An interesting disscussion. My last post was done in the we hours of the morning and probably not quite lucid. No sleep, no coffee. You get the idea.
I would agree with humidity to some extent. The single occasion in which I have had a healthy snake develop an RI while in my care was with too low temps and too much humidity. I do not think the humidity was the cause as my healthy adults can literally tolerate soaking wet conditions IF temps are right and the circulation is good. As you well know a warm, wet, stagnant environment is the perfect incubator.
I am anal about my cages, so they stay spotless. I do however waffle considerably on the newspaper/bedding issue. I love Cypress for its humidity retention, but it is a pain in the butt. A topic for another day.
I have never lost a snake due to an RI and my belief is that I should err to the side of relatively dry (60-70%) humidity and better air flow with a sick snake (i.e bigger vent holes in the cage/tub). The better airflow in itself is a problem in a house with the furnace running as that tends to dry the cages drastically, so I mist them to desired humidity. I give them a more controlled temp range of 82-88 believing and perhaps wrongly, that consistancy reduces the struggle for homeostatsis and thus reduces stress.
This snake, as with most of the other sick snakes I have ever owned came with infection in situ. The PO had an infection in his collection and I bought a group of them. This one had the sniffles but I think the stress of moving turned it into a full blown head cold. I have received other snakes in similar condition but I have only had 1 single snake develop an RI after being in my care for more than a couple of weeks. Cage was too cool, too wet and not enough circulation. A real trifecta!
Now, to the topic at hand. Let me re-phrase my earlier comments. Antibiotics are in fact used way too often and thus we are develoing strains of bateria that are much more resilient. Often such things start with a virus and then as the mucous thickens and the animal becomes stressed viola, we have a secondary bacterial infection. I think I said it backwards yesterday. I also put my pants on backwards too if that tells you anything.
Antibiotics and cultures? Wow, what a tough topic. I agree with Rich that in an ideal situation we would have a lab culture the infection and determine the most likely antibiotic to use. However even healthy animals test positive for a pathogen in more than 30% of the cases. It would then seem problematic to determine which antibiotic to use, thus for the sake of expediency and in search of a magic bullet, the wide development of broad spectrum antibiotics. It is the shotgun approach and we dont have very good aim, we are just making them of a bigger caliber.
Why aren't the cephalosporins used more widely in reptiles? As for amikacin, it is indeed primarily for gram negative multidrug resistant bacteria and is quite toxic at high levels. A precision weapon with lethal killing power. It is also prone to induce renal failure. So, use the shotgun and hope we kill everything or the sniper rifle and hope only kill the thing we want to die. And what about those pesky viruses? I worked in a virology lab for a couple of years. I worship their insidious perfection.
I found this and thought that it might be interesting. I know it is dogs and cats but we might be able to extrapolate something from it.
http://www.baytril.com/43/Bacterial_Flora_of_the_Respiratory_Tract.htm
By the way. Here is what the second vet, a snake collector himself, said. Tell me if it is right.
baytril is the best antibiotic. Amikacin is nephrotoxic and easily damages kidneys. That is what they used to give but the introduction of baytril was “revolutionary”. She weighed 4.2kg by the way. She also sneezed while she was there so he got sample for culture. (paraphrased)
Wish me luck!
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Steve Frist
www.serpentinelogic.com
