Reptile & Amphibian Forums

WOW, they are a real pain in the a**! My big female red is on Baytril for a mouth infection of some kind and I am giving her shots from home, this girl is near impossible to give them to.
Any ideas on how to mske this a little easier on me and the snake? I even have one other person to help me and it is still VERY HARD!
Thanks

i've read that comment before, and it really isn't tough once you get the hang of it...

this is for juvie and adult sized snakes, and not for oral injections

NOTE TO ALL BEGINNERS: MEDS ARE LIKE PROBING A SNAKE. IF YOU HAVE NEVER DONE IT, IT IS BEST TO HAVE AN EXPERT (A VET) SHOW YOU FIRSTHAND A FEW TIMES. YOU CAN SERIOUSLY HARM YOUR ANIMAL WITH YOUR IGNORANCE, SO DON'T GET IN OVER YOUR HEAD TO SAVE A VET BUCK, LEARN PROPERLY BEFORE YOU MEDICATE OR PROBE!

load you syringe, and have it within arm's reach of the front of the cage. grab the blood, and pull it out of the cage. hold just past the mid body, let the head go back in the cage, and the snake will pull itself pretty taut. you are going to inject under the wider scales just off the side of the ventral scales, 1/3 down the body. as the snake tightens up, and is trying to get back in the cage, tighten your grip a bit to slow down progress, spot your injection point, and then slide it in, and shoot it up.

if the animal gets too far in the cage, i just pull it back out again, to the head, and pinpoint my 1/3 spot again. Vision cages (and many others) have a nice lip to the cage, whether the front or the lid, and once the snake gets their head around the lip, they use it for leverage to get back in the cage. they will have a very difficult time striking from this position,and their main objective is to go AWAY from you and fully back in the cage.

best of luck!
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robyn@proexotics.com

Pro Exotics Reptiles

Thank you for your pointers.... but I know how to inject the snake, I have done it plenty of other times before, not to mention I was a research associate in a rat lab and injected them for a year... I know how to give injections, but the snake moves so much it is nearly impossible. she will completely curl her body and throw her entire body into the injection site and bend the needle. I need to know how to keep her from moving, she is 5 feet and 15 lbs, not a small animal

Hi Amy -

Why not try giving Robyn's method a try just once? It sounds like it couldn't be much worse than the miserable time you're having with that animal right now. I can empathize with your situation, having had to inject huge and/or irrascible pythons in the past.

Good luck,
Joan

Not on a blood python, but a Nerodia. Okay, way big difference. But I was really surprised at how much easier it made the whole procedure. Very slick in this case. And it goes against the way I always did it previously, which is to try to immobilize the snake first. The inject-it-while-it’s-heading-back-to-the-safety-of-its-cage procedure worked perfectly (for this first time and on this particular patient).

In the weeks to come, I’ll see if it continues to work so well on this individual. Snakes may be dumb, but they’re not THAT dumb! In the past, I’ve noticed that I may feel I did a great job with a first injection, but as the series continues, the animal puts up increasingly effective resistance. It seems to begin to associate being disturbed by me with pain - at least that’s my interpretation.

-Joan

Oh I certainly was not trying to knock down Robyn's medhod, in fact, I do plan to try it next time I inject. Sounds good to me. Experience is the best teacher of all and certainly Robyn has YEARS AND YEARS of experience. I was just trying to inform Robyn I wasn't a complete novice at injections, and that I did learn the method directly from my vet.
Anyhow, I shall try this method and I appreciate your expert advice.

Hey Joan, the little buggers learn quickly about this trick. It worked for me for about three injections Mine do this crazy zig zag dance when they feel the contact of a hand when they are around the lip of the cage. In another situation it would be funny. They also rise up the side and avoid the front lip of the cage.

I hope the days of injections are gone since I don't take anymore rescues in.

Fun ain't it! For one, I hate Baytril. Whew, got that off my chest.

I set up a PVC restraint system, that I call the Trough of Pain.

I took a six inch PVC pipe and cut it lengthwise. It looks like a big U and smoothed the edges and slightly padded with duct tape with a cap or bag fastened on one end. The trick is to get the snake in the tube like you would with a restraining tube, but have room to inject the snake an allow for the animals thrashing. The objective is to size the animal to the tube to minimize the amount of space that could thrash. With this setup I can inject 20 pound snakes by myself quickly to minimize stress.

The other option is to bag the snake in a cloth bag, let them settle and tighten the bag to get them to curl up and place them in a shallow plastic tub to restrict their movement. Locate the injection point through the bag with someone holding down the snake around the injection site and inject.

However, you do it keep in mind the following:
1. Do it quickly to minimize stress,
2. Protect yourself from getting bitten or accidently injecting yourself.
3. Make sure you inject correctly based on the medicine (Baytril is intra-muscular, Amikacin is sub-cutaneous) for effective administration of drugs.
4. Amikacin requires hydration so soak before.
5. Elevated temps for proper immune system function.

Hope that helps. I handled a lot of rescued snakes that had respiratory problems and having a knowledgeable vet is a must. But even he likes having me explain and show his vet techs how to inject big snakes. Try a 12-13ft burmese python! Or a nasty 5ft d'alberts python with stomatitis requiring mouth rinses three times daily, now we are talking fun.

