Why quarantine?

No problem. I've stuck to the 90 day rule for quarantine, and it seems to be working okay for me. Others may say differently, I don't know.

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Originally Posted by Tigergenesis

What's the 'life cycle' of mites?

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Go to this link: http://www.rodentpro.com/qpage_articles_02.asp and scroll down. You will see a "life cycle" chart for mites.

Jennifer

Quote:

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Originally Posted by emroul

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Marla

...so to quarantine effectively against mites, you need the rooms really far apart as well.

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Or just fog the room with Black Knight. ;)

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Exactly. My point was that it's very difficult and/or unlikely for most folks to be able to use quarantine as a method of avoiding mite infestation. If you have a separate outbuilding for quarantine, you might be able to do it successfully, but that's not going to apply to most herpers.

Better and easier to just proactively treat for mites when/before bringing them in the door. Based on this, my guess is if you have bp's only, then a Black Knight spraying, course of Panacur, and 30 days quarantine (or skip the Panacur and quarantine for 90 days) ought to work. If you have any boids that can just be carriers, then I don't think you can ever safely end quarantine between species.

What is Panacur for?

Treating internal parasites. Panacur is recommended along with Flagyl. That's what the vet gives the snake when it has internal parasites.

If you buy a snake from a well known breeder like NERD or Bob Clark etc.

Do you still need to quarentine your new addition for 90 days?

Sorry , not trying to hijack the thread but I figured it was an appropriate question to put here.

Thanks for the links! It was very nice of PKR and the others to put those up. However, I got the idea that most of those where from 1996.

I'm by no means an expert in IBD but I did have several conversations with my vet recently who has been involved in some recent studies. I'm not sure if the airborne theory mentioned in the older article has been completely ruled out but from our conversation I got the idea that it is an aids like disease spread by contact with bodily fluids such as with breeding and mites/ticks and mother to offspring.

My vet indicated that he didn't think enough had been done to control it and that it is now common in boa collections all over the world. I'm not sure how many breeders are doing the liver biopsy test but at this point and with the potential of a boa to live a long time with it and spread it to mates and offspring it sounds like that would be the only way to be assured of starting a clean breeding group. Maybe it's a good thing for us python people IF (I'm not sure) a python can't live long enough to pass this on to their offspring. Also I'm wondering if the egg might offer protection, but then again boas probably don't have blood exchange with unborn babies either (no placenta) and it sounds like baby boas can get this from their mother so maybe hatchling pythons can too.

Scary stuff! Sounds like if you control all mites and don't house boas and pythons together you are probably safe for the pythons but boa breeders face the challenge of not spreading it through breeding.

PS: While I think your odds of not getting mites or IBD are much better with a well known breeder as compared to a pet store I would feel that the stakes are just too high not to quarantine a new python, at least long enough to be sure you have killed off any mites