Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Hey guys. My fuscus has HUGE farts and suddenly went from being child-could-hold-her-placid to HUGELY hunger-aggressive. So for kicks, I brought in a stool sample to the vet. A few stats were high, including her tricamonad count, which he said could explain the crazy hunger. They took some blood, I went home with meds. Meanwhile instead of once a month she's eating once a week and still acts starved, but hey if she wants it I'm glad to feed her more (she's getting one large rat each meal).

She went through one course of treatment and her system is back to normal, no more farting, and the hunger went down a bit, but she's still eating ravenously once a week and the tricamonads are still 3x what the doc says they 'should be'. I think he's using burm stats as his normal. Her aggression is starting to rise again and we're starting another round of meds.

All that backstory, MY QUESTION: Has anyone dealt with these tricamonads?

Trichomonads are flagellate protozoan parasites that are fairly common in wild snakes. Small numbers are easily tolerated by these wild snakes, but the stress of captivity and changes this causes in captive snakes physiology and intestinal flora can allow Trics to sometimes multiply to very large numbers. It would take a major infection of these to cause symptoms that you describe, and you would most likely also be seeing diarrhea and loss of appetite with this python if that were the case.

Somewhere along the line this snake was exposed in some manner to another reptile or reptiles cage that was infected with Trichomonads. I remember checking imported pythons in the 70's and early 80's for Trics and most had them. They didn't seem to cause them any issues, and two or three doses of Flagyl (metronidazole) spaced 5 days apart usually cleared them up. I am a little confused about the comment that there is a level of where they "should be", especially in a captive born python. What drug is being used to treat this fuscus?

Kelly

She's 11yrs old, and didn't have her for most of that, so she could be wild caught when she was really young, I don't know.

The vet claimed that the trics unharmfully occured in a lot of animals, incl. humans, and that it wasn't their presence so much as their overpopulation that was the problem, so the meds were given to 'bring things down to normal levels'.

Currently on the metronidazole so good to hear she's on the right track.

If this fuscus is 11 then it is likely wild collected. During that time, I saw a bunch come in as fresh imported hatchlings. I remember a bunch here in Chicagoland that were confiscated along Taipan and King Cobra from a animal horder that was importing them directly from Indo-Pacific area.
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I always somewhat assumed she was, though I didn't ask Bob Clark when I got her. Interesting to know that this 'verifies' it.

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I remember when King Cobras came in with their mouths sewn shut.