Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Are respitory infections communicable i recently brought a water monitor and found out some of it's cagemates had respitory infections i didn't really notice anything to indicate one but my interaction with him has been strictly limited over the past four weeks to limit stress to an absolute minimum but now one of my savs has come down with a resp infection but i couldn't understand wher he got it from as i am obsessive about my temps e.t.c but very stupidly when i first aquired my water monitor i broke one of my golden rules and didn't wash my hands between dealing with my different species of monitor and after picking up a regurgitated cricket in the water monitor tank and disposing of it i left his room and noticed that the savs chicks and rat had defrosted so fed this straight to him before washing my hands he has been to the vets and is undergoing treatment with baytril but i am still concerned as the vet i normally use has disappeared and the one he is seeing isn't experienced in dealing with reptiles at all, does a monitors immune system weaken with age as he is currently 8 years old and this is the first time any of my own have had to undergo treatment it is normally the rescues,
I am keeping a close eye on the res of my animals but so far so good
sorry it's such a long post
cheers mat

Really bad husbandry. See a vet and research into why your husbandry needs changed to prevent that again. Ask alot of specific questions and check your air and surface temps throughout the entire cage.

I do check my temps 2x daily in all my vivs the sav is at 140-142 basking spot and then decreases to 78-82 in the coolest part of the viv, And like i said previously i do not understand where it has come from because he has always been kept this one the only alteration i have made is changing him over to dirt, I am always looking for ways to improve my husbandry and try to match the set-ups that people report having the most success with, and don't take this the wrong way but i have just been doing some checking and some types of resp infection are communicable and are not all down do bad husbandry, I do appreciate your views and think that far to many monitors and reptiles in general are been kept in squalid conditions,when i look back now to when i got my first bosc around 14 years ago i think of the poor conditions he was kept in at how i kept him then, his highest temp was only 90 and up until about seven years ago was kept in an arid environment all down to bad info when i first started keeping reptiles he passed away about a year and a half ago and has been the only one i have lost so-far that is why i started re-homing ones in my area, Would it be possible to have some pics of your set-ups as you seem to have a great deal of success.
cheers mat

Healthy life forms with an immune system do not get secondary infections because their body can handle and fight them off easily. Why does pnuemonia spread so easily among bed ridden hospital patients? Their immune system is down, seriously down. Why does pnuemonia kill so many who are full blown AIDS, because the virus destroys their immune system, secondary infections kill them off.
Communicable or not its a crutch or a bandaid to cover the real problem and treat a symptom only. If indeed you have had monitors so long (14 years) why are you experienceing respiratory infections? Ive been keeping monitors for 12-13 years yet Ive buried a few, mainly from bad husbandry and the bandaid approach to the real problems, which I truthfully didnt know the real problems at the time, or how to fix them. My oldest monitors (in my posession) are 3.5 years old and around 2.5 years old. I gave a timor a year ago to a friend (the timor was around 5 or so). I took a break from this hobby for around a year, then I obtained Sobek as a 2 month old hatchling. Ive never ever had a respiratory infection among any of my reptiles, no matter how bad my husbandry was, nor from any recent purchases that were kept really badly. Here is a cage pic from Sobek in her 4x4x8ft (too small).

np

np

np

Not all runny noses are the same.
Most are caused by improper husbandry /temperatures but not all.
Some are most definately communicale not only to other reptiles but also to humans. I have had one (sulfer water monitor ) whose culture came back from the University whose infection was most certainly communicale to humans , it was a form of pneumonia that is actually common in humans . Offhand I don't remeber exactly what it was as this was over 10 years ago and I am not sure if I still have the report fromthe culture laying around .Many people do not see these type of serious respiratoory infections in their monitors because most that come in with these type infections are in such bad shape that they normally do make it to a pet store. Serious respiratory infections in fresh import water monitors are not that uncommon.
Have your vet do a culture on your other monitor that has become ill .
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Stella St.Pierre
www.bluetegu.com

Hi Stella,

If you do find the report, I would certainly like to see it! I hope Family are all well, dogs too.

