Bloody Mess

[guidofatherof5]

Tonight I fed a group of radixes(nothing new) In this group there is one adult female(Lucky's daughter). She is nothing like her mother. Her mother is very docile and easy to work with. This girl isn't. Many times she will chase me out of the enclosure if I don't have food ready for her when I open it up.
Before I ever opened it up I have a small plate of cutup night crawlers read to go. I made short work of getting it in as the monster already had her mouth open for something to eat. As she grabbed her first piece a sub adult male shot out of the hide and grabbed the other end of this worm chunk. Before I could do anything she threw him across the enclosure. He was having none of this and headed back to the worm dish. As he headed back I saw a blood trail behind him. At first I thought it might be worm blood but there was way too much for it to be from the worm.
I immediately scooped him up to she what had happened. He was pumping blood out from around his left eye. I grabbed a paper towel and applied pressure to the side of his face. After about 3 minutes I removed the towel and found a large area of blood. About the size of a quarter. This male isn't that big and I felt this might be a serious injury. I reapplies pressure to the side of his face in the hopes of stopping this gusher. He was very calm during this whole process and cooperated fully. After 15 minutes of pressure I took another look at his injury. She tore a gash in his face just behind the eye. It was still bleeding but had slowed down. I applied more pressure for another 10 minutes. This young male didn't resist anything I did. He was a good patient.
I've had fights before but have never had a snake lose this much blood so quickly. I'm guessing she hit a blood vessel.
The good news is the bleeding is stopped and the beat up male is spending the night in the infirmary.
I gave him a big chunk of worm to hold on his eye

[kibakiba]

Wow what an evil girl! Poor little guy... Hopefully he'll be okay Maybe someone needs a serious time out! I know I sent Snap to time out when she bit me an hour after I fed her... She got scolded and then she slithered over to the corner and coiled up. At least he was calm, he knew you were trying to help him The snake that had the little mold spots on her was calm but she'd start panicking when I was trying to see all where they were.

[Fishsticks]

Wow, good on you for staying calm with all the blood. Are garters prone to wound infections?

[drache]

I hope the little guy will be fine
that girl sounds just like my Whizzy used to be

[ConcinusMan]

Holy crud! I'm telling you it's a blood bath when I try to feed these baby concinnus I have. They are vicious and violent! I'm always having to get them apart. Usually it's mouth locks, I mean one biting the others bottom or top jaw. Once in a while there's a puncture or two but I took something I heard steve say about gentle pressure on the top of the head. This seems to get them apart with fewer, if any injuries.

Quite frankly, I do have 3 radixes in with those concinnus babies and they are just as quick to fight over food. I'm really surprised you don't have more incidences like this Steve. Like you said, probably just hit a vessel. I'm sure he'll be fine.

In the past when I've had a bleeding happening like that, I've always used a dab of powdered alum on it to stop the bleeding. Works great.

[guidofatherof5]

Wow, good on you for staying calm with all the blood. Are garters prone to wound infections?

Sorry for not responding in a timely manor to your question.
I've never had snakes get infections to bites on the body.
I have a number of them develop mouth infections when the bite occurs inside the mouth. Most of those aren't serious.
They may get a swollen lip. A few of those required me to open the wound up to drain the infection. I just use a sterile needle to get the blood flowing which drains the infection.
It's the same procedure my Vet. uses and it's a whole lot cheaper doing it at home.