Posted by:
dave barker
at Mon Dec 15 21:37:24 2003 [ Email Message ] [ Show All Posts by dave barker ]
The teeth will grow back.
It's my observation that mouthrot is almost always a side-effect of some other health problem. It's strange but 25 years ago we keepers were always worrying about mouthrot and we often had to treat it. Now days I hardly ever hear of any mouthrot problems and it's been years since we've seen a case of it. I digress...
In most cases I ignored the mouthrot and treated what I thought was the main problem. Sometimes that problem was bacterial, sometimes it was mechanical (snakes in too-small cages push in the cormers and give themselves mouthrot or something similar that will turn into mouthrot.)
RI can cause mouthrot and usually when the RI is treated with antibiotics, the mouthrot clears up on its own. But sometimes one does need to get in the mouth and clean it up. Look for teeths that have been shed or broken and have wedged down into the jaw. Often a badly swollen area on the jaw has a tooth in the middle of it. Snakes create a kind of dry pus called caseous matter in infected areas. Swelling that is caused by caseous matter needs to be opened up, cleaned out and flushed with hydogen peroxide.
In general, when amikacin is indicated as effective, we treat the snakes for six weeks, even though they may appear to be perfectly healthy after a week.
I agree with Rich--I do not like injectible Baytril. It has been badly used in the past decade. Oral Baytril is very effective at a recommended daily dose of 10 mg/pound, and the human equivalent, Cipro, is a great drug for RI in pythons at a recommended daily dose of 5 mg/pound. We administer these antibiotics daily for 3 weeks, and that can get to be tough on a big blood, but it's pretty easy to accomplish on small snakes.
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RE: amikacin injections - dave barker, Mon Dec 15 21:37:24 2003