Many Thanks, Best Regards Stella/Ron,
mark bayless

If I find it I'll send it to you .
I'm not sure if I tossed it out or stuck it in one of many notebooks of old research papers I coolected over the years .
(too many of which came from you =P)
Lizards, dogs , and family are fine .
The monitor passed away before I got the test results back.It was in terrible shape when I got it as were many of the other monitors that came in with it.
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Stella St.Pierre
www.bluetegu.com

Pnuemonia is a secondary infection, as well any respiratory infection, they take over when a life form has the lack of or inability to have an immune system.
No matter how you look at it, its a basic husbandry problem or several. Ive never seen respiratory infections or impactions in any reptile in my collection over many years, Ive had some really lousey husbandry in the past, how bad does it have to be to have those problems. Unless theres an AIDS virus now among captive reptiles that kills their immune systems when kept properly.

It is not necessarily a secondary infection. If the pneumonia is caused by a virus then it is a primary infection. If the pneumonia is caused by a bacteria following a primary infection or compromised immune system it would be considered secondary. There is no reason to believe there is not a viral respiratory infection in reptiles, there hasn't been enough research done to rule it out.

It is not necessarily the housing of the animal that would cause enough stress to compromise its immune system. Look for increased activity around the cage, as well. These are not domestic animals we keep, just being in captivity is enough for some of them to stress. We ask them to adapt, but sometimes they do not.

"Many viruses can cause bronchitis, and a few cause pneumonia. Most common among infants and children are respiratory syncytial virus, parainfluenza virus, and influenza A and B viruses. Among otherwise healthy adults, the only frequently recognized viral pathogens are influenza A and B viruses. Infrequently, pneumonia in adults is caused by adenovirus, varicella-zoster virus, Epstein-Barr virus, coxsackievirus, and Hantavirus. Important pathogens among the elderly include influenza, parainfluenza, and respiratory syncytial viruses. Patients with compromised cell-mediated immunity frequently develop pulmonary infections from latent viruses, especially cytomegalovirus (CMV). With this exception, most viral infections result from exposure of a nonimmune person to infected persons who are shedding the implicated virus."

After reading this, it again explains that the respiratory infection itself is a bacterial secondary infection brought on by a compromised immune system, this is a quote explaining what VIRAL PNUEMONIA is, a secondary bacterial infection brought on by a weak immune system from a viral infection.
Healthy animals kept in something close to proper conditions and allowed to have an immune system as they do in the wild can survive a heck of alot of disease, parasites and other natural occuring maladies without any medical intervention.
On the other hand in captivity if stressed out, dehydrated, abused, starved, and forced to live in the open with no natural cover from heat, predators, etc they dont have an immune system, therefore they get sick from normal everyday occuring household bacterias.

Hi SHvar as i have previously stated i appreciate your input, but I will state again that i do not think it is down to bad husbandry i am not saying that my husbandry is perfect but i wouldn't say that it was poor either, and after reading your last post you seem to be implying this with this statement, if you wern't please disregard most of the below statemennt

"stressed out, dehydrated, abused, starved, and forced to live in the open with no natural cover from heat, predators, etc they dont have an immune system, therefore they get sick from normal everyday occuring household bacterias".

I have never previously had an animal with a resp infection in 14 years i have thought i have a few times but the coughs e.t.c then were down to environmental factors namely bad substrate to dusty e.t.c
I hope that none of yours get one but if you do will you be saying that your husbandry is poor and your animal is stressed,dehydrated and abused?, as i stated before in another post my husbandry in the past was v.poor and i have studied alot, attended courses e.t.c to improve this so i resent any remark that i would abuse or neglect any reptile or animal for that matter he has plenty of hides good temp gradients two water dishes and a soaking tub is able to climb/burrow e.t.c yes there is probably plenty of things i could improve but this way has worked fine till now and if it ain't broke don't fix it
I have spent thousands and thousands of pounds trying to create the best environment for my animals as possible.
cheers mat

