Notes on treating respiratory infections

[purple python]

I am in no way advocating that the following is an alternative to veterinary care.

A while back, I had to move suddenly, with little planning, and my collection suffered because of it. One caught a respiratory infection and despite proper housing conditions being restored, the infection spread to nearly all of my collection. It was devastating, I could not afford to seek veterinary care for my entire collection, so I parted with nearly all of them to good people who could afford to properly treat my babies..

There was one ball python in particular that I had difficulty finding a home and care taker for, and had already heavily invested in vet care for a few of my other snakes. I did some digging, and tried a few things and with a little luck, he recovered all on his own.

If you have a ball python suffering from a respiratory infection - do not hesitate to seek veterinary care! But there are a few things you can do (with proper treatment) to help with recovery. 1) Sanitize! Clean the enclosure top to bottom, water dish, and any decor you may have. And sanitize often, at least once a week! 2) Switch out your substrate for paper towel - paper towel is easy to completely replace, keep clean, and keeps dry. 3) Lower humidity! I dropped humidity to 30-40%, only increasing it to 50-70% only for shedding. 4) Increase temps, my hot spot went from 90F to 93F, and ambient temps to 82F. These few changes along with veterinary care helped my snakes recover quickly, it even worked wonders for one snake in particular that had not received any medical attention. Again, this is not a substitute for veterinary care, if your snake is suffering from a respiratory infection, seek help immediately!

[Reinz]

I agree!

I did the temp and humidity adjustments when I did not know of a vet at the time and it worked for my snake as well.

[PitOnTheProwl]

Youtube snakesbites down with the sickness.
Its all there and your choice of how to handle your situation.

[Sauzo]

Well increasing the temps kicks in the snakes own immune system plus if you are using antibiotics like Fortaz or Baytril then the temp increase will also speed up their metabolism which helps the antibiotics. Anytime a reptile has a RI, you should raise the temp. Also, you definitely want to get a culture at the minimum from the vet to find out if its bacterial, fungal or viral. My beardie had a bacterial RI which took about a month to cure. None of my snakes got it but I also Chlorhexadined everything and always washed my hands inbetween anything to do with my animals. Too bad about your collection all getting it. Was it an airborne bacteria or fungus or something? Mine had Enterobacter which the vet told me is the most common kind which is found on pretty much everything but only really strikes when an animals immune system is suppressed. And is really only transferred from fecal to oral like if it an animal pooped on the floor and you just wiped it up but didn't sanitize the spot and some other animal licked that spot. Anyways, sorry to hear that. Sucks to lose a whole collection