I like to treat my animals the way I would want to be treated. If I had to live in an area that was was in porportion to what most snakes are made to live in, I would want it super clean. After all, I would have to lay on it 24/7. If I had to use my water bowl for both drinking and soaking/defecating, I would want it disinfected between uses. I hardly consider a once a week disinfection of a cage to be excessive! I don't know anybody that follows their animals around with microscopes or wears gloves when handling (unless to avoid being bitten), so I'm assuming you were just exagerating for dramatic effect.
Snakes aren't meant to lay in the same area day after day. In the wild they can move and don't have the risk of laying in soiled substrate. If we are going to confine them to tiny enclosures, the least we can do is keep it clean.

"A healthy animal is not affected by parasites, germs, or anything other than a keeper practically wearing a surgical mask & gloves when they handle them so they don't contaminate the animals."

This is a weird statement, but I will try to address it. Reptiles are usually born healthy, but they don't stay that way without some good husbandry skills. To say that a healthy animal is not affected by germs or parasites is a flip-flop, because germs and parasites are what make animals not healthy. Do you think that if an animal has parasites that it was just born with them? They get them! That is why you should protect your animals by quarentining new arrivals and regularly disinfecting their cage and cage furniture.

"All of that disinfecting, sanitizing, sterilizing, de-parasitizing, hospitalizing, stuff is nothing but bandaids. Bandaids! Used to hold the animal together, to cover up for poor husbandry. UVB lighting: a bandaid. "

The first three things you mentioned are just the same thing restated over and over. However, In my opinion, keeping a cage clean and taking care of sick animals IS proper husbandry, not a "bandaid".

"If you don't keep your humidity up where it should be, you'd better use a bandaid by disinfecting the waterbowl every day. Low temperatures, inadequate amount or quality of food? You'd better sterilize your cage often. "

Your reasoning is like stating that if you feed your kids their vegetables and keep the AC set at a good temp. that you don't have to keep the house clean or provide vaccinations. ALL of these things comprise proper husbandry, not just the things you want to pick because they are easiest. You can keep your cage as clean as a laboratory, but your animals will still get sick without proper temps and humidity. On the flip side, you can have the most precisely calculated humidity and temperature measurements and your animals will still get sick if you allow them to lay in bacteria-laden cages. Neither one is a bandaid, because neither one will solve any complications caused by the other.

"I don't quarantine the kids that come to play with my kids, either."
And I bet your kids get sick every once in a while too. However, kids get vaccinations that prevent them from getting the major diseases that used to kill people commonly. Your snakes don't, and they need more protection.

"I'll tell you what. If you can name one thing that is guaranteed to show itself within a 3-month quarrantine period that would not show up during a 2-week quarrantine period, I'll seriously reconsider what I've been successfully doing for nearly 40 years. "

Well, get ready. Inclusion Body Disease takes an average of around 30 days in incubate before symptoms become apparent. Not to mention that with only 1 1/2 weeks (like your newly acquired snake) you most likely can not see if it is shedding correctly (incorrect shedding can be a sign of disease). Also, with your ten-day or so quarentine you could easily undershoot the time it could take for a snake to regurgitate (as it can happen days after being fed) and regurgitation is also a symptom of diease. As are loose stools or constipation, but you may not see stools within the 10 day period if the snake was fed a large meal or if the snake wasn't fed for a while.

I'm not saying to follow your snakes around with microscopes and spend every single day cleaning the cages, but I strongly believe that cages should be disinfected every time a snake defecates or passes urates, and I strongly believe that everybody should quarentine newly acquired pets for around two months before allowing them to have contact with other pets. Most "experts" say to quarentine for as long as 6 months, but I'm not that fanatical about it.

Things change when people develop better, more successful ways of doing things. Just because you have not sanitized your cages and bowls regularly or provided UVA/UVB lighting for forty years doesn't mean you can't start now. People do things differently these days because they work better. Bearded dragons, for example, thrive better, have better coloration, and seem to live longer when they are given access to UVA/UVB lighting. I don't know about you, but I would much rather have my animals THRIVE than just live.

I think you should bump up your definition of "just the basics" to include proper sanitization (sanitizing only when the animals poops or "pee"s is perfectly acceptable) and preventing the spread of disease. I mean, come on, how is a clean cage and NOT being exposed to possible diease trivial? Really now.

It might take a little more time and effort, but if your going to have animals, you should be willing to dedicate that time and effort to them.



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~Sara~
4 Leopard Geckos
4 ball pythons
1.0 Black-lined plated lizard (Lizzy Butt)
0.1 Burmese Python (Pixil)
5 Rats
6 Mice
1.1 Gerbils
1.1 Dogs (Ozzie and Mandy)
0.1 Cat (Isis)
0.0.1 Synodontis Catfish (Big Spotty Fish)
0.1 Convict Cichlid
0.0.1 blood parrot cichlid
0.0.1 African Featherfin Catfish

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