Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Howdy.
I just wanted to confirm what my vet told me. He doesn't work with reptiles very often.....

Here are all the details:

Corn snake
approx 400 - 450 grams
diagnosed respiratory infection
Baytril shots 0.15 ml (cc)
every 2 days for 28 days (14 shots total)

Does the dosage seem correct??
Also, is there a better shot "schedule" to follow than the 14-shot schedule?

Thanks for your help.

Tomsey

Generally speaking, it's probably a bad idea to take the advice of non-vets and apply it to what a vet told you... Your best bet might be to call a herp vet (even if it's not one you can physically get the animal to) and ask them if it sounds right.

If your doctor hasn't done much reptile work, I imagine he took the doseage from the exotics formulary, which is pretty well worked out in terms of amounts/administration schedules. So, at a guess (and from consulting my copy ) you should go with what he told you! Good luck,

-P
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1.0.0 Normal corn snake (Frito)
1.0.0 Creamsicle corn (Tang)
0.1.0 Ghost corn (Raynham)
1.1.2 Bay of LA rosy boas (Rivet, Cali, and Cali's unnamed babies)
0.1.0 Cape Gopher (Mole)
0.0.1 African House Snake (Casa)

>>
>>Here are all the details:
>>
>>Corn snake
>>approx 400 - 450 grams
>>diagnosed respiratory infection
>>Baytril shots 0.15 ml (cc)
>>every 2 days for 28 days (14 shots total)
>>
>>Does the dosage seem correct??

Overall, it is impossible to say if the above dose for your snake is correct or not. There really isn't enough complete information there to even determine if the single injection dose is correct or not and whether this is a routine/minor RI or a severe/life threatening RI. It sorta sounds like he's going with a standard 5mg/kg dose but without knowing what the strength of the baytril is, can't really do the math backwards to find out if that is true or not. Baytril is very hard on a reptile's kidneys (not to mention it burns/hurts when injected into the muscle). And knowing that, giving your snake shots for as long as you state, sounds a bit odd... I think it would have to be a major infection to want to give baytril for that long. You really should contact a Herp-trained vet to get a second opinion.

For routine infections in snakes, I know my vet never went more than 2 weeks when doing an every other day schedule (7 shots)..usually it was only 3 shots and slightly more serious infections 2 weeks. The only time she ever authorized me to do a month long type routine was with a pair of aquatic turtles suffering from a severe case of subcutaneous ulcerative disease - a really bad systemic infection where their shells and body were literally rotting from the inside out and we were racing to try to clear the infection up before the turtles rotted to death. We ended up doing daily injections for a month, gave them 2 weeks off, do every other day injections for a month, gave them 2 weeks off, then injections every 3 days for another month before we finally seemed to clear them up and no apparent relaspse occurred in the 6 months after that so we felt confident we killed off the infection. In addition to the injections they were getting daily scrub topical treatments with a strong chlorhexidine solution. Both turtles lost over a third of their shell structure (top/bottom) before the infection was brought under control and cleared up. The only reason she felt comfortable using baytril that much in them was because they were aquatic turtles and could do a better job of keeping themselves well hydrated to fend off kidney problems from the drug than say a lizard or snake could.
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PHWyvern