Ultrasound Machine Suggestions and Price

Thinking about getting an ultrasound machine. Just wanted to know whats a good one and some prices. thanks

I would suggest looking online. I've never personally heard of an individual owning one.

Hopefully someone has some good info on this topic. Subscribed to it.

Cheap low end machines are about 1k

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I would suggest starting with Grant Witmer lavenderalbinos.com and go from there, I know of several people who have been very satisfied with models they have picked up from him.

You're going to spend a pretty penny for a good, reliable, user-friendly ultrasound. Not sure if Grant is still selling them, though. Peek around online for a bit and call around and see if vets/hospitals have old ones they aren't using anymore and/or upgraded. You never know...

Typically ultrasound machines that produce good, diagnostic quality images are anywhere from 40k-150k depending on the models an add-ons. The GE model at a clinic I used to work for costs 75k, and it was a middle of the road quality.

I would also be contentious of laws in your area. If you are using the ultrasound machine to tell other people that their snakes are gravid/ whatever, your are technically diagnosing, therefore practicing veterinary medicine without a license, which in some states you will get a hefty fine/tickets.

my ultrasound was around 3000 and works just fine for seeing follicle growth in a female ball python. the probe is very important. do your research on that too. the unit I have is the wed-308v. depending on the size of your collection, the information you get from the ultrasound is very helpful.

For a decent new one, depending on if you can get lucky and find a demo model or not, I wouldn't be surprised to end up paying anywhere from 2-5k for one that will work great for measuring follicle growth. That may depend some on what kind of warranty they come with, and what you have to do if anything goes wrong and you actually have to put the warranty to use. Like Don mentioned, the right probe is extremely important, you will probably want one that operates at 7.5mhz.

I really don't think I would be concerned about being accused of practicing medicine for just showing someone a picture of the follicles so that they can get a measurement of them. You're really not diagnosing anything, just looking at a picture and measuring what you know is naturally there, beyond that you're not going to be treating the animal or prescribing it anything...other than a hemipene injection maybe.;) They've become quite common for many serious breeders to have at home or at their reptile breeding facility and I have yet to hear of anyone being found guilty for practicing medicine for measuring follicle size. If you could get convicted of using one for that, you could just as easily be convicted of the same for simply palpating an animal and giving your opinion on how big you think they might be by feel.

i think as clinics and doctors advance to newer and more high-tech machines (higher resolution, images in 3D, ultrasounds that detect the direction and speed of blood flow, better datalink to other computers, etc), old ones from like 1980 or something should become available. why should they keep the old ones around when they buy something newer and better and more precise? progress never stops, and these things also contain a computer that analyzes the signal and calculates an image out of it, and computers progress fast.

and to just measure and count follicles and eggs, the most basic low-res 2d machine will be totally fine.

on ebay in Germany i found one for 1000 euros and another one for auction that has two days left and right now its at 25 euros.

we could wait and see how the german auction goes: http://www.ebay.de/itm/Ultraschallge...item4acb0d811f

but then it would be more useful to track it on ebay USA. with an ebay account, you should also be able to search for past auctions.

also, question for the experts: in clinics, do these things have to be licensed for use on humans, is it a license that runs out one day or that you need to keep renewing? if, for example, there is a license making it fit for use on patients that needs to regularly be renewed and renewing it costs money, then the old ones should be even easier to get.

(BTW ive seen two breeders from the USA using them in videos, and the big german breeder Stefan Broghammer also has one).