What!? You gotta be kidden me...

Today I was ranting and raving to someone ( a BP breeder) about how I can't get rid of this RI outbreak in my house with my snakes. I was going on about how they have been to the vet more times in the last two-three months then my 9 year old dog has ever been to the vet in her life. Was telling this guy how nothing is working. Baytrl worked for a bit then failed. Now I'm using Amilkacin and well it's not working since everyone is still wheezing.

His responce to me was "You may lose your whole collection, some RI types just can't be cured." The look on my face I know was priceless and I kinda of giggled and said "you've got to me !@#$ing me... right!?" and he was like "No, I know people who spent hundreds of dollars on treatments and still have lost entire collections to this kind of RI. It just gets out of control from the atart and ruines their lungs. In the end it's best to just put down them down and out of pain".



So now I'm really hoping this is just a bunch of b.s! If it's true I'm going to be really mad and upset. Has anyone else heard this before?

Can't help u out any, but I sure hope not. Good luck to u.

Allison I am sorry to hear that this might happen. How many animals are we talking about ???

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Originally Posted by Freakie_frog

Allison I am sorry to hear that this might happen. How many animals are we talking about ???

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So far that I can see/tell only my three ball pythons have RI's. I got a BP from someone online that had a RI that I didn't know about. I put her in quartine in another room on the other side of the house. A few weeks later I noticed that my male BP was wheezing and put him in another room. Then my newest female started wheezing. Put her in another room. So those two BP's where housed in the same room/rack with my 5 other snakes. So I'm keeping a real close eye on the other 5 snakes and hoping they don't get this junk too!!!


It's been a total pain.

Wow. That's just so sad to hear.

What does your vet think?

When I quarentine anything new I totaly quarentine. Wash hands never use the same tubs when it cleaning time bleach 100% on old tubs. Ect.. I am really sorry to hear that you have a problem .I wish you the best of luck

I've yet to ask this to my vet since they aren't open today. I know he told me that BP's get RI's more frequently in the colder months for some reason. He also has told me every time I've been there that the meds he gave me should work. If that were the case my adult female should have been RI free two months ago and neither of my other two should have gotten it. So I've lost hope with my vet Dr. Gold.

Tomorrow I'm going to call Dr Scott Stahl who is located in VA and see what he thinks/has to say.

I've done all of this since day one. I'm a total clean freak / germ freak.

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Originally Posted by Freakie_frog

When I quarentine anything new I totaly quarentine. Wash hands never use the same tubs when it cleaning time bleach 100% on old tubs. Ect.. I am really sorry to hear that you have a problem .I wish you the best of luck

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I am having the same problem with RI's right now, only I have lost 3 snakes to it so far. These three snakes had direct contact with each other so I thought that when the last one died it would be over, but now I have another one showing symptoms. I had a histopathology report done on one of the snake's organs to rule out inclusion body disease. No inclusion bodies were found, but that didn't mean that it was not IBD 100%. One other thing they think it may be is a new paramixovirus that has started affecting ball pythons recently. This family of viruses includes the influenza virus that affects humans, and apparently a vet that my vet knows has had some success treating affected ball pythons with made-for-human influenza injections. This coming week I will be taking the latest snake that is showing symptoms to the vet again, and I bet we will probably be trying the antiviral injections since we had no luck with antibiotic injections. We started out using Amikacin and then on the last snake added Fortaz with no success.