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Respiratory infections, by far, have been the main ailments that have been posted in this forum. I am going to post my ideas on Respiratory Infection (RI) and the dreaded "Burm Disease". This ramble should rival BrianSmith for the longest post ever.

I do not believe that burm "morphs" are any weaker than the normals. If you look at a wild population of snakes, in this case the burm, there is enough inbreeding that happens in their own little habitat to rival anything that we have done to them in captivity. Natural selection took care of any weak genes that would cause health, or any other physical problems, millions of years ago; color morph is not a weak gene.

First off, I don't believe that any one "burm disease" exists. More accurately, I should say that any of the problems, or any combination of the problems, that I am about to explain are what get labeled as "Burm Disease".

I think that the bacteria that cause RI in burms is always present in the lungs, naturally and peacefully, until it is given the opportunity to raise it's ugly head. I don't believe that RI is air born and I don't think it is contagious...in most cases. I think that if one burm gets RI and then others begin to develop RI, it is not the case that the original burm spread it to the others. I think that the improper husbandry conditions contributed to each of the animals contracting RI, just at different times. I am sure that there are some weird viral diseases that can can be contagious and spread from one animal to the next, but that is not what I am addressing. I want to discuss the potential reasons and the most COMMON reasons that a large burm would develop respiratory complications.

I believe that there are three things that contribute to RI problems in larger burms; they are low humidity, low temps and lack of exercise. Allow me to share with you my beliefs:

Humidity: We all learned our lesson with low humidity many years ago when Brazilian Rainbow Boas, Borneo Short-tails, Bloods etc. all began coming into the U.S. If they did not have the proper high humidity, they turned into big snot balls and died. I believe that humidity requirements can be species specific and not regionally specific. For example...retics, Short-tails and Bloods all come from the same region, but the short-tails seem to be more delicate when it comes to humidity requirements, while retics seem to be more adaptable in lower humidity conditions. I think that Burms are one of those species that needs a higher humidity. I have heard, and I believe, that in lower humidity, the lungs of a burm can get dry and even crack, forming long thin lesions that are a breeding ground for bacteria that eventually gets infected and develops into RI. I have heard people recommend lowering humidity to "dry up" a RI. I believe just the opposite. I think that higher humidity will moisten their lungs and allow them to hack up what mucus has developed. Why else do we use humidifiers when we get sick? I think that burms need a constant humidity of at least 75%. I have tried to keep my snake room at a higher humidity but I was beginning to develop mildew on my walls, (which I am sure was not healthy) so I now keep it around 75%. High humidity must be coupled with fresh cirulating air. The higher the humidity with fresh air, the better.

Temps: Ideal temps for a burm are low 80's at night and mid to upper 80's during the day- basking sites around 90-95 are always nice. However; I think that burms can dip down into the mid 70's at night as long as they have day time temps that are raised back up into the mid 80's. When burms are cooled to lower temp (mid 70's) I think that their immune system becomes suppressed. With a suppressed immune system, I believe that bacteria that naturally lives in their lungs will begin to grow out of control and can develop into RI. Where does this bacteria come from that causes the RI? Like I mentioned earlier, I think that the bacteria has always been there and it is just now allowed to grow out of control. I do; however, think that as long as the burm is warmed back up during the day, the immune system of the animal will fight back any possible infection. It is when burms are kept at prolonged low temps (days) without the daytime increase in temperature that they begin to devlop RI. During breeding season, I cycle my burms down to 75-76 degrees at night and don't have a problem but I raise them back up to 84-86 degrees during the day and even give them a 4 hour basking site around 90 degees.

Lack of exercise: If you have ever done a necropsy on a large burm, you realize that their trachea and lungs span half the length of their body or more. I think that since in captivity they have no need to move around much and really don't have anywhere to go, they get very lazy. It is possible that there are areas in the deepest part of their lungs that do not get used and that can create "dead spots" where little air exchange happens and a perfect environment is created for bacteria growth; again, the bacteria is already there, it is just now allowed to grow out of control due to environmental conditions.

Mycoplasms are commonly associated with RI in burms. Mycoplasms are a bacteria that can be supressed with Tylan. I say "supressed" because Tylan is used only to stop the reproductive cycle of the mycoplasma bacteria so that the animals immune system can fight it off. Tylan itself does not kill the mycoplasma. Tylan is also available in a concentrated strength so that smaller doses can be given to the bigger burms. Antibiotics should be used carefully; they can sometimes do more harm than good when improperly dosed, i.e. renal failure. If you need to take your animal to a vet, please try to get references from a local herp society or your area herpers to find a good one that has a lot of experience with reptiles. Most vets do not see enough reptiles to really be able to properly diagnose or treat with accuracy.

