Reptile & Amphibian Forums

First a refresher on the situation. I bought a significant group of animals from a forum member. All were as advertised. One pair were just finishing up a round of Amakacin for URI and looked to be in good shape but relapsed a few weeks later. An adult female Borneo developed symptoms about a month after arrival. An albino female also turned up with the sniffles a few weeks after arrival. Another 6 snakes are symptom free. The male on Amkacin seemed to have gone neuro-toxic along the way with general malaise and failure to feed. The female was in dire straights after her relapse.I have never, ever had issues with URI before and all of the snakes that were or became sick came in that shipment. Please note - I do not think the seller had any hand in this. They are good animals and he represented them 100% accurately.

This precipitated a discussion on treatment for URI in bloods, so I thought I'd give you the results thus far. No snake was successfully treated for URI with Amakacin alone. Both relapsed and one seems to be neuro-toxic and I don't know if it was the URI or the antibiotics that did the damage. Baytril seemed to clear the infection from 2 snakes and on advice from VPI and my vet a combination of oral Ciprofloxin and injections may save another. We have one dead, another one might pull through but be permanently damaged and a couple seem like they will survive OK.

I have lost very, very few snakes in years past and this has been a very trying time for me. We have spent countless hours driving to the vet, cleaning cages and administering medication. We have also spent an incredible amount of money. We made quadruple sure cage conditions were right and anything that could be sterilized was. One thing that we think helped the sick ones was to get them out and let them move around in the yard. It has been moderately warm and wet here and the exercise seems to help break up the mucous. It seems the cause of death is not the URI itself but asphyxiation as snakes lack the ability to cough in order to clear thick mucous. They also lack lung structures that allow thing like albuterol to open up the alveoli as we would do with mammals. Allowing them to move about freely helps the cilia move the mucous along. The fresh air and sunshine has got to feel good in any case.

Not sure what to make of this. I dont know why all of the sick snakes came from one source while none of my other snakes showed any signs. I dont know what to think about treatments. The results are not very clear. I do think a combination of antibiotics, both oral and injectable, has merit in very sick animals. I think fresh air and exercise has merit. I would also suggest that you jump on any infection hard and early.

Wish me luck..
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Steve Frist

www.serpentinelogic.com

steve@serpentinelogic.com

Sorry to hear about your challenges. I know that situation well over the years to learn exactly the one point you mentioned. Since snakes cannot cough or expel mucous, getting the out to exercise actually helps break this up. Good luck and I hope things clear soon.
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www.richcrowleyreptiles.com
Support your local herp society
www.chicagoherp.org

Good to hear from you Rich.

It has been very, very frustrating and to be honest emotionally draining. I have always taken pride in the quality of care that my animals receive and have vowed that no animal will want for lack of money or time. In this case, no amount of time or money seems to be enough. It drains me to see a snake suffering, and suffer they have.
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Steve Frist

www.serpentinelogic.com

steve@serpentinelogic.com

Did your seller ever get a C/S test before administering the Amikacin? A C/S test is CRUCIAL to determine which drugs to give.

I recently got an animal in that thank GOD is recovering from a URI. She was knocking on deaths door.

Best advice I can give is heat that animal up. 83 degree ambients and heat the floor up to 88 all over.

Getting the animal out and getting some exercise helps as well.

Fresh water every day, disinfect the bowl every day.

Steve is there a possibility of an underlying parasitic infestation? Worms or flagelytes (sp)?
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www.richcrowleyreptiles.com
Support your local herp society
www.chicagoherp.org

Sounds like you have had a real struggle with these guys, and RI’s in bloods can many times go this way. I am curious about your statement that the seller had no hand in the RI issues, but you stated that two of them were being treated for existing RI’s when they were received. To have this many bloods from one source having RI issues would strongly indicate that the immune systems of these snakes had definitely been compromised, and this would typically be caused by high stress due to suboptimal environmental conditions. Due to the numbers infected, it sounds like a virulent and resistant strain of bacteria was the cause as you did comment that none of these snakes responded to amikacin. It is usually effective for most pathogenic bacteria in pythons, so this would be a significant observation. This of course would assume that the correct dosage of this antibiotic was being administered. If neurotoxic symptoms were noted, I would assume that the dosages were not too low. As you were noting, lethargy and/or ataxia are usually the first signs of aminoglycoside overdose. Ciprofloxacin is an excellent choice and is one of the best antibiotics available for bacterial infections in pythons. I have used and seen it used successfully on many occasions.

