new snake quarantine

[tmartin2347]

how long do some of you quarantine your new snakes from your collection? and do you keep them in another room or other side of the room? or something different?

[xdeus]

I quarantine for at least 3 months in a separate room.

[tmartin2347]

well do my room is in the basement and I have one whole side. and I have sweatshirts that actually hang from a beam that makes my one room almost look like two rooms, do you think it will be fine just putting my new snakes on the other side of the room? Adam from 8 balls told me when he first started off he just had them on the other side of the room.

[xdeus]

Well, ideally they should be in a completely different building. The closer in proximity and less time you use to quarantine, the chances are better that you will eventually get cross contamination. It can be something as "minor" as mites to something more deadly like IBD and many things in between. Then again, I'm sure there are people out there that have never practiced quarantine procedures and have never had a problem. In the end, it's up to you to decide what you're comfortable with.

My advice would be to keep them as far away from each other as you can for at least 3 months.

[Chubbz]

my quarantine is 2 months in another room

[Entropy]

I have a 60 day quarantine in a seperate room and use bleach, rubber gloves and hand sanitizer liberally.

[frankykeno]

We quarantine for usually 60 - 90 days or more in a seperate room on a seperate floor. We only quarantine ball pythons up there, boas are quarantined seperately. If a new snake comes into quarantine, any snake still in QT restarts their "clock". We take care of the QT snakes last after the regular collection, we don't share their prey, they have their own husbandry stuff that's kept up there with them and we wash and sanitize after handling them. They are of course handled only upstairs and never come down into the general part of the house. Our children aren't allowed access to snakes while in quarantine. No snake comes out of quarantine if they aren't perfectly healthy and of normal weight, eating, shedding and passing waste products appropriately.

It may seem like a lot of rules and fuss but so far it's meant no mites, no disease transmission, etc. so for us it's worth it.

[dragondavy]

I have quarantine snakes for up to 6 to 8 months in a different room to be safe.

xdeus said it best, "In the end, it's up to you to decide what you're comfortable with".

Quarantine is a good practice.

[qiksilver]

quarantine is a good practice. For example, I had 5 snakes come from 2 different people, and they were all quarantined separately from my collection, until a fire in my building forced a quick move of all my animals to a friends place (which had limited space) and all my animals were placed together. My collection was clean, but one of the breeders that the new animals came in on had mites, and they spread quickly throughout my collection.

So yeah, quarantine is important.

[broadude]

I quarantine in a separate room in a separate part of the house. * don't have a facility yet*

I quarantine in the kitchen, to be close to running water. The quarantine animals have their own towels and cleaning materials. I normally buy from people I trust implictly so I usually keep them quarantined for 30 days. If I buy from an unknown (on these people's good word), I have kept them quarantined for up to 3 months.

The main collection is housed upstairs; the males are in the guest room and the females are in the laundry room next to running water. I am considering putting the males and females in one room to free up a room for incubation (the incubator is in my bedroom so I can watch it)

The downstairs back room has the "hospital" This is where I keep snakes that may need closer supervision. medication, microscope, snake restraints, etc. The Ultrasound machine is also in this room.

As for mites, there are few people that I would put their ainimals with mine without quarantine..but nearly every animal I receive is wiped with RR before they cross my threshold, (I have had two people bring me snakes and wiped after they were in the house...but so far no outbreaks) and their substrate (butcher paper) in the tubs is pretreated with P.A.M so when they arrive they go straight to these tubs and my collection gets a treatment the day before the new snakes arrive (if they haven't had their monthly prevention treatment).