I have been meaning to post this information for quite sometime and I just have never gotten around to it. I hope it helps.

Thanks for reading it!

Tom

Very well put Tom. You have come to a lot of the same conclusions that I have, apparently also from trial and error and sheer experience. I too have long theorized that low humidity levels cause cracking in lung membrane tissue offering a rend in which bacteria may get a foothold and thrive, becomming a serious RI over time. I was the first to post this theory to my knowledge. I wanted to touch on this in my original post below about the rumored, "pre-natal" viral time bomb/predisposition to die scenario. I too have never seen any real evidence that this condition exists, but I MUST as a breeder at least be able to address it, research it, and rule it out completely if I am to be a responsible provider of burmese morphs. Besides, I have to admit,. in the last decade I have not been seeing a whole lot of older burm morphs. Now this can be coincidence, and maybe it is just a normal law of averages given common ignorance in large reptile husbandry that frequently lead to early death. Who knows? Either way I raise an eyebrow and would like to know with certainty exactly why.

An interesting thing to think about,.. when I was at the afore-mentioned large breeder's place and noticed the total absence of large burmese, I asked him something that led to an interesting sequence of sentences. I asked, "Hey (breeder), what do you do when the really big one's die? Do you just dispose of them, or do you ever skin them? What?" Breeder pauses and glances at his right hand man and then back at me and says, "Well,.. we don't ever have any that die." Right hand man chimes in, "Yeah, we don't get any deaths." And I'm thinking,... 'now wait a minute,. everyone experiences deaths. even breeders or keepers with 20 or 30 snakes occasionally has a death. and this guy has THOUSANDS of adults.' The math just didn't allow this to be true. I said, "Well you MUST get deaths, the sheer number of breeders dictates the certainty." All I got was "Nope, never." "Nuh uh, just don't get them." From breeder and right hand man. The obvious lie bothered me at that moment and has bothered me ever since. Why lie about something so common? I mean,. everyone has SOME deaths. It's unavoidable. Just something for everyone to think about. Is your breeder being honest with YOU?

As to contagious deadly viruses,.. I do know that they exist because I experienced one. It was HIGHLY contagious and 100% deadly. At the point my colony was exposed to it I had been keeping boids and numerous other reptiles for over a decade and a half with no health problems. After this single female burm was entered into the colony (deliberately sold to me by a competitor via an anonymous third party, i found out later) scores of burms, boas, rocks, ceylonese and indians began to contract the illness. Symptoms began to show within just days or weeks and death was usually about a month or two afterward depending on the age and size of the snake. Burmese were particularly susceptible to this and older, heavier females, or brumating/gravid females seemed to die much more rapidly than younger snakes or leaner males. I called in a mobile vet as transporting scores of large, sick snakes was not economically practical. Swabs were taken and cultures were performed. The results showed more than one viral infection. Some were considered somewhat "normal" and not as life threatening, and others were even mysterious and unknown to my vet. I was prescribed a great deal of Amikacin (sp?) and lactated ringers (electrolyte, saline solution) to counter the subsequent dehydration resulting from heavy doses of this antibiotic. Weeks passed, thousands were spent, snakes were treated, nothing recovered or improved, snakes died. My vet then gave me Genomyacin (sp?) and I had no better results with that. We tried other antibiotics, yet nothing was effective. Still snakes died. Most of the pregnancies were lost, most of the breeders died. It was a total loss. I stopped trying to cure the snakes as no antibiotic was effective. The remaining burmese would seem to slightly improve on their own imunity systems, only to relapse worse than before and eventually die. Over 30 adult female burmese, over 25 female boas, at least a dozen indians and ceylonese, half a dozen rocks. All dead or sold before they caught it. This my friend was not due to improper husbandry. It was a killer tornado of a viral "coctail" that wiped out an entire colony in less than 2 years. My guess is that it was an airborne contagion.

Now,. while I know that this does exist, I don't believe that snakes are born with a "sleeper virus" in their systems which surfaces on or about their 4th birthday. But I'd sure like to get down to the nitty gritty of just exactly what does exist and what we all can do to prevent any bad scenarios like this.

Thanks for your informative post.

