The founder of an animal rescue charity who discovered 70 starving pythons and dozens of dead snakes on a couple’s property near Durham has called for better laws to protect reptiles reared as pets.

Daniel Holmes, of Knaresborough Exotic Rescue, said the condition of the  – some of whom he thinks had not been fed for a year – was so poor that it made him and a fellow volunteer break down in tears after the rescue.

All 70 of the royal pythons he found alive in the property’s former coal outhouse were underweight, suffering from mites – which can make snakes anaemic – and had skin they tried to shed stuck to them.

“We’ve got about five or six in a critical condition,” he said, adding that some of the snakes were babies. “It’s upsetting.”

He was called to the property after the owner of the snakes, an unnamed man, left his girlfriend and abandoned his pets. “He had told her he had six snakes in there, but it looked as if he’d been breeding them for years.”

All the snakes were expensive royal pythons and had “different high-end colours”, suggesting the owner had been breeding them to get more colours into the snakes before he left them in the care of his ex-girlfriend four or five weeks ago.

“I think he’s done it maybe to spite her,” said Holmes. “It was just awful. She was physically shaking; she was that frightened of snakes.”

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All 70 of the royal pythons found alive at the property’s outhouse were underweight and suffering from mites. Photograph: Daniel Holmes/Knaresbrook Rescue

About 50 of the snakes were kept in drawers and 20 others were loose inside the shed. “It was so cold the thermostats on the snake racks had been overheating, which then caused the snakes to overheat inside as well.”

The baby snakes were the worst affected by this. “They were very dry.”

Rescuers also found bags of deceased snakes in the freezer and three other dead snakes out in the open. “There was a really pungent smell because they’d been there a while,” Holmes said.

He is putting together a file of evidence to send to the RSPCA. “\ as many reptiles out there as cats and dogs nowadays, so there should be better laws against cruelty and rescue centres like ours should be able to prosecute them – but we can’t, because we’re not the RSPCA.”

He would also like to see more legislation put in place to regulate snake breeding. “At the moment, anybody can go and buy \ snakes and breed them at home.”

Part of the problem, he said, is that snakes are not generally seen as pets and yet they are kept as pets.

“They do make great pets, especially for kids who have ADHD and autism. At my centre, we have kids like that who come in and volunteerand it relaxes them so much, especially when they hold the snakes and feel how smooth they are when they run through your hand. They get mesmerised by it and it’s great.”

Holmes is planning to bathe the snakes every other day to get rid of their mites and gradually rehabilitate them into a vivarium so that they can one day be rehomed.

He is hoping the public will  to cover the cost of the rescue, the resulting vet bills and ongoing care of the snakes, and to help fund future rescues. “At the moment, with the royal pythons, we are full to capacity now,” he added.
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