Why 3 months of quarantine?

JJ....you should be able to know within two or three months if the snake has something. I personally think I would be able to tell in two months. I keep track of everything!!!! I use a program to record all urates, measurements, poo's, feedings and feeder weights. Anything out of the ordinary I document. This way you can see a pattern, you can see what the poo was like...etc. When handling my snakes....we handle the ones in our collection first....after that....then the one in Q. Also.....Qing in a different room is perfectly fine. Gosh I don't even have the ability to have a seperate house for Q. I just do it in a different room. :D

Don as far as IBD...wow this is such a question that I have been wondering for a long time.... for those of you that have boas AND pythons. I have always wondered since boas are carriers of this....and it CAN lie dormat.....how do you protect your pythons. ??? Are the boas ALWAYS Q'd from the pythons. Now don't get me wrong....I am not blasting anyone that keeps both. Just curious as to how they did it.

Thanks for the insightful replies everyone. I do quarantine with my snakes and do all the necesary precautions about it but i was just wondering why some people say 1 month. some people say 6 months and why most people do 3 months. I love this site because you get lots of opinions about every aspect of snake keeping. :)

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Originally Posted by BPelizabeth

JJ....you should be able to know within two or three months if the snake has something. I personally think I would be able to tell in two months. I keep track of everything!!!! I use a program to record all urates, measurements, poo's, feedings and feeder weights. Anything out of the ordinary I document. This way you can see a pattern, you can see what the poo was like...etc. When handling my snakes....we handle the ones in our collection first....after that....then the one in Q. Also.....Qing in a different room is perfectly fine. Gosh I don't even have the ability to have a seperate house for Q. I just do it in a different room. :D

Don as far as IBD...wow this is such a question that I have been wondering for a long time.... for those of you that have boas AND pythons. I have always wondered since boas are carriers of this....and it CAN lie dormat.....how do you protect your pythons. ??? Are the boas ALWAYS Q'd from the pythons. Now don't get me wrong....I am not blasting anyone that keeps both. Just curious as to how they did it.

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Well I have both boas and balls. Long ago I had them in the same room but do to expansion, and the higher temps maintained in the Ball room we moved the boas out. We now have 1200 sq foot for boas and 900 sq feet for balls. Qt is in several different rooms. If it came from 2 different places it qts in different rooms.

Now as far as my practices on QTing. Boas that are under a year are qted for 3-6 months. 1-2 years old are qted for 6 months to a year. (yes I am super paranoid). Balls are qted for 2-3 months. Best part of this is if anything weird happens. The qt time starts over.

Long and short. I don't get much new each year. I tell people I am my own best customer.

What are the symptoms and signs of something fatal like IBD? Is there anything that I should be specifically looking for? What do the mites look like in the water? What does healthy feces look like?

Sorry for the questions... but I want to know more about it so I can provide the best care for my ball python.

I think many here are confusing why you quarantine new animals. You don't put them in a QT tub and just feed and forget them for 3 months. You must look for issues to develop. Look for the ticks and mites. Examine the scat for worms/parasites. When you quarantine, you are acting like a doctor. Looking for issues to be brought to your attention.

I've found that almost exclusively, a sick snake comes from a bad breeder. Many times flippers will have issues too.

The most important rule I would recommend everyone follow is to know your breeder. Get references if you're buying through the internet.

Just my opinion,
Jim Smith

Got a ? since we are on this subject. What if you are just starting off and you buy 2 or 3 snakes from the same breeder? These would be the only snakes you have. Would you house them in different rooms or keep them in the same rack???

I ask this as I'm getting a cinny,pastel and spider this year from the same breeder all at the same time.

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Originally Posted by bman123

Got a ? since we are on this subject. What if you are just starting off and you buy 2 or 3 snakes from the same breeder? These would be the only snakes you have. Would you house them in different rooms or keep them in the same rack???

I ask this as I'm getting a cinny,pastel and spider this year from the same breeder all at the same time.

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Since they are coming from the same breeder I would put them in the same rack.

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Originally Posted by Shieny

What are the symptoms and signs of something fatal like IBD? Is there anything that I should be specifically looking for? What do the mites look like in the water? What does healthy feces look like?

Sorry for the questions... but I want to know more about it so I can provide the best care for my ball python.

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IBD in balls hits hard. I have never had balls with IBD but back in the 80's I lost my boa collection to it. The Vet I worked with, Dr. Roger Klingenberg told me that balls don't live much longer than a month once the get this. I had a friend that had a ball with IBD and it did live longer than a month, but like he told me. He had it into the vet all the time with RI and the ball was constantly on antibotics.

The way I look at IBD, is it is much like AIDS. IT's not so much the IBD that kills the animal but the break down in its amine system. In other words, constant RI or mouth rot, or whatever. A snake that does not eat, loses weight, skin dull etc, is not an animal you want to add to your "good room"

Mites look like black pepper in the water dish or on your animal. I will mash one and if it shushes red/brown, I figure it is a mite. Now I am older and my eye sight stinks so all my water dishes are light color and if I see something I mash it. Most all the time it's dirt or something else but...... I'm always looking.

I hate to break this to you guys, but paramyxovirus has an incubation period of up to ten months.

This information has caused me to revise my own quarantine procedure. It may be inconvenient, but it's crazy to only quarantine animals for 3 months when they could be harboring a disease with 30% or more kill rate, even with good supportive treatment.

I think people are much too quick to rush animals out of quarantine--usually to breed them, or for the space, etc. There's nothing that says you can't breed your quarantine group to each other, in quarantine. It's not worth exposing the rest of your collection.

Consider this--if someone gets a snake, quarantines it for 3 months, and then a month later decides to sell it, they sell it to you, you quarantine it for 3 months, it COULD STILL FALL ILL 3 months after you put it with the rest of your collection. The guy you bought it from never knew.

NOT worth the risk.

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Originally Posted by WingedWolfPsion

I hate to break this to you guys, but paramyxovirus has an incubation period of up to ten months.

This information has caused me to revise my own quarantine procedure. It may be inconvenient, but it's crazy to only quarantine animals for 3 months when they could be harboring a disease with 30% or more kill rate, even with good supportive treatment.

I think people are much too quick to rush animals out of quarantine--usually to breed them, or for the space, etc. There's nothing that says you can't breed your quarantine group to each other, in quarantine. It's not worth exposing the rest of your collection.

Consider this--if someone gets a snake, quarantines it for 3 months, and then a month later decides to sell it, they sell it to you, you quarantine it for 3 months, it COULD STILL FALL ILL 3 months after you put it with the rest of your collection. The guy you bought it from never knew.

NOT worth the risk.

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what the Heck is that?!? Do you say we are going to have to quarantine them for almost a year? That sounds crazy.