Treat a Respiratory Infection (RI) from Home. DIY

[TheSnakeGeek]

I am in no way condoning skipping out on a vet visit if your animal is sick. Unfortunately, some of us live in areas where there isn't an exotic vet nearby. Others may have one of those tough to beat RI's that aren't responding to antibiotics and want to try something different. Fortunately for me, my father is a veterinarian (although not a specialized exotic one) and has the resources to antibiotics and labs to send cultures off to if need be. Although we could have gone ahead and started giving my snake antibiotic injections, I've seen how much it stresses them out and wanted to try something else. I hate having to restrain my snakes to give them injections while they're flailing their bodies around the whole time. No fun for either one of us. I just recently had success with this method and wanted to share so maybe I could help someone else who's stressin out over one of their babies.

I'm sure some of you have seen/done this before. I actually got this idea from a BHB snakebytes video, so don't think I'm some mad scientist whipping up random concoctions on my own. Remember, if you can get to a vet, it's always recommended. If you try this and it doesn't work, you may have to suck it up and make the 3 hour drive to the nearest exotic animal clinic.


What you'll need:


a Zoomed Repti Fogger ($60 at petco, I found mine online for $40 plus shipping)





a plastic tub ($4 at Walmart or Target. I used a 15 qt tub, but size doesn't matter too much. You just don't want a huge one)





F10 Veterinary Disinfectant ($15.99 from reptilebasics.com)





and a sick snake





First thing you'll want to do is put one or two ventilation holes in the side of the tub. For this I just used a soldering iron to "punch" out the holes ($10 at walmart if you dont already have one), or if you have an electric drill that will work as well.

boom.





Then you'll want to cut out a hole on the lid of the tub just big enough for the plastic hose that comes with the Repti Fogger to fit in securely. (I know my hole looks janky, but it works just fine. I used the soldering iron to "cut" it out. The edges are rounded off and not sharp at all.)





Next you'll want to dilute the F10. This is a concentrated disinfectant so it doesn't take much. Fill up the water bottle to the fogger with water then add 3 ml of F10. My F10 came with a built in measurer. If you have to use something else to measure and didn't already know, in liquid measurements, ml (milliliters) and cc (cubic centimeters) are the same thing.



Now hook the bottle up to the fogger and turn the dial on all the way up to make sure it works. I thought mine was defective at first because it didn't come on immediately. You may have to give it a couple minutes for the water to fill up the little chamber. If it works, it'll look like this:






Now all you do is put your snake in the tub, "plug" the end of the fogger hose up to the hole on the lid, and fog up the enclosure.






It doesn't matter how high you turn it on as long as you see the tub getting completely fogged up. You'll want to fog your snake for 20 minutes, once a day, for 7-10 days. The reason this works is because the disinfectant F10 is completely safe for reptiles and it kills bacteria. A respiratory (lung) infection is a bacterial infection in your snakes lungs. When your animal breathes in this disinfectant it helps to kill off the bad bacteria infecting its lungs.

No more wheezing or clicks!

Once again, if you can make it to an exotic vet, you should. If for some reason you cannot, or if you've had a culture done and the antibiotics your vet gave you are not working, you can try this. It does seem to work.