Respiratory Infection

Hi! I'm a new BP owner. I have a female BP that is probably a year and a half old. When I bought her she had a respiratory infection. The day I brought her home she had a small bubble that came out the side of her mouth. The guy I got her from gave her a shot of Baytril (sp?) a week ago. I have been keeping her tank around 90 degrees day and night. She ate three days ago. She seemed to be getting better, but I was holding her today and saw a bubble come out of one of her nostrils. Does anyone have any suggestions on how to help her with this? Does she need another shot of the antibiotic? How long should it take her to get over this? Any advice would be greatly appreciated!

I would take that girl into the vet. She should be on antibiotics and I would bump up her temps to ~94. Make sure the humidity in the tank isn't high. I haven't had any direct experience with RI's but from reading all those that have these are my best suggestions! Good luck and remember RIs are very serious problems!

I am having a hard time finding a reptile vet in my area. There is only one that I know of. I took one of my dogs to him some time ago and was not impressed. Maybe he prefers reptiles. I guess there's not really a choice of who to take her to. Anyway, her humidity is around 50%. I will bring the temperature up a little more. Do you know if I should keep it that high at night? Thanks for your help! I'm new to this and don't want to mess up. I know the guy I got her from kept his temps too low. He had one other BP with a respiratory infection too. Maybe I should have waited and gotten a different snake, but she was the one I wanted. Probably not too wise to get one that is already sick as your first though.

hold your temps up to 95º warm and 85º cool. seeing a vet would be a great idea. i would hold the temps up day/night until i seen improvement. till then try to keep handling to a minimum

Thanks. I had not handled her much at all up until yesterday. I guess it's back to that again! I just went and bought a new digital thermometer. I am using newspaper as a substrate and I changed it today and gave her fresh water. Is there anything I should do to disinfect the tank so she doesn't keep reinfecting herself?

Kristie

doing a good cleaning (changing substrate, washing hides, etc) once a week and changing water daily would be a good idea

Thanks Jason. I've had a couple of suggestions from friends who own snakes. One suggested crushing up Vitamin C and putting it in her water. The other suggested tetracycline (sp?). Have you heard of either of these things?


Kristie

If the snake if in the bubbling stage, it really needs to get to a vet and be on a long round of antibiotics. There is nothing that will help him/her get out of it at this stage, besides antibiotics. One shot is not going to do a thing. Tetracycline by itself is not a strong antibiotic for RI' it's mainly used in cattle for mastitis and whatnot. Even if there isn't a reptile vet nearby, you can take the snake to the vet, get it weighed, and get a good antibiotic regimen prescribed. If the snake doesn't get help soon, it will most likely drown in its own fluids, as they cannot cough or sneeze like we do. Up the temps to 95/85 as other have mentioned and keep them constant day and night. Minimize humidity as much as possible as it will just exacerbate the problem. With respiratory infections, the snake isn't going to keep reinfecting themselves, as with a parasitic problem. They just don't work that way.

Vitamin C is used to prevent us from getting sick and I really doubt the snake is going to get any use from an overdose of vitamin C since it is already sick.

The only advice I can give you is to take the snake to a vet quickly, and get it put on a LONG regimen of Baytril, injectable or oral. Injectable Baytril given orally works better than when it is given as it is supposed to be. Injections will probably need to be given once or twice a day for more than 2 weeks. At this stage the snake is at, just upping the temps isn't going to resolve the problem. Hope you get everything under control soon. Good luck with it.

Wow. That's scary. I will be taking Eve to the vet tomorrow. I really thought she was getting better until I saw that bubble today. I hope she will be okay once she has had a round of antibiotics. Thanks for all your help!

good luck and its a good thing to hear that you care enough to take her to the vet. ive asked my science teacher before where he brought his 6ft BCI and he said nowhere, if she gets sick and dies then she dies. that p***** me off. good luck with the vet, make sure you let us know how it goes