Treat a Respiratory Infection (RI) from Home. DIY

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makes sense, yes. although i don't know if i would go as far as calling that sense common. it requires a little deeper thinking. both of my parents are veterinarians, and while i'm in no way insinuating i'm speaking for all veterinarians, working at my mothers clinic and growing up with them, i got a lot of first hand insight as to why they and other vets in my area do things the way they do. they prescribe antibiotics because they work more often than not. if the antibiotics worked less than half the time (which would be the case if it were viral), they would start doing cultures more often. it would be a waste of antibiotics and leave you with unhappy owners and sick animals. if the antibiotics work, i would think it's safe to say it was a bacterial infection. and since antibiotics work more often than not, i think it would be safe to assume more often than not, these infections are bacterial. and while you do seem to hear about a lot of RI's not responding to antibiotics on here, i think that's probably because they've exhausted all other options and come here looking for answers. you don't hear of the hundreds of RI's that got treated and clear right up.

I actually think that bacterial RIs are not as common as we think. Doesn't mean that they are uncommon, just means that they should not be the first thing we assume when a snake has an RI. There are fungal causes, parasitic causes and viral causes.

In my time keeping snakes, I have had more imports come in with lungworms than bacterial RIs. When is the last time you saw someone talk about parasitic RIs on the forums? They don't because most vets just don't bother to do anything more than throw Baytril at a snake with a suspected RI.

The one time I had a spontaneous RI occur in a long term captive, it was due to a virus.

I'll repeat what I said earlier - until vets stop short-arming clients, no one knows the true breakdown of the incidences of each cause.