About a month ago I found my largest and sweetest female rolled over on her back, but still breathing. She was unable to roll herself back over and couldn't seem to control her head or her body. This was about 36 hours after my thermostat shorted out and the temp shot up to 95 degrees for im guessing about 24 hours. Everyone else in the room was fine. This is a snake that has been in my care for over 2 years, was appx 10 years old, and was perfectly healthy until that day. I brought her to my vet to see if she could be saved and they immediately started poking, prodding, and running tests. The next day she was euthanized. My vet suggested i could have an autopsy done (i know theres another term for it) to see what caused her to go downhill so fast. The opinion of the vet who performed the autopsy was ibd. she had no sypmtoms of it before, was eating like a hog and I havent added any new snakes to my collection. He hasn't been able to tell me what led him to that conclusion. My personal theory is the heat, in combination with her slight weight issue (6 1/2 feet 45 pounds) and her age caused her to overheat more quickly than my other more slender and younger bloods. She was being kept with another female who is still alive and healthy; my vet keeps urging me to euthanize her due to the close contact exposure. Im not convinced it was ibd in the first place. The report stated several other health issues such as chronic mouth rot and severe obesity (how does a snake with chronic mouth rot become obese???) which makes me question the validity of the whole thing. any words of wisdom or opinions about ibd would be great. Im scared to death for my collection. I dont see how a perfectly healthy snake with no symptoms can roll over and die from ibd within 24 hours.
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questionable IBD diagnosis
Replies (4)
Elliot R. Jacobson, College of Veterinary Medicine, University of Florida, Gainesville, Florida has done lots of research on this subject so check out the details. Also I question your vets tactics in this case, but agree caution is warranted regarding possible cross contamination without adequate quarantine procedures.
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for IBD. You can do liver biopsies on a live animal and blood cultures can even show signs that IBD might be present. Any time I've had a Neurocropsy done various tissue samples have been sent away to a specialist for pathology. I had a few snakes go suddenly awhile back and my vet thought it was possible as well. However we made sure, and it was determined to be bacterial. Most likely Salmonella, possibly due to rotten feeders. There are alot of things at play with these animals. I urge you to BE SURE, but at the same time it looks like another vet might be helpful... good herp vets are hard to find though.
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"It's my snake, I trained it, so I'm going to eat it!" - Mad Max, The Road Warrior
My vet did send the animal to a pathologist and a liver biopsy was done. They reported hepatitis and ibd. Is a liver biopsy an unmistakeable way to diagnose IBD or could there be other causes of the symptoms? I do feed frozen thawed rats and her last feeding was a week before she died. I had been given these rats by a friend, not a big company so that does make me wonder about the possibilty of a bad rat. Any thoughts on the overheating theory?
my lesson:
buy cb babies, grow your own.
From what I understand inclusions cannot occur without viral benefactors. I think there is another virus that can cause them but it is not commonly occuring in boids, and there are tests that can be done to rule out this, leaving ibd as a sole culprit. If he can reattain the slides and if you can get a print out of the pathology report to read that might be helpful. These should still be on file. IBD is not something to take lightly. Overheating is a possibility, if the animal already had a abnormally large amount of bacteria present in its body that could cause rapid spread as well. I don't claim to be an expert in this field however, so I strongly encourage you to do your own research. There is alot of imformation out there if you look for it.
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"It's my snake, I trained it, so I'm going to eat it!" - Mad Max, The Road Warrior