I will announce it here and several other forums, again it has never happened but I read about others having it happen, and its a regular occurance on this forum at least every couple of months and when the weather gets warmer because of all of the new imports bought on impulse by so many people who have no idea what they are in for or how to properly care for the animals.
You say your husbandry is fine, you say it has worked until now, you say youve done this for 14 years, I cant disprove any of your statements except that what I already stated, and that is "Virus's can cause the immune system to be weakened, to allow a secondary infection such as RI to occur, but they do not cause them directly". If youve had the animal for any amount of time Id rule virus out. Hey heres an idea ask a good vet to send blood samples etc to a lab to prove wheather it was caused by a virus, problem with so many vets giving out explanations to RIs impactions etc is that they are told by their customers that their animals husbandry is just fine and when they ask specific questions they get specific answers that are what they wanna hear, so they believe that these animals die easily and get sick so much, so they rarelt see any but sick dieing animals that need the medical crutch or to die.
Instead to saying "my husbandry is fine and works" ask yourself what I do if theres a problem "how can I improve my husbandry to achieve better results, or to prevent a problem I now have, and what part of my husbandry caused this problem?"
Good luck

You don't see it happening in your animals for the same reason Frank doesn't and I don't either. When you start of with healthy animals and they are well taken care of and you don't make a habit of introducing ill animals you will probably never see anything like this . There is a world of difference between wild caught that has been roughly handled and a captive bred animal.

Vets see another story ... usually by the time they see the animal it has been cared for poorly for a long time .Take Savanah monitors , they get imported in very rough shape at certain times of the year (maybe because most lizards are easy to catch at only certain times of the year so they stock up on them and hold them way to long, who knows ) Some of these Savs have gone for so long without food that they are starving , by starving I do not mean just hungry . I mean they have gone for so long without eating that they not only have used their fat reserves that they normally use when they hibernate but they also use a good portion of their muscle tissue and deplete their bones of minerals . Starvation causes major chemical changes in the body and what a normal healthy body can process some one or something in this shape can not .Intestines that have not been used for a long time lose muscle tone just like any other muscle . These chemical changes in the body effect major organ like your kidney and liver and once this is damaged its damaged and yes you are going to be prone to catching things afterwards if you recover that you might not have otherwise . Some get lucky and get taken care of soon enough before they are to the point where they just can not handle eating something that would be a normal meal to them some don't . this might not be very well documented in monitor lizards but the effects of starvation is very well documented in humans ... (sadly many of our soldiers during world war 2 found this out the hard way when they gave their candy bars to the starving people they found locked in concentration camps - a little reading on this might give you a better understanding of why vets say the things they do because they do not see the same animals that we keep)

For those that are lucky enough not have reach this point before making it to your local pet store but are still in rough shape (stress alone is a major killer) many have to deal with the fact that they are administered wormers in gross dosages without being properly hydrated first - too many people just dump the stuff in their water and guess take guesses at the amounts they should have and the results are organ damage . Some of these will get lucky also but they will NEVER be the same as a captive bred animal .

Then add just normal day to day stress to the factor .. a animal that has been in the wild and use to going as he pleases does not understand what life is in a cage , the older they are the more stressfull htis probably is on them . One that was born in a cage /incubator will have a much different outlook on their keepers and the enviroments in which they are kept as long as their enviroments provide them everything they need.

You just can not compare a captive bred lizard to a wild caught one .

This is unlikely to change untill people are educated enough to know the difference . As long as there are people willing to dump their money on these "bargain " lizards things are very unlikely to change (they give exporters very little incentive to change) . Somedays I read these forum and I just shake my head ...I read just way to many post where people are asking "is this a good deal/price " before asking anything else .

Stella St.Pierre
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Stella St.Pierre
www.bluetegu.com

"You don't see it happening in your animals for the same reason Frank doesn't and I don't either. When you start of with healthy animals and they are well taken care of and you don't make a habit of introducing ill animals you will probably never see anything like this . There is a world of difference between wild caught that has been roughly handled and a captive bred animal. "

I hardly think so, every animal Ive had minus a few beardies, my ackie , and my current albigs was imported, period. 3/4 of what I bought before these current animals were walking abused skeletons and they recovered and turned into (except a few) beautiful great animals. The timor I gave to a friend is over 5 years old and he was a stressed out import with parasites (never treated him for them), yet hes just as healthy but like any other import and the most of them never adjusts to tolerate people so well, thats the difference, husbandry is still the same only alot more patience. All of my old albigs, my niles, it goes without saying every bosc I had, were all imports.

