Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Sorry this is a little long, I am pretty upset and disapointed right now. Ok, I am going to start from the begining. In early June of 2010, I bought 5 BP's from a breeder in town that seemed pretty reputable. I researched him on the internet and the few reviews I found on him were good. He sells on Kingsnake and has hundreds of Boa's and BP's. I liked being able to go to his facility and he showed me everything. I had a good feeling about this breeder so he cut me a package deal on a 1750 gram pastel female (07), a 1000g pastel female (08), 700g bumble bee (08), and two large normal girls (2200 and 3500g) (06's). He advised me he is concentrating more on his Boa's and less on BP's, so he is focusing on two other BP morphs. I did not handle or mess with these guys at all when I got them home. I put them into their tubs and left them.....checking on them once a day to make sure husbandry was good. Oh yeah, ALL 5 of them were live eaters.

My tubs are 41q sterlite, melamine racks with 3" flexwatt belly heat. Warm end of the tub is 90-91 under the newspaper controlled by a Helix thermostat, cool end is 81-82, humidity is usually 50-65%. The rack is fully enclosed and only open end is the 18" in the front, so it stays dark in the tub and especially the back all the time. My set up is the same as the breeder except for fact his snake room is set at 86* with back heat and not belly heat.

From day one, my 1750g female pastel was pretty nippy. She would hiss when I opened her tub and strike at me when I changed substrate. I just thought it was because she was not settled in, even though all my other BP's settled in fairly quick. After two weeks, I attempted to feed one F/T small rat. The bee and the 1750g female would not eat......EVERYONE else ate and have been eating every single week for the last 9 weeks. I tried again the next week and the bee and her would not take. After that, I decided to put shoe box hides in each tub. After two weeks, I put a LIVE small rat and neither one of them took. The next week, I offered her an adult mouse and she didn't want it either (the breeder advised me he forgot to tell me one of the pastel girls was a mouse eater).

Anyways, 11 days ago, she (1750g female) hissed at me and it sounded horrible. I saw bubbles in her mouth and figured it was an RI. Her weight was down to 1620g too. I took her to the vet the next day and he gave me Baytril to inject into her every other day. He said it looked like the infection had been in her for a bit (not sure how he could tell that) and he believes the RI along with stress of a new home contributed to her getting such an extreme RI. I did exactly what he said....... I quarentined her in my bedroom closet at the other end of the house. I put an UTH hooked to a Herpstat thermostat and kept half the tank at 90-93 and the other half at 78-81. Humidity was around 65%. Her hiss was sounding better after a week of shots, just a little bit of congestion, but I was feeling great and that the infection was going away. I just checked on her and she was belly up! I pulled her out and she was dead, cold as could be and coiled up on the cool side of the tub. I just put her in a plastic bag and put her in the freezer (hopefully the right thing to do).

What the hell happend? Do you think her RI was beyond saving her? Do you think I should contact the breeder and tell him everything? I did tell him she had an RI and he said he does not believe she could have got it at his place. Was I correct to freeze her and should I try to find what the cause was? My 9 other BP's seem fine. I check them every few days and everyone seems comfortable, everyone is eating (except the bee) but he is the same weight as the day I got him.......I haven't even tried to feed him in 2-3 weeks......oh yeah, he pooped for me for the first time and shed last week too, so hopefully he comes around.

Even though my girl was a bit nippy (obviously because she was sick), I feel horrible. I know she was in such discomfort, having to pin her down and give her shots every other day combined with being sick and in a new environment........I can't imagine the stress. The vet said, "if she makes it through this" last week and I thought he was being dramatic. Damn.

Unfortunately, by tossing her into the freezer, you have frozen and destroyed any chance to find out what she died of.
A necropsy is no longer an option.
Did you quarantine ALL of the new animals, or only the one that got sick after the fact? I only ask because if one came down with an RI, chances are pretty good that it may have infected the others in your collection.
You also mentioned you got Baytril injections after your vet visit; did the vet do a culture or just prescribe Baytril all willy nilly?
Without a throat culture you're vet was just taking a stab in the dark at which bacterial strain your ball python may have had. Those meds may have been completely uselss to your snake.
Just tossing out ideas here..
-----
www.strictlyballs.ca

I am sorry for your loss. It will kill me to ever go through something that horrible.

