Are the eye caps intact? Are her eyes clouded over at all?

I really couldn't tell if the eye caps came off. The shed was in one piece, but all rolled up. When I unrolled it, the head part was pretty broken up. Her eyes look black and shiny; no dents.

:What size enclosure does she have? Heat souce? Temp range? Humidity? What kind of hides?

She's in a 55 gallon tank. Humidity is in the 40 to 50 range now and she has a humid hide. I mist daily or twice a day when she is in pre-shed. That gets the humidity up to 70 or 80 for a couple of hours. She usually sheds in one piece or several large pieces.

The ambient air temps are 78-82 on the cool side. There is a hot spot of about 95 on the warm side directly under the ceramic heat emitter. Also, half the cage has a UTH set to about 90.

I use reptile rock dens as hides. They're made out of cement and shaped to look natural. I'll probably need to get bigger ones soon. There is one on the warm side and one on the cool side. Lately, she's not been using them. She's been hanging out in the humid hide which is a tupperware tub with a hole cut in the top. When I open the top, she cranes her neck out ready to attack any intruder as if she defending territory.

:She sounds like a healthy size. Your question about sexual maturity may be better answered if you could get a weight on her.

I need to get an appropriate scale.

:And, hey, sometimes I just like to look at pics of cool morphs, too. (But I understand how it is when you have a question that you want answered)

I like to look at the pics too.

Thanks again.

:Good luck,
:GratefulFred

::Thanks for the advice. A vet check is certainly a good idea. I'm concerned that a health problem might be the cause of this. But she seems pretty healthy presently. She just had a perfect one piece shed and her feeding response is still quite strong. She doesn't seem like a sick snake to me, but I'm not very experienced. Do you have any opinions about her coming into sexual maturity as a possible cause for this? Maybe another possibility is retained eye caps? It doesn't look like it, but I'm not experienced, so I might not pick up on it. It really is an amazing overnight transformation from kitten tame to mean as snot.

::Also, I must say that I'm dissapointed at the general lack of response on this forum with regard to husbandry questions. Seems like Fred is the only one answering such questions. I know there are a lot of experienced snake keepers/breeders on this forum, but they seem reluctant to share their knowledge. Maybe there is a better forum somewhere for people with basic husbandry questions.

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