"Vets see another story ... usually by the time they see the animal it has been cared for poorly for a long time .Take Savanah monitors , they get imported in very rough shape at certain times of the year (maybe because most lizards are easy to catch at only certain times of the year so they stock up on them and hold them way to long, who knows ) Some of these Savs have gone for so long without food that they are starving , by starving I do not mean just hungry . I mean they have gone for so long without eating that they not only have used their fat reserves that they normally use when they hibernate but they also use a good portion of their muscle tissue and deplete their bones of minerals . Starvation causes major chemical changes in the body and what a normal healthy body can process some one or something in this shape can not .Intestines that have not been used for a long time lose muscle tone just like any other muscle . These chemical changes in the body effect major organ like your kidney and liver and once this is damaged its damaged and yes you are going to be prone to catching things afterwards if you recover that you might not have otherwise . Some get lucky and get taken care of soon enough before they are to the point where they just can not handle eating something that would be a normal meal to them some don't . this might not be very well documented in monitor lizards but the effects of starvation is very well documented in humans ... (sadly many of our soldiers during world war 2 found this out the hard way when they gave their candy bars to the starving people they found locked in concentration camps - a little reading on this might give you a better understanding of why vets say the things they do because they do not see the same animals that we keep) "

Every bosc Ive had was a starved dehydrated import.

"For those that are lucky enough not have reach this point before making it to your local pet store but are still in rough shape (stress alone is a major killer) many have to deal with the fact that they are administered wormers in gross dosages without being properly hydrated first - too many people just dump the stuff in their water and guess take guesses at the amounts they should have and the results are organ damage . Some of these will get lucky also but they will NEVER be the same as a captive bred animal ."

Combination of this and my not so good husbandry at that time is what killed a few of my animals, of course I refuse to do parasitic treatments and I also have a good vet who is knowledgeable on herp now.

"You just can not compare a captive bred lizard to a wild caught one ."

No kidding they dont get as cuddly and tolerant but otherwise my husbandry is the same with imports or CBB, the animal still has the same needs.

"This is unlikely to change untill people are educated enough to know the difference . As long as there are people willing to dump their money on these "bargain " lizards things are very unlikely to change (they give exporters very little incentive to change) . Somedays I read these forum and I just shake my head ...I read just way to many post where people are asking "is this a good deal/price " before asking anything else .
Stella St.Pierre"

I guess you think all of FRs animals were born in captivity, he bred most from imports, and from zoo excess he was lucky to have, he produced the CBB animals, ask him how many where imports before he got them, he will tell you the same thing, he cared for them the same as any CBB but they are less tolerant and some dont adjust to people so well.
Ive seen my share and then some of perfectly fine imports. WC etc I helped a friend also with a petstore (exotic reptile shop) for a while, I cared for his animals as well mine on a daily basis and ordered those animals for him, so I know where they came from, yet none of them have ever had a problem with impaction or RI period, no matter who abused them before we obtained them, I say this for good reason with some of the suppliers.

I guess you think every animal I've worked with was captive bred , you couldn't be more wrong. I have worked with enough wild caught to know that there is a huge difference in their needs depending on how bad a shape they were when I got them . My best breeders are also animals that were born here
that were never exposed to hardships and there is huge difference in the quality and quantity of babies they produce as a result

Like I said earlier there is a big chemical difference in a hungry , skinny and a starved animal . I've seen to many people think a lizard is starving because it has a thin belly from not eating for a week or two and they reach right over and pick up a lizard with a fat belly and an emaciated tail(belly is full of gas ) and swear the fat one is the healthier of the two.

I've seen my share of perfectly fine wild caught ones too but I have also seen more than my share of ones that were in terrible condition . I have had and kept my share of imports that were very good and also my share that werehorrible .Even the very good ones do not come close to captive bred ones.