Bill Rubin
-----
2.1 Tripple Het Caramel, Orange Ghost, Genetic Stripe
1.0 Honeybee
1.1 Het Lavenders
1.1 Het Caramel Albino
0.1 Het Albino
0.1 Spider Het Albino
0.1 Het Pied
1,1 Pastel Het for Orange Ghost
1.0 Albino
0.1 Spinner
1.1 Super Pastel
0.1 Jungle Pastel
1.0 Pied 50 percent White
0.1 Clown
0.3 Normal
1.1 Kids (9) and (16)
0.1 Spouse (22 Years Married)
1.0 Chocolate Lab

Sorry about the loss of your snake. It would have been better to refrigerate the body, not freeze it. Though it may still be possible to do a necropsy...the process of freezing destroys cells and does make it harder to determine why she died. Not sure if viruses and bacteria will be destroyed...as I know some can survive freezing, up to a point. It would depend on just how cold the freezer is. Spores/eggs can survive it to some extent as well.

The breeder who you bought the snakes from may not have known there was an IR in the female. If she wasn't too sick..it may not have been apparent to him or her, with just cage cleanings and feeding/watering. Most animals are very good at hiding sickness, till it gets to the point they can't anymore (ie when you noticed bubbling etc.)

It would have been better for the vet to run cultures, but I think alot of them treat first with a general all purpose antibiotic and go from there. Cultures do take some time to process and if there are no lab facilities at the vet's clinic, it may take 2-5 days for a culture to be sent out and the exact bacteria determined. Also, some respiratory infections are viral in nature, so antibiotics would have been useless anyway, except in preventing secondary infections.

I suggest bringing all your ball pythons in for a check up...they may seem healthy now but its possible they may have contracted the ailment of the snake which died, and just not be far enough along to show symptoms.
-----
PHLdyPayne

Yeah, I now know I should have put her in the fridge. After talking with my wife before I even checked this thread, we decided that we probably won't do the Necropsy anyways.

As for the vet, he did not do a culture and he was my 4th choice for a vet. . Of course, as Murphy's Law would have it, the top 3 recommended vets in the area were either off or on vacation and it was recommended I get my girl seen ASAP. I now know a culture is a necessity and not to "try" different meds out til we find the one that works. It may not have been an RI since the vet did not do a culture right?

I bought all my BP's (10 of them) within the same 2 weeks so technically, you can say they were all quarentined.....together. Eight out of the ten of them were from two breeders and shipped together too. I do not blame the breeder I bought her from at all. He seems like a good guy with a good reputation and I have no doubt that if she had the RI when I bought her, it was not noticable. All 7 of my other girls and one male settled in after one week and started eating F/T (even though they were all live eaters) right away. This girl was pretty nippy from the get go, always tense when I picked her up and an occasional strike at me. It has been over 11 days since I removed her from the rack. I have been watching very diligently for ANY signs of ANYTHING wrong with any of my other BPs.

How long does it take for signs of an RI to show? Thanks for the advice guys, since getting back into BP's this has by far been the worst experience in my reptile keeping. Sucks that it happend right away and I just want to avoid it ever happening again.

If the conditions in your racks is perfect, they may not develop any symptoms of an RI. The stress of moving to a new home could have caused it to flare up particularly strongly in that particular female...or she may have other things going on that weakened her immune system and the RI may have been a secondary infection...hard to say without a complete necropsy. So its all really just guess work.

The breeder may have had her in a part of the rack that may not have been getting sufficient heat or was particular drafty...or she may have other issues that remained hidden for a long time, so difficult to say.

For now I will continue to monitor the health of the other snakes you purchased from this breeders and well, the rest of the others in the rack. Regular eating, defecating and activity in them is a good sign. It would be a good idea to weigh them weekly, (before feeding and after pooping, if they are kind of nice to poop weekly...but definitely before you feed each week (maybe a day before feeding day), and keep track of the weight. This will make it easier to monitor any changes in weight.
-----
PHLdyPayne

I've found that one of the best things for a RI is heat. In my experiences, i've caught the infections fairly early and gotten them to go away by raising the temps to upper 90's on the hot end and upper 80's on the cool side. I always keep my cool side around 80 now because when I let it get into the mid 70's too often, I had several RI's. The only time they get that cool is during breeding cooldown. I'm sorry for your loss and I hope the rest of the snakes stay healthy and make some great babies for ya.

Derek Garner

Thanks for the replies. The hot side stayed at 93-94. The cool side stayed 80-82 as I just could not get it higher. I think she had two new homes within the last couple months (traded to the breeder and then bought by me), along with a mild RI, and a lot of stress from the moves.......that all contributed into something much worse. At least thats all I can think of.

I feed my other BP's every single Tuesday, just one small rat (60-80g) every week. I actually do weigh them weekly. So far, all the girls I have got from the breeder have put on very good weight every single week or so. They defecate weekly, if not at least every two weeks or less. I will just hold my breath and watch them all I guess. Thanks again for your responses.