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What happened to my milk snake?

B

BlueCrowned

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I have had my nelson's milk snake for three months now and I just went to feed her and found her dead. She is covered in mites but i never noticed any mites at all prior to her death. There is no way I would miss that on a bright red snake. I have had mites before so I know what to look for. I did notice her soaking but I know I have a minor humidity problem and I'm working on getting them all in bins to help with that so I thought nothing of it. None of my other snakes seem to have any problems or signs of mites. She appeared to be in shed for a few days before i found her dead. She was eating great and only missed her last meal due to being in shed. What happened here? How could I miss a mite problem until death?
 
After some poking around I'm hearing that the only way a snake dies from mites is neglect. I assure you she was not neglected in any way. Here is a photo of the body. As soon as I saw the mites I rushed outside to get her away from my other animals so this was taken with a spotlight. The perfectly round dots appear to be mites. They were moving all over the body. The rest is eco earth.

fTHCx8R
 
BlueCrowned said:
Upon closer inspection and further research I am fairly confident impaction from eco earth killed her. She has a ton in her mouth.
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Not necessarily. Snakes in their death throes will often snap at anything so she could have grabbed a mouthful of the eco earth as she was dying.

Also if she was on the eco earth that's likely why you didn't notice the mites as they'd blend right in to the substrate.

How long did you have her?
 
Never mind, saw you had her for three months. How long did you quarantine her?
 
Just as a peace of mind, I had a small GTP for a few months. Now I look at this snake every day, he's displayed right next to my gaming PC, which I sit at for the better part of every night after work. I went to bed on a Friday, woke up on Saturday and he was COVERED. I'm talking mites here, mites there, mites climbing out of the freakin enclosure. I had taken a photo holding that snake 2 days prior, not one on it. They just seem to EXPLODE. So, very well could have been that you hadn't seen them, and they sucked her dry overnight.
 
I wasn't able to quarantine her properly in a completely separate room but I did the best i could for a month.

I inspected my other snakes and didn't notice any mites, Fwiw.
 
BlueCrowned said:
I wasn't able to quarantine her properly in a completely separate room but I did the best i could for a month.

I inspected my other snakes and didn't notice any mites, Fwiw.
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Mites travel. Even though you aren't seeing them on your other snakes now it's a good bet the rest of your snakes have them. Also a female mite that has had a blood meal can survive for many months before needing to feed again. You absolutely must treat the rest of your snakes and I wouldn't get any new ones any time soon.

QT is at least 90 days with the snake on paper substrate because that lets you see mites quickly.
 
One of the snakes in question is an amel corn snake. I would see any dark specks on her right away.

The supposed mites on the milk snake seemed different than the ones on my boa when she had them. Could they have been a harmless mite in the substrate which appeared after her death?
 
Im just not willing to believe that mites I had not noticed on my snake at all for three months would suddenly kill her overnight. That makes no sense, especially based on what I'm reading: for mites to kill a snake there would have to be severe neglect, there would be other signs, she would have to be crawing with them prior to her deatg
 
BlueCrowned said:
One of the snakes in question is an amel corn snake. I would see any dark specks on her right away.

The supposed mites on the milk snake seemed different than the ones on my boa when she had them. Could they have been a harmless mite in the substrate which appeared after her death?
Click to expand...

Those look like the ones that were on mine. And even if you don't see them, please treat. I used a combo of Provent-a-mite and Nix. I couldn't see them on my other boas until I put them in water and they started to die and fall off onto my hands. You don't want to mess around with them, the sooner you treat for them the sooner your plague will be over. They are not good.
 
BlueCrowned said:
Im just not willing to believe that mites I had not noticed on my snake at all for three months would suddenly kill her overnight. That makes no sense, especially based on what I'm reading: for mites to kill a snake there would have to be severe neglect, there would be other signs, she would have to be crawing with them prior to her deatg
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If you kept your snake on eco-earth then there's a good chance you would have never seen the mites because they blend in to it.

At this point you need to accept that you have a full-blown infestation on your hands and it's all-out war on the little buggers. Nothing should enter or leave your collection until the mites are gone.

Also this is an excellent writeup on the quarantine process from an exotics specialist veterinarian in Australia. Note that 90 days minimum is recommended in a minimalist setup (as in, no natural substrates) so that you'll notice pests like mites immediately.

http://www.herpvet.com.au/all-about-quarantine/
 
"...Could they have been a harmless mite in the substrate which appeared after her death?"

No, "harmless mites" wouldn't be feeding on her as these are. I'm sorry for your loss, more so for your snake, but you missed the mites on this snake when you got her, & using a substrate they didn't show up on helped them hide until they did what they always do without treatment: their population exploded exponentially in a short period of time & killed your snake by sucking her blood. It's a tough way to learn this lesson. I'd be putting all my other snakes on white paper towels for a while, immediately giving them supervised soaks in mildly soapy water (Ivory) & quickly investing in some "PAM" (Provent-A-Mite), as mites travel to other cages and it would be a miracle if your other snakes don't have them too. You can accidentally transport them from one cage to another on your clothes, & you should assume that you did.
 
BlueCrowned said:
Im just not willing to believe that mites I had not noticed on my snake at all for three months would suddenly kill her overnight....
Click to expand...

That's why it's SO important to quarantine, & house new snakes on white paper towels with minimalist set-up. Try taking damp paper towels & wiping down your other snakes to see if any mites show up. They hide under the chin, near the eyes or vent sometimes. Obviously they are quite tiny when young, & even hard to see when grown. I don't know off-hand the precise number of days in their reproductive cycle, but for comparison, think about rodents in the wild & what would happen without predators to eat them. I watched a documentary once about an explosion of rats that totally stripped fields of crops (it's been a while, it was some place in southeast Asia, I think?). The place was literally crawling with rats everywhere. Because with a short reproductive cycle, the babies mature, breed, & all their babies have babies...it's the same with mites...exponential population explosion! Even if you don't find mites on your other snakes, stay vigilant & treat! It doesn't take many mites for this nightmare to happen.
 
So sorry to hear about this, and really hope you don't have any further outbreaks. I have no experience of mites (thankfully), but could this have been a hatching event? Could there have been eggs under the scales that hatched overnight?

Certainly if it were me I would be now frantically bathing every snake and treating every enclosure. You don't see any mites on your orange corn snake, but then they weren't apparent on the milk snake either. How large a collection do you have to deal with?
 
Helenthereef said:
So sorry to hear about this, and really hope you don't have any further outbreaks. I have no experience of mites (thankfully), but could this have been a hatching event? Could there have been eggs under the scales that hatched overnight?
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No. Female mites leave the host and lay their eggs in places like tiny crevices in wood furniture or substrate. This is why PAM works even though it's only applied to the paper substrate, hides, and enclosure walls: the female mites walk on the treated surface and die, or the nymphs hatch, walk on the treated surface, and die.

Once you have a mite infestation you have to treat everything for at least six weeks after you stop finding mites on your snakes, as an egg can take up to a month to hatch after being laid.

An infestation scares the bejeezus out of me. I've been through two and my collection was much smaller then. Today I have over 100 snakes, including adult retics. Even using the less-expensive options for making a permethrin-based mite spray would be expensive in time and resources to treat.
 
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