Well it's good your store got lucky maybe the distributor who supplied them had someone to cherry pick there shipments like me .How many boxes of reptiles did your store see on a weekly basis one , two , four , five styros full ?
Living in South Florida where many of the reptiles that are imported into the country come through I have had ample opportunity to go through many shipments over the years before they get distributed . A friend of mine(distributor )in the mid west used to ask Ron and I to go cherry pick many
shipments for him . We did this for him as a favor for years because it gave us the opportunity to pick the real neat stuff for ourselves at little to no cost to us (like Blood Boas, the Motley Boas , Carmel Albino and many other phases of ball pythons , sulfur water monitors , an albino savanah , and
anerytheristic Burmese python just to name a few ) . For a long time I was lucky enough to be one of the first people who would go through many of the shipments that arrived here . I have seen and opened more crates of reptiles coming from all over the world than I care to remember. You do this enough for enough years and you start to see a trend of what animals come in good
when and when they come in bad .From this I can tell you that there are seasons in which they come in great and seasons in which they come in horrible from the same exporter . Hmmm check out some of the post here and you will notice that at certain times of the year people say how great their sav they just purchased is and at other times of the year their post are full horror stories about their animals.

When they come in horrible they have "bargain " sales in order to sell them quickly and cut loses - these "bargain " animals rarely live long . There are seasons in which savs come in infected with a parasite that effects their brain stem and causes them to run circles in their cages the ones that
are infected with this do not make it . There are seasons in which they used come in covered with ticks (department of agriculture had a cow when they saw what some of the ticks were carrying so now they have to spray thelizards with a pesticide to kill the ticks before shipping ) Pretty much the same goes for water monitors - they have season when they come in LOADED
with gram negative /gram positive bacterial infections, viral infections and seasons where they come in fine.

I am not a proponent of feeding junk to lizards and we do feed
whole prey items . Ask Bayless about the conversations we had years ago about feeding Savs and White Throats whole prey items - I'm talking many years ago - he didn't think they could live on a constant diet of justrodents because all the literature he had at the time said otherwise - well at that time I already had plenty of F1's and F2's white throats/capes /savs that said otherwise (of course I did not keep mine in the same conditions
that all the literature said they needed to be kept) . If you think that I have just kept and bred captive born tegus you are dead wrong .

Temps , humidity and diet play a huge role in preventing disease but so does not exposing animals to disease. People who handle large numbers of sick animals have do deal with things much differently (why do you think hospitals spend so much effort sterilizing and sanitizing stuff ? ) People who do rescues end up working with some of the worst cared for animals available so they have to be extra careful to keep disease from spreading
.In these cases not washing your hands can be enough to make a healthy animal ill regardless of how well they are taken care of. (anyone who keeps a large collection private or zoo knows this lesson or learns it the hard way ) I stopped cherry picking animals years ago because the risk of bringing something into the collection is to high. You can chose to belive anything you want that is your personal choice . I have come to realize that
anything you add to an equation is going to change the sum of that equation and one answer does not solve all problems nor are all monitors/lizards alike .

Stella
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Stella St.Pierre
www.bluetegu.com

The animals for his store were picked one at a time and ordered through suppliers that have a good reputation, except a few I tried to see how they came out.

"I already had plenty of F1's and F2's white throats/capes /savs that said otherwise (of course I did not keep mine in the same conditions"

Interesting comment, so your saying youve bred both bosc and albig many times? When was that, Id like to see pictures of eggs in incubators, parents laying them, eggs hatching, ya know the normal things that people take pictures of when its a rare event as such. I dont even keep pairs because theres simply no room.

Pictures of eggs , hatchlings and breeders where on my web page years ago , ask around . Savs, White Throats and Capes were a cake walk considering we were the first in the private sector to breed Crocodile monitors (picutres of those were on my web page too , ask around or maybe do a search on the old forums )
Actually we have bred a lot more different montiors than just that .
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Stella St.Pierre
www.bluetegu.com

Interesting that nobody remembers that happening, yet so many know and knew about Ravi breeding boscs, and FR breeding Cape banded WTs, ProExotics with BTs, Dan from Tarpit with BTs, Rob Faust with WTs BTs niles and argus etc etc. When was this, or rather around what years, Im just asking as nobody seems to reference it, unless of course if its been 10 years or more then that explains why its not referenced. I didnt have internet access until a few years ago but Ive kept monitors for 12-13 years or so.
I remember the article written by Mark Bayless about hair impactions mice and bosc, nile, albig monitors, I believe he retracted and rewrote it not too long after it was published, I have a copy in the original magazine yet, and the updated article from later.

