Question about RI's

[Rat160]

OK, so first off I noticed that like three of my ball pythons are showing symptoms of an RI. On two I noticed little bubbles near the mouth and on one he is wheezing. They aren't really bad sounding but I wanted to ask.

They are in a rack system and the hot spot is 90-92 and cool side is 83-85, I will admit I don't have a humidity gauge at the moment but given the temps and the substrate (paper towels) I cant see it being too high.

I am going to look into getting them to the vet but wanted to ask your opinions.

How is it that all three have symptoms when their heat is good?

Any help is appreciated. Thanks.

And let me know if you have any questions, I monitor my threads closely.

[llovelace]

How are you checking the hot side temps?

[Rat160]

How are you checking the hot side temps?

Raytek laser temp gun

[llovelace]

While you are waiting to take them to the vet, increase the hot side temps to 94-95*, add some moist sea sponges to increase humidity.
To answer one of your earlier ?'s, an RI is contagious, so by simply handling without precautions, you may have inadvertently cross infected them

[Rat160]

Will do but do you have any idea what would cause this. Id like to find out, because as far as I know I'm doing everything right. Now all the sudden three of my babes are showing symptoms. This is kind of alarming given the amount of time I put into these guys everyday.

[llovelace]

You didn't add any new snakes recently did you?

[Rat160]

You didn't add any new snakes recently did you?

nope, plus I have a separate quarantine rack set up.

[llovelace]

I can happen sometimes, my snake room is kept at 79-83*, and I had one of my boas out a couple weeks back, and what do I hear? Yep the distictive clicking of an RI .
Just make sure to sanitize their enclosures.

[Rat160]

I can happen sometimes, my snake room is kept at 79-83*, and I had one of my boas out a couple weeks back, and what do I hear? Yep the distictive clicking of an RI .
Just make sure to sanitize their enclosures.

Thats the weird thing, I clean tubs twice a week using Chlorhexidine Gluconate .08% solution and the temps are kept correctly, and each snake is checked on daily. I follow proper quarantine procedure, I just don't get where this came from.

Really frustrating.

[dr del]

Hi,

URI's really don't have a single underlying cause.

This is why we recommend getting a culture done to test for sensitivity - though you get resistant strains within a single bacteria as well it has to be said.

It's more often a case of the snakes immune system is slightly under par and an existing organism within the healthy animal develops to the point of causing problems. So the causal organism could be either a bacteria or virus.

Once it has reached those levels though the infected animal is shedding bacteria at a high rate and these can easily be passed to other animals which can then cause them the same problem.

At least that is what I got told the last time I asked.


dr del