Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Hello everyone, here is a picture of my boa who was diagnosed to have a blocked saliva gland. Initially I thought it was mouth rot or R.I. . Her face is really puffed up. (see negative for a detailed view). Inside the mouth there was a big soft lump and full of saliva, ( you can see the lump from the outside on her throat) , No bacteria or parasite were found in her saliva/mucus that was very thick. The vet suggested making a hole somewhere so the saliva would flow. ( I’m having 2nd thoughts about this. It’s like curing the symptom and not the cause. )

Has anyone have any experience with this sort of thing? Any ideas what caused this?
Definitely its not temperature related, her enclosure was kept in a room that is at optimal conditions with 8 other snakes, and she was the only one with this. (she now stays in a different room with the same condition only a bit warmer.)

Please post you thoughts on this matter . thank you.

or did your vet just do the generic fecal? Getting the full set of sensitivity tests done will often turn up bacteria that is treatable.
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I'm not really sure what kind of test was done .

I agree with the other poster I would get an oral swab done, what they will do is culture the swab to see what kinds of bacteria she may be carrying, dont do anything prior or youll mess up the culture but after it probally wouldnt hurt to run her through a cycle of tylan, its a safe drug, so if it helps great if not youve lost nothing but a few bucks do a search on the old forums for tylan and mycoplasm, Jeff Ronne? I think it was him, has a very good write up on it. Myco is a bacteria nomrally carried by rats if you feed rats that sneeze alot for no aperant reason ods are they have myco, in certain stages of infection, they exhibit the same symptoms your discribing her, swollen glands etc. myco is almost impossible to completly get rid of something to do with the cell wall of the bacteria, we carry it as well, antibiotics disrupt the bacterias life cycle, something about the cell wall of myco makes it hard to disrupt it also makes it hard to detect there are specials culture they have to do to find it from what I understand, as far as I know if it is myco youll never get rid of it you can only run the animal through a cycle of tylan whenever its showing clinical symptoms, anyway I would request a culture because I agree that trying drain it without solving the problem doesnt sound like a proper course of action
Best of luck hope this helps Jason
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Jason & Danica
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