Hi Nicole,
A few things you need to know……
You seem to have a great deal of snakes (I make this leap by the list that you post at the end of your postings, 11 boas of different spps and 13 corns!) but your knowledge of them seems to be lacking a bit. Don’t get me wrong, we all start out somewhere and learn for our mistakes. You have picked a great place to get advice and help, but this should not be your soul source of information. Much of this research should have been done before acquiring such a large collection. But many new herpers make the same mistake, they get a lot of animals very quickly because they get addicted to them. Now you must learn about your animals and help prevent mistakes like this in the future. Jeff is correct, a vet may not have a clue about how to treat your snakes, but is great with your cat and dog. The only thing to fault the vet with, is him/her not coming clean and letting you know that he/she does not have a great deal of experience with herps. My own vet is a bird person and is learning about herps as we go along, together we sit down and discuss our treatments of my animals. I rely on her ability to culture infections for ID, and basic medical knowledge, while she relies on my 20 years of knowledge and research of the animals in which I keep. She will ask my opinion on what I feel (based upon my reading and experience) is the problem with my snake, most common issues are obvious to me nowadays, small mouth infections or Upper respiratory infections are easily seen and identified. I know what the problem is and it is the vets job to culture the infection so we can determine the best antibiotic to use for that particular bug. If I did not have the knowledge that I have, I don’t think that the vet and I would make such a good team and my animals treatment would suffer. But I have researched such things over the years and can provide this information to my vet.
You don’t yet have that knowledge, mainly because you are still new to the hobby (again my assumption) So you need to do a bit of research. Dr. Mader has a fantastic medical reference book that I would recommend you get, enter his name into the search engine on Amazon.com for it. It is obvious that you vet does not use this has his/her reference. It is also obvious that your vet is using an outdate reference book, probably from the early 80’s. Many reference books, from this time were very generic and mineral oil was commonly suggested as a treatment for mites. It should not cause permanent harm to your snakes, but you should was it off. If your snakes still have mites, then treat them in a few weeks with one of the cage sprays out there to treat mites (black flagg, pro-vent a mite etc…) A few other thing that your vet my try a recommend that you should avoid…. Ivermectin (oral or inject able) it is a blood stream poison that is used to kill blood sucking parasites as well as internal parasites. It is very toxic on reptiles and although snakes handle it better then most, I would still avoid it as there has not be a good dosage worked out for reptiles for this med. The other would be a Vapona (pesticide) strip. This too is an old method in which this fumigant is place into a snake cage and the cage is covered to prevent fresh air from coming in. This was used a great deal in the 70’s and 80‘s and started to fall off in the 90’s when people realized that it was the pesticide that was causing organ failure with their snakes. The idea here was to get enough Vapona into the cage to kill the mites, but balance it with still keeping the snake alive! Not a good way to do things, BTW Vapona was ban from household use in the US in the mid 80’s due to it’s toxicity to all forms of life!
My point on this post is simple, if not long winded. It is your responsibility to research your own animals. Your knowledge will only help your Vet choose the correct treatment for your animals. Your vet does not even need to be consulted on a mite problem, it is easily handled with information out there (see VPI { the Barkers} web site for more information on the treatment of mites). You must read and research what you can on the care of your animals.
Here you will get a dozen different opinions on what to do on each and every issue, but you need the basic knowledge for yourself to know what is best for your animals and what is not.
I wish you luck
Jim Hopkins

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