Notes on treating respiratory infections

[purple python]

I am in no way advocating that the following is an alternative to veterinary care.

A while back, I had to move suddenly, with little planning, and my collection suffered because of it. One caught a respiratory infection and despite proper housing conditions being restored, the infection spread to nearly all of my collection. It was devastating, I could not afford to seek veterinary care for my entire collection, so I parted with nearly all of them to good people who could afford to properly treat my babies..

There was one ball python in particular that I had difficulty finding a home and care taker for, and had already heavily invested in vet care for a few of my other snakes. I did some digging, and tried a few things and with a little luck, he recovered all on his own.

If you have a ball python suffering from a respiratory infection - do not hesitate to seek veterinary care! But there are a few things you can do (with proper treatment) to help with recovery. 1) Sanitize! Clean the enclosure top to bottom, water dish, and any decor you may have. And sanitize often, at least once a week! 2) Switch out your substrate for paper towel - paper towel is easy to completely replace, keep clean, and keeps dry. 3) Lower humidity! I dropped humidity to 30-40%, only increasing it to 50-70% only for shedding. 4) Increase temps, my hot spot went from 90F to 93F, and ambient temps to 82F. These few changes along with veterinary care helped my snakes recover quickly, it even worked wonders for one snake in particular that had not received any medical attention. Again, this is not a substitute for veterinary care, if your snake is suffering from a respiratory infection, seek help immediately!