>>To pass along info I've received from the vet I've been taking mine to lately: if Baytril is called for, the first dose is given via injection, the remaining doses are given orally. Which is a challenge, of course!

I read a Reptiles mag once, this was I dunno 3-4 years ago. I was reading Dr. Mader's column and what Steph said here is exactly what he had to say about Baytril.
Baytril is used so much for so many animals not just reptiles that my ears perk up when I hear or read something about it so I tend to remember it.
Dr. Mader said the injection is meant to get the benefits into them quickly then it's better for them to go orally after that first initial injection and that this is originally what the intentions for Baytril are... I am not 100 percent sure on this part but I believe he said that is the manufacturer's recommendation.

Ken,
I've already had this discussion with my vet last fall when Janie the box turtle sat outside in the cold then fell ill with a respiratory infection.
She went with a sulfa drug first and said at the time Baytril is over used and if another will work it's best to go with another.

My vet views Baytril's use in reptiles the way I view it's use for rats. I have 11 years or so of experience with keeping pet rats, they are extremely prone to bouts of pneumonia so for them Baytril is the big gun.
You use other antitbiotics first for minor respiratory illnesses because as they age they'll only have more problems anyway so you use the big gun only if nothing else works.
That's because they tend to have chronic pneumonia, which is very much like the chronic pneumonia in American gopher tortoises. It's a Mycoplasma species that causes chronic illness in rats, it's a different Mycoplasma species that causes chronic illness in the gopher torts but you can't kill Mycoplasma you can only attempt to control it, and so you don't want them to build up a tolerance to Baytril.

When Janie the box turtle did not improve on the sulfa drug I already had a full bottle of chloramphenicol that the vet had specially ordered for my rats and it was compounded into a strawberry flavor.
The vet worked out a dose for Janie to use that, she loved the flavor as much as the rats did so I used it & it worked fabulously which made me very happy. So now Janie has never had Baytril, if we need that big gun one day it'll work better for her then.
Based on all my rat pneumonia experience I was really happy when my vet told me that Baytril isn't always her first choice & why it's not. So it looks like she agrees with your vet on this.
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PHRatz

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