I was curious as to the humidity levels under which the antibiotic therapy took place. Having worked with many bloods over the years, and many with RI’s in other collections, I believe the most critical aspect of their RI treatment is high humidity. Not only does it keep the lung tissue moist, but also acts as an expectorant to help move the congestion in the lungs. The moisture also aids in the ability of the antibiotic to reach the infected lung tissue. The humidity during treatment should be at least 80%. I know some will disagree with this statement, but I have found that if the cage conditions are kept clean during treatment, it is very difficult to get the relative humidity in the cage too high for blood pythons. They can probably tolerate higher humidity levels than any other python, and also benefit from higher humidity levels than any other python species. This is especially the case when treating them for bacterial RI. Most healthy bloods can be kept at humidity levels around 60 % with no problem, but this will only work if there are no environmental stressors occurring with these snakes. Once under stress, I don’t believe they will tolerate humidity levels this low. Additionally, I have never seen a blood python have any health issues when kept at a humidity level between 70 and 80 %, but I have seen many that had issues with humidity levels at 50% or less.

Good luck through this process and please keep us posted.

Kelly

I am more likely to think that the animals were stressed over moving and the change in routine than anything else. As we all know stress can compromise an animal quickly. The two animal that were being treated actually looked and sounded pretty good when I got them. I have no doubt that a pathogen was present, it just needed an opportunity to do it's dastardly deeds. The neurotoxic symptoms did not appear in the male until a couple of weeks after the completion of the Amakacin. He still has them and I dont think he will recover, but we'll see.

I kept them at around 70% humidity and I occasionally lightly misted the far corner of the cage for an occasional bump in humidity. Air temps were around 85 degrees with a basking spot of 90 degrees and a cool spot of 80 degrees. I took the night drop off of them while they were sick. I typically have 4 degrees of night drop. All of these conditions have proven to yield consistently healthy animals and are similar to what VPI uses. These are the first bloods that have ever become ill while in my keep.

The good news is that we can now see the light at the end of the tunnel. It is a a faint ray of hope. One snake is dead. One snake is mortally ill. The rest of those involved might make it just fine. None of my other snakes have come down ill. I am counting my blessings, I could have had it spread throughout my collection.
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Steve Frist

www.serpentinelogic.com

steve@serpentinelogic.com

The husbandry of your collection was good at the time these other previously stressed bloods were brought in, so your current bloods would not likely have been at risk. Unstressed and properly maintained snakes are very rarely at risk of bacterial RI even when directly exposed. They harbor in their bodies most of these pathogenic bacteria naturally in captivity anyway. Bloods can usually take short-term stress with little consequence or compromise of the immune system. I can remember having young bloods shipped in years ago, on several occasions, where the shipments were delayed and they were a day late getting in. These snakes felt like ice cubes when I unpacked them but never showed any signs of illness over the next few weeks and months.

The delay in neurotoxic symptoms is typical, however, based on your previous description, this python may be showing signs of nephrotoxicity instead. Neurotoxicty is characterized by tremors of the head and neck region, and typically only show these when the snake is trying to move or strike. They also still continue to try and feed. Nephrotoxicity and renal failure is usually characterized by extreme lethargy with snakes remaining motionless for long periods of time. They also show no interest in feeding. From the symptoms, this sounds more likely what the issue might be. I have also seen a few bloods survive with no side effects after showing these symptoms. Good luck with them and I hope the rest pull through with no problems.

Kelly