>>Respiratory infections, by far, have been the main ailments that have been posted in this forum. I am going to post my ideas on Respiratory Infection (RI) and the dreaded "Burm Disease". This ramble should rival BrianSmith for the longest post ever.
>>
>>I do not believe that burm "morphs" are any weaker than the normals. If you look at a wild population of snakes, in this case the burm, there is enough inbreeding that happens in their own little habitat to rival anything that we have done to them in captivity. Natural selection took care of any weak genes that would cause health, or any other physical problems, millions of years ago; color morph is not a weak gene.
>>
>>First off, I don't believe that any one "burm disease" exists. More accurately, I should say that any of the problems, or any combination of the problems, that I am about to explain are what get labeled as "Burm Disease".
>>
>>I think that the bacteria that cause RI in burms is always present in the lungs, naturally and peacefully, until it is given the opportunity to raise it's ugly head. I don't believe that RI is air born and I don't think it is contagious...in most cases. I think that if one burm gets RI and then others begin to develop RI, it is not the case that the original burm spread it to the others. I think that the improper husbandry conditions contributed to each of the animals contracting RI, just at different times. I am sure that there are some weird viral diseases that can can be contagious and spread from one animal to the next, but that is not what I am addressing. I want to discuss the potential reasons and the most COMMON reasons that a large burm would develop respiratory complications.
>>
>>I believe that there are three things that contribute to RI problems in larger burms; they are low humidity, low temps and lack of exercise. Allow me to share with you my beliefs:
>>
>>Humidity: We all learned our lesson with low humidity many years ago when Brazilian Rainbow Boas, Borneo Short-tails, Bloods etc. all began coming into the U.S. If they did not have the proper high humidity, they turned into big snot balls and died. I believe that humidity requirements can be species specific and not regionally specific. For example...retics, Short-tails and Bloods all come from the same region, but the short-tails seem to be more delicate when it comes to humidity requirements, while retics seem to be more adaptable in lower humidity conditions. I think that Burms are one of those species that needs a higher humidity. I have heard, and I believe, that in lower humidity, the lungs of a burm can get dry and even crack, forming long thin lesions that are a breeding ground for bacteria that eventually gets infected and develops into RI. I have heard people recommend lowering humidity to "dry up" a RI. I believe just the opposite. I think that higher humidity will moisten their lungs and allow them to hack up what mucus has developed. Why else do we use humidifiers when we get sick? I think that burms need a constant humidity of at least 75%. I have tried to keep my snake room at a higher humidity but I was beginning to develop mildew on my walls, (which I am sure was not healthy) so I now keep it around 75%. High humidity must be coupled with fresh cirulating air. The higher the humidity with fresh air, the better.
>>
>>Temps: Ideal temps for a burm are low 80's at night and mid to upper 80's during the day- basking sites around 90-95 are always nice. However; I think that burms can dip down into the mid 70's at night as long as they have day time temps that are raised back up into the mid 80's. When burms are cooled to lower temp (mid 70's) I think that their immune system becomes suppressed. With a suppressed immune system, I believe that bacteria that naturally lives in their lungs will begin to grow out of control and can develop into RI. Where does this bacteria come from that causes the RI? Like I mentioned earlier, I think that the bacteria has always been there and it is just now allowed to grow out of control. I do; however, think that as long as the burm is warmed back up during the day, the immune system of the animal will fight back any possible infection. It is when burms are kept at prolonged low temps (days) without the daytime increase in temperature that they begin to devlop RI. During breeding season, I cycle my burms down to 75-76 degrees at night and don't have a problem but I raise them back up to 84-86 degrees during the day and even give them a 4 hour basking site around 90 degees.
>>
>>Lack of exercise: If you have ever done a necropsy on a large burm, you realize that their trachea and lungs span half the length of their body or more. I think that since in captivity they have no need to move around much and really don't have anywhere to go, they get very lazy. It is possible that there are areas in the deepest part of their lungs that do not get used and that can create "dead spots" where little air exchange happens and a perfect environment is created for bacteria growth; again, the bacteria is already there, it is just now allowed to grow out of control due to environmental conditions.
>>
>>Mycoplasms are commonly associated with RI in burms. Mycoplasms are a bacteria that can be supressed with Tylan. I say "supressed" because Tylan is used only to stop the reproductive cycle of the mycoplasma bacteria so that the animals immune system can fight it off. Tylan itself does not kill the mycoplasma. Tylan is also available in a concentrated strength so that smaller doses can be given to the bigger burms. Antibiotics should be used carefully; they can sometimes do more harm than good when improperly dosed, i.e. renal failure. If you need to take your animal to a vet, please try to get references from a local herp society or your area herpers to find a good one that has a lot of experience with reptiles. Most vets do not see enough reptiles to really be able to properly diagnose or treat with accuracy.
>>
>>I have been meaning to post this information for quite sometime and I just have never gotten around to it. I hope it helps.
>>
>>Thanks for reading it!
>>
>>Tom
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"If I had 365 enemies it would only take a year out of my life to settle all scores." Mia Miselfani