Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Hi all,

I had always meant to post a "howdy" on this forum and it saddens me greatly that this has to be the first post I make on here. I got my CB baby green annie in May or June, I believe. He was a fantastic snake, ate great, perfectly tame. On Tuesday I noticed that he had some sort of skin problem, which surprised me greatly as he has always been kept on DRY newspaper and (unlike my female yellow annie) never tips his water over to wet his cage or tries to soak at all. I tried to treat the infection with Betadine and antifungal cream, but last night I found him dead.

I am totally baffled as to why he would have gotten a skin infection; as I said, his cage was always kept dry and clean. He never had difficulty shedding or other problems. I did a bit of research on skin infections (I assumed the pathology was fungal, though I'm not totally sure) and found a couple of cases of this happening in green anacondas.

I guess my question to the anaconda community is, is this a fairly common thing in these snakes? I absolutely loved my little guy; I was really looking forward to watching him grow up to be a gentle giant and it saddens me greatly that now I won't get to. Now I'm afraid to try my hand at another green, as I don't want this to happen again and since I thought I did everything right the first time, I don't know what to do to prevent it. Has anyone ever heard of a similar problem in other greens?

Sorry this was such a long e-mail; thanks in advance for any help y'all can give.

I am sorry to hear that he didn't recover, but I was interested if you could give a detailed visual description of the skin problem. Young greens will sometimes acquire what is called "blister disease" from soaking in water for extended periods, especially if the water is contaminated. However, this takes days to develop, and would take weeks or maybe months untreated to become fatal. I don't believe you would ever see this on a green kept in a clean cage on newspaper. Captive bred and born greens are typically very hardy captives and problem free. I know that Jud and I have worked with more than 50 of them over the years and never had any health issues. This is definitely very unusual. Also, I would be interested to know what type of antifungal creme you used on him. Thanks,

Kelly

Hi Kelly,

Thanks for the reply. Unfortunately I didn't think to take any photos of the lesions while he was still alive; I was more concerned about trying to treat the problem, and to be honest I didn't think it was going to be fatal -- it looked bad, but I really thought the treatment would help. I attached a photograph that was taken post-mortem. The lesion in the picture had been debrided of material; previously, the areas were covered with a whitish substance. It looked as though the actual scale had been infected -- very strange actually. When rubbed, the white stuff would flake off in chunks and a clear liquid came out of the lesion. I didn't smell anything, but my fiancee thought it smelled "like a wild-caught garder snake."

I saw two larger, white swellings on one side of his body, but the scales were starting to "puff" in other areas as well. As I said, this came on EXTREMELY suddenly; I fed him two days before and didn't notice anything (though admittedly I didn't examine him closely), and a day or two before that I had been handling him and didn't see anything wrong at all. I had never seen him soaking in his water bowl prior to this, and he never spilled the water to wet the cage either.

I was trying to treat the infection threefold: I would soak him in water with a drop or two of tea tree oil, then place him on paper towels soaked with Betadine, and finally put tolnaftate cream (generic Tinactin) directly on the lesions.

Another interesting note is that, as I said, I never saw him soaking prior to developing the infection, but after the infection started I noticed him soaking just his head in the water bowl. I thought this was strange as there was nothing on his head; I could understand him trying to soak his body, as the infection was probably itchy and painful, but I didn't quite see why he would be trying to soak his head in water. It seems like a natrual anaconda thing, but he never did it before. Also, he was quite aggressive one of the days I was treating him, while previously he was very tame. I attribute this to the pain of the infection, though maybe there was something else going on as well..?

Again, apologies this is so long; I'm just trying to provide as much detail as possible. In retrospect I really regret not photographing the lesions before debriding the material.

Sorry to hear about your loss. I had a similar experience almost 25 years ago. However I am sure it was my fault because this was a nasty...I mean pure evil wc anaconda. I was young and dumb and not the best of keepers back then. Surely it was caused from not cleaning the water as I should have. The only reason I did not was because I was getting tired of loosing blood. Once the problem developed I had to give her injections of some form of antibiotic. This was an adventure in itself. How I remember it I lost her in within a couple of weeks.

Jim

I think it goes without saying that this was a very severe infection. I have not seen one that looked like this before, and it is incredible that it was able to advance that swiftly. It would be nice if you were able to have a vet or univesity perform a necropsy to determine the exact cause. This could be bacterial or fungal, and I don't have a clue from the appearance. It is still extremely unusual for something like this to occur considering the clean environment in which he was kept. Sorry I couldn't give you much information on this and please let me know if a necropsy is ever performed. Thanks,

Kelly

Sorry it took me so long to reply; somehow I thought this system would alert me to additional replies like it did the first one, but it didn't do that this time.

I still have no clue why this infection could have occured. Thankfully, knock-on-wood I have not seen it on any of my other snakes. The strangest thing is that my female yellow anaconda is clean of it. Up until quite recently I was having a nearly impossible time trying to stop her from tipping her water over, so her cage was almost constantly soaked -- although I changed her paper daily, sometimes twice a day, it was still impossible to keep dry. If anything, I would have figured her to be the one to pick up an infection. I'm clueless as to how the male contracted anything on dry newspaper...

Unfortunately I didn't get a necropsy done. I now really regret it; I guess I figured for sure that it was a fungal infection, and left it at that. I did take a look myself (I am pre-vet, so I guess my curiosity got the better of me, and looking at it from a veterinary standpoint was a way to deal with the loss for awhile) and saw no lesions on any internal organs. The external lesions had not penetrated through to the muscle layer, but the scales were clearly rotting off when scraped gently.

Anyway, thanks for the replies -- I still haven't the slightest what did go wrong, but at least I now know that I didn't do anything wrong as far as I can see, and that if I do decide to try another green anaconda this probably isn't likely to happen again!
-----
-- Kitt