Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Yesterday morning, all my snakes were alive.

Last night, all my pythons were dead and dying. (I have a room full of colubrids, who all seem fime, so far.)

I have always tried to be careful about quarrentine procedures. Each snake has it's own feeding tub. I try to keep cages clean, and keep hand-sanitiser in the herp room.

Last year I brought in a boa who was too large to keep anywhere in my house but the herp room. She is the only snake who was not quarrentined. She dies suddenly, weeks after I got her. The necropsy indicated no signs of cryptosporosis.

My Snakes have been in brumation, and I was just warming them. All has seemed well, except one indident about a month ago, when one female ball python was twisting her head, with her mouth open. I freaked, but she stopped after about five minutes, and seemed fine since. I assumed at that point that she had gotten some substrate in her mouth, or something.

Last night two snakes were dead, and the third was in obvious pain. I felt so helpless. I couldn't think what to do for him. I put him in a pillowcase and set him outside in a snowdrift.

What are the odds of all three snakes dying like that in one day?? IOther then descibed above, I have seen no symptoms of stargazing, or anything to make me think there was anything wrong.

Like I said, all my colubrids seem OK so far, but this is scary as hell for me. I really can't afford to have necropsies done on these snakes. I am looking into sending tissue samples to a university. It all just happened so fast.

As a survivor of an IBD outbreak I feel for you, it's gutwrenching. Do you have any other boids on the premises? That of course would be your first concern. If none, than if money was a concern, I'd clean everything super well and wait a bit before starting again with them. Since you don't know what happened I'd be cautious around your colubrids as well.

As for finding out what happened, sending out tissue samples to a university is probably not going to be overly beneficial. The pathology labs that are going to be most usefull only work through veterinary clinics, this allows for the vet to make the interpretation of results and give the diagnoses. In the end, the results would probably make more sense to you. A general university would probably not know what to look for.

It might be safe to make the assumption that these animals died from the same thing. A proper post-mortem evaluation on one animal will probably suffice, and not be overly expensive. However make sure the vet clinic uses a path lab experienced in reptiles, as I've had problems with the "average" ones. This needs to be done asap to keep the tissues valuable. Refridgerate the animal for no more than 6-8 hours until you can take to the vet. If this is not possible, you can immediately freeze the animal and hope samples are still useable.

My last comment is an ethical one, and perhaps you were unaware. The manner in which you killed your snake (snowdrift) is completely unacceptable. Freezing has been described many times to be a painfull death, and we must assume that reptiles feel pain. Please seak a humane euthanasia at a veterinary office next time. Thanks

Ian

Thank you for your response.

Oh, trust me! I tried hard to find a vetrinarian who would help me to humanely euthanize that snake! I do not have a single herp vet in this town, or anybody woh is even willing to try to help me. The only other thing I could think of was decapitation, and I do not think that that is terribly humane for a reptile. A mamal, perhaps, but, well, I just don't know. It was all I could think of to do. I simply could not watch her go on like that. I had to do something.

On the good note, the Washington Animal Disease Diagnostic Labratory has agreed to necropsy all the snakes for me, at a very reasonable fee. The reason being that they would like as many tissue samples as possible, to increase the odds of getting an accurate diagnosis.

In the mean time, all other snakes are acting happy and healthy.

Any, what boggles me is, why would these snakes all die within a couple hours of each other? And basically without symptoms. I had checked on them twice already that day, and no one was acting odd or as if in pain. It was just so sudden....

Two of my corn snakes have regurgitated their last meal.

This has never happened to me before. I'm sick with worry. Why the hell is this happening?!?

When I had my IBD outbreak, groups of young boas would die at a time, all withen hours, and often, I'd just find them all dead in the morning without showing any problems the evening before.

I hope your corn snakes are unrelated; however:

Double check your husbandry parameters. If you have had a viral outbreak in your boids, a stressor could have cued them to all fall to it at once. This same stressor, and not the pathogen that killed the boas, could be causing the corns to regurg... an example of this would be cold temperatures or a draft. Check your room heater or whatever else you use.

An interesting aside, is that boid inclusion body disease has questionably been found in corn snakes and a few animals outside of the boidae family. This case however was in neonate corns and they did show stargazing signs and died acutely. It would be a stretch to say your corns have it, even if your boas did have IBD diagnosed.

For now, I would approach every animal as quarantined, but treat the regurging animals no differently as you would for any other animal that regurged. Watch of other symptems closely, and monitor weight losses.

For herp vets, start by asking who your local vets refer too. Then ask other local herpers, zoos ect and see who they use. Go to www.arav.com and check the membership list. Also go to their link to herpvetconnect for a client referal list. You should be willing to drive a bit to get there as it's just part of being a herp owner. I cannot even think of a humane way to kill a pet herp at home but see how you panicked. Find a vet before you need it.

That washington disease center, are they familiar with reptiles? Exotic reptiles? It can't hurt to try them, but I'd be cautious of a false diagnosis. It really takes someone familiar with herps to know what they are looking at. For instance, in my above personal case, are any inclusion bodies found viral or from other reasons? Are they normal? If further evaluation finds viral bodies, are they IBD; something else?

Good luck with this, and I hope the corns regurging was just coincidence.

Ian

WADDL has helped me with snakes before, and I have found them to be knowledgeable and thoughrough. (As far as I could tell, anyway.) And took the time to explain their findings to me on the phone, as I am not a vet, and did not understand all thier tests and terminology.