I have slides of all 3 species hatching from around 92-97
Savs being the earliest and capes being the latter ones , pretty sure my first capes were around 1995 or 1996 .
I even have a few slides of all three type eggs together in one picture with a quarter showing the difference in egg size .
I have no way to scan them at the moment but if you are really that interested in seeing them email me your address and I will send you a few as long as you promise to mail them back .
All slides are dated an each one has a card in the picture with the actual hatching date and the species , heads poking out of eggs , some with full babies out and some of eggs before hatching . Sucks to take almost everything on slide when now it is so easy to just use a digital camera .
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Stella St.Pierre
www.bluetegu.com

It would be cool to see them though. No rush besides I know how ya feel about the conversion process, I converted a few of my old monitor pics from 35mm to digital (they sucked). Shoot for that matter I didnt even have a computer until a couple of years ago (cant remember 4-5 years???), Ive learned alot from these 2 computers Ive had. Im in the process of finding a better digital camera now, and a bigger house so Sobek can have a 10x6x5ft cage and Shadow can have her old cage etc. My fiancee and I have beardies hatching and her female is bigger and fatter than ever again, this time 25-30 eggs??, who knows.

Think you better go back and talk to Rob Faust again because he sure use to call my house and ask both me and Ron a ton of questions years ago about how we hatched the white throats and Argus monitors ... If I remember right he even bought baby white throats from me one year.
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Stella St.Pierre
www.bluetegu.com

"Dozer", Sobek and Shadows father (the one that used to be on his website with the pinkish background color), and the younger one that got killed by his mate I believe. He had all female BT/WT crosses and wanted a cape male from FR or Pete. I remember he told me he got a male from Proexotics, they had a whole bunch of males from FR. He gave away some of his animals etc to make space to move the rest of them all outdoors. That was a year ago if I remember.
I think he at one time had a male cape for sale as an extra male, duller pattern and colors.

http://www.bluetegu.com/images/vaalbigularis.jpg
These pictures are from a display I had at an old expo . Some of the pictures are a bit faded and since my scanner isn't working I photographed them with my digital camera .

photo 3 - regular Sav
all the others are V. albigularis albigularis from bloodlines imported out of Zimbabwe (this is what the importers were selling as cape monitors )
1 and 2 are captive hatched but not captive bred (2 different clutches from 2 different females that came in - one gravid one full of folicles and was being bred by a male in the same crate) Both females laid there eggs at our house and we hatched them .I raised 10 of these that I hatched and bred them less than 9 months later number 5 was one of the first F1 babies these captive hatched ones produced. 4 and 5 are what the babies looked like after a week or so of coming out of the egg.
Both orginal females that laid the eggs were banded but one was light in color and one was dark . There were 2 color phases that came into the country with the original shipment.

Stella
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Stella St.Pierre
www.bluetegu.com

Hi Shvar,
There are bacteriums that specifically attack the respiratory system, and often compromise it - I know, having had pneumonia 9 times. Although a reduced immune system can promote a bacterial atttack/invasion, it is not always the case.

The most common bacteriums associated with respiratory infections are pseudomonas aureus, streptococcus pneumoniae, betahemolytic streptococci, Staphylococcus aureus, klebsiella pneumoniae, influenza, tuberculosus, legionaires disease, and even Escherichia cocci (= E. Coli).

Q-fever can be transmitted from reptiles to humans by the bacterium Coxiella burnetti, and a host of this bacterium can be the ornate monitor tick, Aponomma exornatum and Aponomma latum (Bayless, 2000). Last Q-fever was spread via tortoises a few years ago in Florida.

For further reading on health and reptiles see:

D.F. Cowan. 1968. Diseases of captive Reptiles. Journal of the American Veterinary and Medical Association 153(7):848-859.

Funk, R.S. 1988. Herp health hints: parasiticide dosages for captive amphibians and reptiles. Bulletin Chicago Herpetological Society 23(3):30.

Lawrence, K. 1983. Treatment of parasitic infestations in reptiles. British Herpetological Society Bulletin 8:33-35.

Cheers,
markb

=) not only bacterias and viruses but mycoplasmas can cause them too.
( not sure but i don't think the mycoplasmas show up on regular cultures , pretty sure you have to do dna type test for these to show up )
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Stella St.Pierre
www.bluetegu.com