Reptile & Amphibian Forums

What is the incidence of Inclusion Body Desease among breeder-supplied young now-a-days? The reason I ask is that a breeder at a rep show said "haven't seen it for years!"

Just wondering...

R,

Leon

Leon,
...I have heard of no documented cases of IBD in BRBs. And that means almost nothing. IBD is difficult to diagnose and can only be positively diagnosed from the inclusion bodies being found in specimens from the brain. To diagnose IBD in a live snake the snake must be killed to take the sliced specimens from the brain. The simple truth is that most dead snakes do not get necropsied and those few that do usually do not have samples taken from the brain looking for inclusion bodies. There is much that is still unknown about IBD. Much of what is reported on the internet is by people who have very little understanding about the disease.
...Most of the Rainbow Boa breeders I know are very careful about bringing new animals into their collections and keep new snakes in long quarantine. Snakes from these breeders are likely to be healthy. I have zero losses of my captive born baby BRBs here except for the small percantage that are born with obvious physical birth defects. When I do lose an adult BRB it is almost always due to complications related to breeding and reproduction. Most of the people selling BRBs at shows are dealers rather than breeders and most dealers have no safe regimen for quarantining animals. They buy and sell a bunch of snakes in a hurry and so snakes bought from them are much more likely to carry diseases, including IBD than snakes bought from real breeders. It seems that external parasies are the principal vectors in the transmission of IBD. Dealers often have mites on the snakes they bring to shows. It scares me to think how bad their mite problems must be in their facilities. Many dealers would like for you to believe that they are breeders when in fact many of them have limited breeding success.
Jeff

>>What is the incidence of Inclusion Body Desease among breeder-supplied young now-a-days? The reason I ask is that a breeder at a rep show said "haven't seen it for years!"
>>
>>Just wondering...
>>
>>R,
>>
>>Leon

>>>> When I do lose an adult BRB it is almost always due to complications related to breeding and reproduction

Jeff,

Can you take a stab at my post a bit bellow this thread, "Keeping two BRBs (M F) together for life?" Although babies are nice, I do want to avoid 'unplanned parenthood', while maintaining the two animals in a naturalistic display vivarium together, at least for the most part...can you suggest a strategy?

Regards,

Leon

Leon,
....You have likely read all the good reasons not to keep two snakes together but if not here is a quick review........ transmission of disease from one to the other, if one passes a messy stool or regurgitates you may not know which one it was, during and right after feeding they have to be seperarted to prevent feeding accidents, if they have limited hiding spots the dominant one may keep the less dominant one from going where it needs to go in the cage to thermoregulate, cannibalism though rare does occasionally occur. If you are keeping a pair together there is the added risk of breeding. During breeding season males in the presence of females will often go off feed for several months. If bred a female will stop eating and sometimes not eat for the entire 5.5 month gravidity. A big pile of baby BRBs can weigh over a pound and this long period withoput food and relatively large litter size causes a tremendous amount of strain on the female. Gravid females seem to be more susceptable to infections. They also can literally starve to death while gravid. They also can have complications during delivery and not have enough energy to survive. Having posted all that....there are many of us who do keep BRBs together in cages. There are also many of us who bred our snakes because we consider that to be one of the ultimate challenges of keeping herps. Having a big litter of healthy babies is really something to get excited about.
....Keeping a pair together? If you will watch them for the first week after putting them together you can figure out which one is dominant by their actions. In most cases they will get along perfectly and share hiding spots comfortably. In other cases they will stress each other out moving out of each other's way in the cage. If you have a large enough cage dominance heirarchy problems will be lessened. If both snakes are about the same size the risk of cannibalism is less. They must be seperated during feeding and watched carefully after to make sure that one is still not so hungry that it smells rodent on the other's breath and tries to eat it. If you do not want them to breed you will have to seperate them when they are around 24 to 30 months old. Trying to get snakes to breed is sometimes difficult but they sometimes will breed without the keeper doing anything to manipulate the environment.
Good luck,
Jeff

>>>>>> When I do lose an adult BRB it is almost always due to complications related to breeding and reproduction
>>
>>Jeff,
>>
>>Can you take a stab at my post a bit bellow this thread, "Keeping two BRBs (M F) together for life?" Although babies are nice, I do want to avoid 'unplanned parenthood', while maintaining the two animals in a naturalistic display vivarium together, at least for the most part...can you suggest a strategy?
>>
>>Regards,
>>
>>Leon