How to Give Snakes a Bath!

hey everyone today I'll be sharing with you the instances in which you'll need to give your snake a bath and how to do it properly but do you know what snakes put on their bath towels by the way hiss and hers there's really only four reasons to give a snake a bath the first is if the snake is dehydrated bats will usually let them rehydrate themselves because they usually drink a little bit of the bath water second if your snake is unable to go to the bathroom a bath will kind of warm it up and get everything moving as the snake is moving around in the water and that will stimulate it to go to the bathroom third if the snake has stuck shed a bath will usually help that old skin come right off afterwards and finally if the snake just goes to the bathroom and thinks it's finger paint or something and spreads it everywhere and just needs to be cleaned although some species of snakes seem to enjoy baths and they could soak in there for hours there's a lot of species of snakes that seem to not appreciate baths and it seems almost stressful to them because they're constantly trying to get out now we can't talk to the snakes to see if they are in fact stressed or not but its overall belief that you shouldn't be forcing a bath on your snake unless you need to for one of those previous four reasons so now that you know the reasons to give a snake a bath let's show you how to do it helping me out today is candy cane this is our albino Nelson's milk snake that was kind of gets fed to a cobra but that's a whole story for another day anyway she doesn't technically need a bath today but she's such a chill milk snake that she'll just help me illustrate how to properly give a snake a bath to you so the first thing you want to do is make sure you have a secure plastic tote for them to take a bath in you can use Sterilite containers any Tupperware container really of course you want holes drilled in the side but you don't want the holes drilled at the bottom of the of the tub because then the waters just gonna leak out I have holes drill on the top to make sure that nothing leaks out on the counter when she's in her bath another thing to keep in mind is to have a tub that has locks on the outside that actually hold down the lid because there's some styles of tubs out there that have a lid that just kind of clicks into place on top and those snakes are able to push the lids off of and escape and obviously you don't want that happening you want the tote to be big enough for the snake to you know not feel squished and cramped of course but not so big that they feel exposed and they don't feel secure anymore unless you want that snake to go to the bathroom in that case I would give them a tote that allows them to fully stretch out because it's those undulating movements of the snake that will kind of move everything around inside of them or just get things moving and then cause them to go to the bathroom so for rehydration purposes and stuck shet purposes and just cleaning off the snake something like this size for this tie snake would work out great once you have your tub and I'm gonna have to do everything one-handed I think because she's got a pretty good grip on my other hand anyway once you have your tub it's of course time to put the water in next the water should be just deep enough to barely cover the back of the snake and that will allow the snake to be able to rest its body on the bottom of the Tupperware container and feel secure if they're floating and unable to reach the bottom then they're gonna have nothing to hang on to and they'll feel pretty stressed out so we're going to add our water and the water by the way should be around 80 to 85 degrees I mean this does vary based on species and some may like it cooler some may like it warmer but for most species kept in captivity 85 or 80 to 85 rather works out quite well for them and I try to stick tours 85 whatever yet eighty three point six that'll work I try to get it closer to 85 than eighty because then as the bath goes on the water will obviously cool down a little bit and if you start it a little bit warmer it'll likely continue to stay warm enough for the snake to be comfortable throughout the duration of the bath one more thing you should add before adding the snake I mean if you want to do chlorinate the water you can certainly do that I have found personally that snakes don't seem to mind if you use just city water and leave it as is and fib Ian's on the other hand have much more sensitive skin but that aside you have to add something in the middle of the bath to let the snake grip on to this make snakes feel much more secure if they can take their tail and wrap it around something just to hang on rather than them not being able to grip anything and just slithering around aimlessly in the water some snakes however will use the rock or whatever you use and they'll just sit on top of it and refuse to touch the water and in that case I would recommend using something shorter so that even when they're sitting on it they're still submerged at least partially submerged in the water then you can of course add the snake I usually start her head up out of the water so that she can dip down on her own and of course she's gonna try to get out as you can see snakes don't really like baths she wants to get out right away and this is why I recommend not just giving them unnecessary baths just give them a bath if there actually is a reason to do so for rehydration purposes or you know one of those other incidents that you'll need it we're gonna just cover her up here and lock it down and as you can see she's still trying to get out but that is normal another way you can calm down your snake during its bath is to just simply cover up the bin with a blanket in its bath your snake may explore constantly or it may just curl up around the rock or whatever structure you have inside of the bath each snake is a little bit different when it comes to taking baths some also just take a little bit of time to come out of their shell and then they're explorative as you can see here candy cane is wrapped securely around to the rock and that's what's calming her down and making her feel safe and