Salmonella. Have YOU caught it from your reptiles?

[purplemuffin]

I've been seeing a lot of news articles and mentions lately of salmanella and the danger of exotic animals. We all know the risk is there. But I want to know how many have actually experienced salmonella poisoning from their reptiles?


I've only caught salmonella once, long before I ever had herps. Now that I do have reptiles, I've never caught it.

I currently have two snakes, three lizards, a bird, and a frog. The bird is 7 years old, and all the rest of the animals are between 1 and 3 years old. My boyfriend has been keeping reptiles and birds his whole life and has never caught it.

Now I won't say we are perfect with our care in preventing salmonella. We know the risk but...well, we get lazy. I've kissed my snake before, I've forgotten to wash my hands before eating after handling my reptiles. Most of the time we are good about it, but honestly we treat cleanliness with them and our hands like we do our dogs and cats..Sometimes we'll forget, unless we've been cleaning cages or something. We've been lucky in avoiding salmonella for sure I suppose. But how lucky?

I'm curious to know--the number of animals, how many years you've kept reptiles, if you ever caught salmonella from them, and how clean you are when it comes to preventing salmonella.

I know this is an extremely active forum, so I know a lot of people will be able to respond. I want to see some big numbers and percentages.


To be honest with all the bad press lately, we will be for sure being more careful about avoiding salmonella. We've just been a little bit lazy when it comes to our own health I suppose! Now we'll be better about it for sure.