For hydrating a boa with an RI, I have used pedialyte straight, undiluted, every other day. I gave the sick snake a hidebox and left that on its hotspot at about 90 and it spent most of its time in there. I had outstanding success with this technique and was simultaneously treating this animal for a nose rub as well. The comeback was miraculous and for me took only 3 weeks. This animal was exposed to very cold temps when I was away on a 90 day assignment while it was in someone else’s care. I came home and found a very sick snake (a few actually!)
To deliver the pedialyte, I would simply remove the hidebox with the snake in it, pop the lid off, and deliver.through a catheter tube. Since the snake was already in a semi-relaxed environment, it gave little resistance and in turn, this minimized the stress to the snake. I would get a bit of water on the tube first as to lubricate it somewhat, and that helped. It is almost impossible but warrants mention that in getting the tube down the throat that you do not get it into the animal’s airway. This, although conceivably difficult to do, would fill up the lungs with the delivered fluid.
I would open the animal’s mouth and use a straw to keep it open just a bit while I worked the tube in. Once I had the tube a good 8 inches down the throat, I slowly released the fluid from the syringe and maintained the animal’s head elevated at about 18 inches above the box in which it sat. After the 50cc serving was delivered (6 ft snake), I VERY slowly let the snake’s upper body back down and watched carefully for it to gurge any of the fluid. Only once or twice did it start to spit up and when it did, I kept the upper body elevated and tried again.
As I said, this animal made a miraculous recovery and I am convinced that the forced hydration was the key. Within 10 days, the physical strength increase of the animal was noticeable and within 3 weeks it went into a shed, came out, and was fine. Now I know that this is not how it always goes and this animal may have just had rugged genetics, but I don’t think the pedialyte can hurt your cause.
Adequate hydration might help offset damage, but I don’t know if it really prevents it. I avoid antibiotics like the plague and the only animal I had to give a rigorous regimen to (including Baytril) died. Thus I am somewhat biased and inexperienced with the use of antibiotics and while I can’t recommend dosages, I have talked to a lot of people and read a bit on this.
I am not certain about oral delivery of Baytril or any antibiotics for snakes but I do know that many drugs have varying toxicities AND dosages required when comparing oral versus injectable delivery. In addition, the effective life of the drug in the system can be VERY different based on the delivery, whether it is in oil based versus water base solution, etc. This is a very important consideration. If I were you, I would find out what drug the vet says you should use, per the culture taken. Then, to not reinvent the wheel, I would do what most people have done and find out exactly what dose per unit of animal body mass they have been using, how often they deliver the drug, AND insist to your vet that you use exactly what they have (oral or inject) in the recommended dosage at the given frequency.
I wish you the very best and I hope your snake has a speedy recovery!
