Vet visit to treat RI cost?

[Skiploder]

Yes i agree there are strains resistent to baytril but if the resp is caught early most of the times baytril clears it up. If the resp is in the stages where you see bubbles or mucous the snake looses the battle. There comes a point where you have to look at risk vs reward. If the snake is in the later stages with bubbling and mucous you have to make the decision that do i want to spend upwards of a grand to take a shot in the dark that spending that kind of money will clear it up? The odds are not good in that case. Also snakes have a slow healing rate. Even if you spend big money and try different antibiotics this takes a huge toll on their system and all your doing is prolonging the inevidable. Im not saying baytril is the only answer im just relying of my 20 years of personal experience. But i do agree on your post that an infection should be cultured but its helpful in making the decision to know the signs of the stages in resp infections cause there is a point in where its a loosing battle

There are RIs that are completely resistant to Baytril. Doesn't matter whether or not you catch it early or late, the bacteria is completely resistant to the antibiotic. There have been whole papers written on the over-use and subsequent growing bacterial resistance to Baytril in both veterinary medicine and the livestock industry.

http://evolution.berkeley.edu/evolib...050915_baytril

http://www.rabbitnetwork.org/articles/growing.shtml

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC89461/
Cut to "Discussion" for the pertinent info.

Part of the reason - a combination of every hack vet blindly treating RIs without culturing and animals not getting the full treatment - the owner sees improvement and stops administering the drug. Then you couple that several animal for food industries use it prophylactically to treat large lots of animals and you have all the making of an antibiotic that isn't as effective as it once was.

When you get the culturing results back from the lab it tells you several things - first, what bacteria is responsible. It also will rank the effectiveness of several antibiotics against the particular strain of bacteria.