Lessons Learned: Herp keeping mistakes

[RMorrow]

I saw a thread similar to this in the fish section and I did not see any here (maybe I did not look hard enough). I know I have made a few mistakes over the years, some of them led to hurt my animals, some of them hurt me. I think the sharing of our mistakes may prevent the same mistake by others.

Example - Several years ago I loved to use old butter tubs with holes cut in the lids that I could use as hideboxes and water bowls. Everything worked great for a number of years until one of my adult female Spotted Pythons turned a tub over on top of the hot section of the cage. With the hole side down, she could not escape and was killed. After that, I still used butter tubs, but now I put the holes in the curved sides to prevent this accident from happening again.

 

[snakeguy101]

I had a heavy ceramic water bowl sitting on top of some substrate and put a scarlet snake in there. It burrowed underneath the bowl and made herself nice and cozy until she made her burrow to big and the bowl collapsed the burrow and squished her.

Also, when I first started keeping herps (around 10) I used one of those electric heat rocks and my savanna monitor tried to dig and scratched his way through the rubber coating on the cord and gave himself a good shock. It didnt kill him but after that he went off feed for a week.

 

[RMorrow]

I guess we are the only ones that have made mistakes. lol.

A mistake that hurt me that might interest you as a hot keeper. When I was keeping my first hots, I made the mistake of getting complascent changing light bulbs in cages and got tagged by a copperhead. I failed to secure the animal prior to sticking my hand in thinking, "oh, this guy won't do anything." Not my best decision.

 

[snakeguy101]

I guess we are the only ones that have made mistakes. lol.

A mistake that hurt me that might interest you as a hot keeper. When I was keeping my first hots, I made the mistake of getting complacent changing light bulbs in cages and got tagged by a copperhead. I failed to secure the animal prior to sticking my hand in thinking, "oh, this guy won't do anything." Not my best decision.

I know of a dozen people that have made either that mistake or the "It can't get me from there" mistake. How many vials of AV did you take? Did you use Crofab?

 

[RMorrow]

It was only a scratch and I am kind of a big guy and I knew, at the time, there had been no deaths in our state due to Copperhead bite and I was more apt to have an allergic reaction to the antivenin, so I gutted it out. Alot of pain, swelling, and discoloring but it resolved itself slowly. Took about a week for the color and swelling to go back to normal, but my hand was hypersensitive to touch and heat and cold for several months.

 

[snakeguy101]

yeah, just be glad you got off easy. I know a very experienced keeper that was bit by a copper and had to get 26 vials of Crofab and they charged him $7k for each vial not to mention the other hospital bills (morphine, week in Critical Care, doctor bills, etc&#8230

 

[RMorrow]

Well, I was also scared for my job. I was not supposed to be working with hots in the lab alone. I not only risked my hand, my job, but also the schools license and insurance. Like I said before, not my best idea, but I was young and dumb.

 

[RMorrow]

I was hoping more people would share the mistakes they had made keeping their herps.

 

[snakeguy101]

BUMP! everyone has their fair share of mistakes. No shame in admitting them.

 

[Etunes]

Didnt see the thread. First uro i got i was still learning the ins and outs on the equipment and i kept the Heat bulb to close to the basking spot and she ended up with burns. SO then i brought her to the vet and we found out it was burns so i lifted the light up to get the temp down then she was having problems with not eating and it caused a bad shed. You can still see the spot were the bad shed was (it was really bad) and i am hoping it will go away more and more with every shed. But she is nice, fat and healthy now.