My husband had his mom over the other day because she wanted to see the snakes. But, she was unwilling to hold any of them because her tetanus shot is not up to date and she was worried about getting tetanus from one of the snakes biting if something happened to cause a bite. She was not afraid of the snakes or being bitten by itself, she has owned snakes before in her youth and many other animals common and not since then, she was just concerned by the chance of getting tetanus from a bite.
But... I have not once come across a single mention of tetanus from a snake bite in any forum, breeder page, books, or anything I've read in my research in the last 2 years about captive snakes. I'd like to know if this is a legitimate concern and if it isn't, I'd like to have some publications/reputable sources I can share with her about it.
Is tetanus actually a concern for a snake bite (specifically for captive bred/born snakes)?
[I would guess it is an "anything goes" situation with wild snakes since it can be contracted from contaminated soil or other things they would be exposed to from my initial searches on tetanus in general.]
Does anyone have any scientific-based articles or info about it they could share?
All of the mentions of it I have found are on pages that promote some fairly outdated practices or provide weird/wrong reasoning for doing some husbandry things, so I am not willing to trust what they say & they had no sources to back it up. (I.e. feed "dead prey" so your snake will be less likely to bite you than if fed live prey, always use a feeding enclosure because of cage aggression, etc.)
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