Quote Originally Posted by The Serpent Merchant View Post
You need to have a vet do a culture because there are different causes of RI's (bacterial, fungal,...) different causes require different treatments.
It's true that there are different causes of RIs, but the most common ones are bacterial. Depending on how advanced the RI is you may have time to try to treat it with an antibiotic first and then do the expensive culture afterwards. The two times I have been to the vet with an RI they were both in the beginning stages. One I was told would have probably gone away on it's own it was so minor and the other was a little more advanced but a round of antibiotics later and it was gone. In both cases I was prescribed the same antibiotic (I did treat the extremely minor one just to be on the safe side instead of waiting for it to get more advanced). I can't remember what it was off the top of my head but I know it wasn't baytril and in both cases it worked.

The best advice I can give you princess17 is to go to your vet and get a diagnosis and then find out what they would prescribe. If you can get it through your mom and save some money, that's great, but you really should get advice from your vet first.