Treat a Respiratory Infection (RI) from Home. DIY

[TheSnakeGeek]

I am in no way condoning skipping out on a vet visit if your animal is sick. Unfortunately, some of us live in areas where there isn't an exotic vet nearby. Others may have one of those tough to beat RI's that aren't responding to antibiotics and want to try something different. Fortunately for me, my father is a veterinarian (although not a specialized exotic one) and has the resources to antibiotics and labs to send cultures off to if need be. Although we could have gone ahead and started giving my snake antibiotic injections, I've seen how much it stresses them out and wanted to try something else. I hate having to restrain my snakes to give them injections while they're flailing their bodies around the whole time. No fun for either one of us. I just recently had success with this method and wanted to share so maybe I could help someone else who's stressin out over one of their babies.

I'm sure some of you have seen/done this before. I actually got this idea from a BHB snakebytes video, so don't think I'm some mad scientist whipping up random concoctions on my own. Remember, if you can get to a vet, it's always recommended. If you try this and it doesn't work, you may have to suck it up and make the 3 hour drive to the nearest exotic animal clinic.


What you'll need:


a Zoomed Repti Fogger ($60 at petco, I found mine online for $40 plus shipping)





a plastic tub ($4 at Walmart or Target. I used a 15 qt tub, but size doesn't matter too much. You just don't want a huge one)





F10 Veterinary Disinfectant ($15.99 from reptilebasics.com)





and a sick snake





First thing you'll want to do is put one or two ventilation holes in the side of the tub. For this I just used a soldering iron to "punch" out the holes ($10 at walmart if you dont already have one), or if you have an electric drill that will work as well.

boom.





Then you'll want to cut out a hole on the lid of the tub just big enough for the plastic hose that comes with the Repti Fogger to fit in securely. (I know my hole looks janky, but it works just fine. I used the soldering iron to "cut" it out. The edges are rounded off and not sharp at all.)





Next you'll want to dilute the F10. This is a concentrated disinfectant so it doesn't take much. Fill up the water bottle to the fogger with water then add 3 ml of F10. My F10 came with a built in measurer. If you have to use something else to measure and didn't already know, in liquid measurements, ml (milliliters) and cc (cubic centimeters) are the same thing.



Now hook the bottle up to the fogger and turn the dial on all the way up to make sure it works. I thought mine was defective at first because it didn't come on immediately. You may have to give it a couple minutes for the water to fill up the little chamber. If it works, it'll look like this:






Now all you do is put your snake in the tub, "plug" the end of the fogger hose up to the hole on the lid, and fog up the enclosure.






It doesn't matter how high you turn it on as long as you see the tub getting completely fogged up. You'll want to fog your snake for 20 minutes, once a day, for 7-10 days. The reason this works is because the disinfectant F10 is completely safe for reptiles and it kills bacteria. A respiratory (lung) infection is a bacterial infection in your snakes lungs. When your animal breathes in this disinfectant it helps to kill off the bad bacteria infecting its lungs.

No more wheezing or clicks!

Once again, if you can make it to an exotic vet, you should. If for some reason you cannot, or if you've had a culture done and the antibiotics your vet gave you are not working, you can try this. It does seem to work.

[satomi325]

Nice write up. I've never tried it myself, but I hear this method works wonders.

A respiratory (lung) infection is a bacterial infection in your snakes lungs. When your animal breathes in this disinfectant it helps to kill off the bad bacteria infecting its lungs.

This will only work with bacterial RIs. There are also fungal and viral types of respiratory infections.

[TheSnakeGeek]

This will only work with bacterial RIs. There are also fungal and viral types of respiratory infections.

true. i'm assuming these would most likely be the respiratory infections that don't seem to respond to the antibiotics?

[TheSnakeGeek]

Most RI's in snakes are bacterial. That's why vets are so quick to prescribe antibiotics without even doing a culture.

[Coleslaw007]

Thank you for this writeup, if my little dinker doesn't respond to the treatment he's on I may be trying this and I was never sure of how to do it.

[Skiploder]

Most RI's in snakes are bacterial. That's why vets are so quick to prescribe antibiotics without even doing a culture.

Since most vets don't culture, we will never know what percentage are bacterial and what percentage are viral. It seems that there are a plague of RIs on this forum alone that do not respond to repeated rounds of different antibiotics.

Common sense would dictate that until vets do due process and start culturing, no one should assume that RIs in snakes are mainly viral or bacterial.

[snakesRkewl]

Most RI's in snakes are bacterial. That's why vets are so quick to prescribe antibiotics without even doing a culture.

Not a vet I'd go to ...

[TheSnakeGeek]

Since most vets don't culture, we will never know what percentage are bacterial and what percentage are viral. It seems that there are a plague of RIs on this forum alone that do not respond to repeated rounds of different antibiotics.

Common sense would dictate that until vets do due process and start culturing, no one should assume that RIs in snakes are mainly viral or bacterial.

makes sense, yes. although i don't know if i would go as far as calling that sense common. it requires a little deeper thinking. both of my parents are veterinarians, and while i'm in no way insinuating i'm speaking for all veterinarians, working at my mothers clinic and growing up with them, i got a lot of first hand insight as to why they and other vets in my area do things the way they do. they prescribe antibiotics because they work more often than not. if the antibiotics worked less than half the time (which would be the case if it were viral), they would start doing cultures more often. it would be a waste of antibiotics and leave you with unhappy owners and sick animals. if the antibiotics work, i would think it's safe to say it was a bacterial infection. and since antibiotics work more often than not, i think it would be safe to assume more often than not, these infections are bacterial. and while you do seem to hear about a lot of RI's not responding to antibiotics on here, i think that's probably because they've exhausted all other options and come here looking for answers. you don't hear of the hundreds of RI's that got treated and clear right up.

[TheSnakeGeek]

Not a vet I'd go to ...

i would prefer not to either, but not everyone has the option to choose between more than one exotic vet in their area. some are lucky to even have one. some of us live in the sticks. lol

[Skiploder]

makes sense, yes. although i don't know if i would go as far as calling that sense common. it requires a little deeper thinking. both of my parents are veterinarians, and while i'm in no way insinuating i'm speaking for all veterinarians, working at my mothers clinic and growing up with them, i got a lot of first hand insight as to why they and other vets in my area do things the way they do. they prescribe antibiotics because they work more often than not. if the antibiotics worked less than half the time (which would be the case if it were viral), they would start doing cultures more often. it would be a waste of antibiotics and leave you with unhappy owners and sick animals. if the antibiotics work, i would think it's safe to say it was a bacterial infection. and since antibiotics work more often than not, i think it would be safe to assume more often than not, these infections are bacterial. and while you do seem to hear about a lot of RI's not responding to antibiotics on here, i think that's probably because they've exhausted all other options and come here looking for answers. you don't hear of the hundreds of RI's that got treated and clear right up.

I actually think that bacterial RIs are not as common as we think. Doesn't mean that they are uncommon, just means that they should not be the first thing we assume when a snake has an RI. There are fungal causes, parasitic causes and viral causes.

In my time keeping snakes, I have had more imports come in with lungworms than bacterial RIs. When is the last time you saw someone talk about parasitic RIs on the forums? They don't because most vets just don't bother to do anything more than throw Baytril at a snake with a suspected RI.

The one time I had a spontaneous RI occur in a long term captive, it was due to a virus.

I'll repeat what I said earlier - until vets stop short-arming clients, no one knows the true breakdown of the incidences of each cause.