I've been dealing with this with my babies, and they dont really seem to mind the injections so much. My vet is doing it and there very small animals but there isnt much trashing or anything involved. Its with Amikacin so there not intramuscular, tho im sure there would be much more rebellion if it were. They seem to dislike mouth rinses much less, and throw there tail at me and thrash about. Now if I tried to do anything with my five footer he didnt want, step back. He's a sweetie and wouldnt bit but just giving him an occasional mite bath, just in case, is a big task. It seems like you have some very good tips to go with and good luck with your snake. How bad was its RI? I ask because you said you were doing injections for a month, when my vet only reccomended that we do 3 injections for my animals. They have been given Amikacin so the treatment might be different.
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"It's my snake, I trained it, so I'm going to eat it!" - Mad Max, The Road Warrior

I thought amikacin was administered either IM or intravenously. The second mode is, of course, a near impossibility with snakes.

Is there some new recommendation to administer amikacin subcutaneously? In general, snakes have very little circulation and absorption of sub-Q medications.

In any case, for about 15 years I have used amikacin in IM injections with very satisfactory results. It's a great antibiotic for pythons.

In blood pythons and short-tail pythons, amikacin should be administered every four days, not every three days as in other pythons.

Dave,

I am by very far not an expert on the subject as this is in fact my first experience with RI. Basically I'm going by what my vet sais (well the stuff I agree with anyways). He doesnt seem to have experience with short tails however and was giving me some housing advice that was wrong. I'm still very concerned about my snakes as well. They seem to be feeling better, as they are more active and also more resistant to mouth cleaning etc. How long will it be til I see visible results tho. One of their mouths started becoming plauged with nuercrotic (sp?) tissue after the injections. I seem to have countered that, but her mouth pains me to look at. She has swollen gums, one of her big fangs is immmobile, and her teeth are falling out. At first with the neurcrotic tissue her mouth looked worse, but its now back to about what it was when the injections started. Ive been cleaning her mouth out with peroxide twice a day and then applying neosporin to gums (my vet advised against the neosporin, which I did, but it seems to prevent the neurcrotic tissue so I reverted back). Anyone have any advice? By all means please share.

-J
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"It's my snake, I trained it, so I'm going to eat it!" - Mad Max, The Road Warrior

The teeth will grow back.

It's my observation that mouthrot is almost always a side-effect of some other health problem. It's strange but 25 years ago we keepers were always worrying about mouthrot and we often had to treat it. Now days I hardly ever hear of any mouthrot problems and it's been years since we've seen a case of it. I digress...

In most cases I ignored the mouthrot and treated what I thought was the main problem. Sometimes that problem was bacterial, sometimes it was mechanical (snakes in too-small cages push in the cormers and give themselves mouthrot or something similar that will turn into mouthrot.)

RI can cause mouthrot and usually when the RI is treated with antibiotics, the mouthrot clears up on its own. But sometimes one does need to get in the mouth and clean it up. Look for teeths that have been shed or broken and have wedged down into the jaw. Often a badly swollen area on the jaw has a tooth in the middle of it. Snakes create a kind of dry pus called caseous matter in infected areas. Swelling that is caused by caseous matter needs to be opened up, cleaned out and flushed with hydogen peroxide.

In general, when amikacin is indicated as effective, we treat the snakes for six weeks, even though they may appear to be perfectly healthy after a week.

I agree with Rich--I do not like injectible Baytril. It has been badly used in the past decade. Oral Baytril is very effective at a recommended daily dose of 10 mg/pound, and the human equivalent, Cipro, is a great drug for RI in pythons at a recommended daily dose of 5 mg/pound. We administer these antibiotics daily for 3 weeks, and that can get to be tough on a big blood, but it's pretty easy to accomplish on small snakes.

I've heard sub-cu and IM for Amikacin. The vet that I go to has prescribed it sub-cu every third day. I haven't checked with him to see if somehow he varies the dosage based on this delivery. He is an ARAV member and works strictly with exotics for the most part. I have had success so far with the only exception being a borneo that had some history of UR treatments before coming to me. We found that it was no longer sensitive to Amikacin, so we treated with Fortaz. That worked, but it is very expensive since there is no vet equivalent yet (human only). For those reading this, as with any medication, I recommend defering to the experts (Vets) when dealing with the dosage and recommended frequency, etc.

I do realize as does he that we are still in the infancy with herp medicine. Dave, thanks for sharing your experience with this, I will pass that along should it come up again.

Dave,

What are you basing your advice to do injection every 4 days instead of 3 on? I would like to share this with my vet as he doesn't seem familiar with short tails. I am assuming it has something to do with their lack of movement and thus a longer time for the medicine to circulate through the body? My vet has been using the method Rich described accept he is waiting 5 days for the last injection because he's not open on weekends and wont be in on monday =( hmmm if he had told me this before last appt i could have schedualed for every 4 anyways.. I should have suggested giving the injection myself as well but didnt think of it.
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"It's my snake, I trained it, so I'm going to eat it!" - Mad Max, The Road Warrior

There is a published pharmacokinetic (sp?) study on amikacin levels over time in the blood of blood pythons. Apparently they metabolize the drug more slowly than other pythons, and the recommendation was made that the drug be administered by IM injection every four days, versus every three days in other pythons.

The study was published back in the 1980's and I fear I can't remember where or by whom. I will try to locate the reference, but no promises. At the time only blood pythons were in captivity, so no breitensteini or curtus were incorporated in the study, but I think it's likely that they will react similarly to amikacin as does brongersmai and until someone studies them it's the more conservative assumption.