Reptile & Amphibian Forums

One of my colombians has been sick for over a month now with a respiratory infection. In the first vet visit I was given baytril pills to administer orally, which didn't work because she didn't want to eat and force feeding just leads to more stress. He then gave me 7 baytril injections to use every other day which nearly cleared everything up. At a check up visit she was still a little sick so he gave me another round of 7 injections. I thought those had worked until a few day ago when i heard the tell tale sound of a respiratory infection again. I dont want any more injections becuase they seem to cause the snake more stress than good, not to mention she now hisses and opens her mouth whenever i touch her(not that i blame her). Any thoughts on what I should ask the vet for next? Is there a less stressful way to administer medication?

Under what temperature and humidity conditions were you keeping this boa while it was receiving these injections of Baytril?

Kelly

The thermal gradient was 75-95F with 35 percent humidity. About 2 1/2 weeks ago I moved the snake into a new cage with a gradient from 80-95F and 40 percent humidity. The change was made because the winter temperature had dropped the temps in the cage down which most likely started everything.

Your temperatures are fairly good but the cage humidity is extremely low. My bet is that the low humidity has caused the respiratory problems with this boa and not necessarily the temps. Your humidity should be between 60% and 70% for a healthy sub-tropical boa, and between 70% and 80% for a boa that has a respiratory infection. The antibiotic treatment may have been working but the very low humidity may not have been allowing complete recovery. Try raising the humidity up to at least 75% for a couple of weeks and see if that helps the situation. If it does not help, maintain the higher humidity and see if the vet thinks another round of antibiotics is in order, and possibly a different one. How are you heating the cage?

Kelly

I'm heating the cage with a radiant heat panel in a vision cage. And before I forget thank you for your help.

That heat panel would tend to lower the interior humidity somewhat, but you should be able to keep it up with spraying of the sides and substrate a couple times a day. I don't remember the configuration of the air vents on a Vision cage, but you may need to partially cover them to help maintain the humidity. Thanks,

Kelly

This thread has taken a good direction. Any treatment won't succeed without troubleshooting the husbandry. On the medical half of this case, more diagnostics should be done to a) see if this is also a lower respiratory infection and b) to see if there is systemic illness. Both will significantly change how difficult this will be to treat.

Despite being so cranky, it sounds like the injections have done more good than harm.

Ian

You should get a culture to make sure baytril is the proper antibiotic. Although it is used a lot in reptiles it has a fairly narrow spectrum, so unless the bacteria is sensitive to it you could be wasting time, money, and it can be painful when injected. Nebulization will also help and antibiotics can be put into the nebulizer.
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Michael McFadden, M.S., D.V.M.

I completely agree with everything Dr. McFadden said, and although I am definitely not an expert, I would like to clarify some points with the practice of treating RI’s by nebulizing antibiotics. I count on Dr. McFadden to correct me if I am wrong, but my understanding with the use of nebulizers in antibiotic therapy is that systemic antibiotics should also be administered concurrently with the nebulized antibiotics for several reasons.

When using a nebulizer alone with a chosen antibiotic, the selection of resistant bacteria has been a problem due to sub-optimal doses reaching the target organism. I can see this as a definite concern with boids, as their low pulmonary tidal volume would limit the amount of the antibiotic actually reaching the site of the infection. Additionally, the droplet size produced by the nebulizer is critical to the amount of antibiotic that is inhaled deeply enough to be carried to the site of the infection. Another case for concurrent systemic antibiotic treatment. And lastly, it is critical that no other snakes be in a position to inhale the nebulized antibiotic. With sole exposure to the nebulzed antibiotic, and without concurrent systemic treatment, these snakes would be prime candidates for the development of resistant strains of bacteria to a given antibiotic.

I think this is an extremely valid treatment option, but should be handled in such a manner as to allow the use of it to the full potential.

Kelly