best treatment for snake mites?

Originally Posted by LampropeltisCollector

I've always taken the snake and put it in shallow water with a small amount of dishwashing soap. That goes through the water and drowns the mites. I've done for awhile and I've never been disappointed. Usually if you see a mite on your snake afterwards, its dead.
-Jordan
JTS Herps
"Breeding every species of hognose, Central Plains Milksnakes, Eastern and Florida Kingsnakes!"

That will get them off the snake but it won't kill them in the container or the eggs either so its best to use prevent a mite because it kills the eggs too. Unless you want reoccuring infestations down the road, and you could have mites and not even be able to see them because until they reach a certain age they are undetectable to your eyes.

Provent a mite works better than anything else I've ever tried... I've been using it for years now, and have not seen a single mite (or anything else besides a snake) in my snake racks since I started using it.

As far as getting rid of the mites ON the snake, here is the method I've used in the past with great success...
1.) Give the snake a bath in warm water, allowing him/her to soak for about 20-30 minutes. This drowns the majority of the mites on the surface, but unfortunately does not often get rid of any eggs, or any of the mites hiding between scales, or in other hiding places...
2.) Dry thoroughly, and apply a light coat of olive oil over the entire snake (except for the mouth). This suffocates the vast majority of the mites that survived the water treatment.
3.) While doing all this, clean the cage and spray with provent a mite...
4.) After the cage is set, and the snake has been washed and oiled, move them back into the cage... Generally by the time they shed (usually the shed is very clean and easy thanks to the oil application) there will not be a single surviving mite remaining.

Now I've only used this method on boas and pythons... I never worked with colubrids back in the day when I actually occasionally encountered mites... but I would imagine that the whole thing would work the same way regardless of the snake....


Hope it helps...

Pest strips, snake oil, provent a mite

You can get the snake oil on big apple herptelogical supply
You can get provent a mite on kingsnake in their supply section or bean farm
Pest strips you get at the grocery store (make sure you do research on the film canister method with this!) Works great but Im not sure how good prolonged exposure to unborn snakes are with this stuff as its pretty nasty, but, used initially, will nip your problem in the butt!