that's why she's not freaking out inside of this bin and if she didn't have this rock I'm sure she'd be acting a little bit more stressed out she'd be moving around a lot more in trying to escape but since she has that peace of mind of holding on to that rock she is much calmer and as you can see here she can be completely relaxed and still hold her head out of the water which is a win-win it keeps her happy because she's able to rest and still breathe of course and it makes me happy because she's still able to soak her entire body now just for educational purposes watch what she does and how she reacts when I removed this anchor she has nothing to grab on to anymore and she is can't see how much more active she became just instantly she is not nearly as secure as she was before and she's trying to get out trying to find something to hang on to so I feel bad I'll give her her rock back there we go now that she's got her tail wrapped around the rock again she's feeling safer so she's not moving around trying to get out nearly as much once the snake is in the bin the bath can last around 15 to 20 minutes that's usually long enough to get the job done whether it's to get stuck shut off or whatever else you need to get done but the purpose of that bath is and after 15 to 20 minutes is also when the water temperature starts to drop so before it gets too cold you can remove the snake after the snake has been in its bath for a couple of minutes is when you can add like liquid additives or medicines of sorts to the water the reason why I don't recommend adding things right away is because snakes usually when they're in the bath the first thing they do is they drink a little bit of the bath water so you don't want chemicals being in the water for them to drink unless it's like a medicine that you intend for them to drink two of the most common things to add to snake bath water who would be first off betadine solution this is an antiseptic solution it's a liquid form and you add this to the water of a snakes bath to prevent infection of wounds and to promote faster healing of wounds and just keep them clean in general if you want to learn more about how to use betadine solution I actually recommend watching this video right here where we use this to treat snakes with burns all over their bodies and I go more into detail on exactly how much of this to use and where to get it in that video another additive that people will use in snake bath water is Dawn dish soap and this is usually only used for in the case of mites snake mites are an external parasite that wedge themselves in between the scales of the snake and they actually suck the snakes blood and if they're not treated they can cause very serious damage if not death in the snake now bats in general this is kind of whoops one of the things I forgot to mention one of the reasons why you can give a snake a bath is to treat for mites you don't even necessarily need Dawn dish soap because just the process of putting the snake in the water and that snake being engulfed in water being submerged will suffocate the mites themselves and cause them to fall off into the bath water now some people will use Dawn dish soap and kind of very gently rub a small amount on the scales of the snake kind of wipe them down and then put them in the bath and then the the mites just slide right out of the scales this doesn't get a hundred percent of the mites so I'd still recommend other treatment methods but this is something that certainly helps control them well I think candy canes bath is done it's been about 15 minutes or so and she seems ready to get out of the bath now it is very important to make sure that the bath water is neither too hot or too cold if it's too cold then snake can actually develop upper respiratory infections because you know these are ectothermic or cold-blooded animals so their body temperature is going to match whatever temperature the water is so if it's too cold they're gonna get really cold themselves on the flip side if the bath water is too warm that can cause permanent neurological issues with the snake if not actually kill them in the bath we've heard of snakes that were given to warm of a bath and they act funny in the bath water and then they just drown in the water or they just permanently act weird afterwards and they eventually die so it's very very important to make sure your bath water stays between 80 and 85 degrees Fahrenheit or 26 to 29 degrees Celsius throughout the duration of their bath now if it's a couple of degrees above or below that's not gonna kill them but try your best to keep it within that range well now that you're done you want to go back upstairs we'll bring her up by the way for big snakes instead of a really big tote for them we just toss them or okay gently lay them into our bath tub here and since this is actually that's the only purpose of this bath tub in this house is for snake baths so we have this permanently in there it's something for them to hang on to and one trick for using the bath tub for snake baths is to take the inner shower curtain and keep that inside of the tub then when you close it it'll kind of keep them contained unless and this happens quite frequently they figure out how to get out of the corner but it usually takes them a little while so they'll stay in the bath for a little bit at least before escaping all right well we'll bring her back to the snake room now so there you have it those are the reasons why you'll have to give a snake a bath at home and how to do it properly thanks for watching today's video hopefully you learned something new and we'll see you next time here since I found you in your humidity box when I stole you for this video I'll put you back in it she loves her humidity box there you go and back in we go happy snake [Music]

Channel: Snake Discovery

Views: 3,934,071

Keywords: how to bathe a snake, give snake a bath, giving a snake a bath, how to give a snake a bath, snake bath, cleaning a snake, milksnakes, snakes, reptiles, lizard a bath, constipated snake, stuck shed, how to remove stuck shed, dehydrated snake

Id: szrCt-pvzXA

Length: 11min 0sec (660 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 28 2018