Reptile & Amphibian Forums

My apologies if this has been covered in other threads but Im wanting to know how long people quarentine for - do you use differant periods for young and old and do you keep all snakes in the qurantine room until the end of the period for the last snake that entered?

eg; snake 1 is half way through the qurantine period and snake 2 enters the room in another viv - does snake 1 still join the main collection first or should it wait until snake 2 is ready??

cheers

sam

I do 6 months myself, that might be a little much to some people. I've heard at least 3 though.

Hey Sam,
Steve and I quarentine animals in seperate tanks in seperate rooms for about 4 months. I usually will run a fecal exam and a blood test if i think there is something wrong with the animal. BUT i have access to free tests and blood labs due to the fact that I am a Vet Tech and my Doctor is always super cool about everything. I would always keep quarentine animals out of your main collection for a period of time. If you could use multiple rooms that would be the best so that you dont have to worry about one quarentine animal infecting another animal. The other important part is sterilization of everything that is used in the quarentine rooms. Dont let anything from the Q-room make it near your main collection or you have chances of passing diseases and mites that way.. Good luck Sam

Sincerely,
Rose Hipskind
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www.srsnakes.com

I have an excellent reptile specific vet up here in Michigan. She worked for a zoo for some time and has quite a bit of experience and knowledge about IBD. She said, at her zoo they quarantined for a year and that she would reccomend a minimum of 6 months.

I personally go with the 6 month minimum figure. I have a set of racks setup in another room for that purpose.

Thanks for the advice - cleared that up a little and is how I was going about it anyway....

Cheers

Sam

It's always important to remember that quarantine is also set up for the "X" factor. That is, there is a lot of diseases that we don't know of yet, or know little about. For example, IBD was already mentioned. It is unknown how long a boa can live with the disease in a carrier state. It is quite possible that they can live their entire lives spreading the disease without themselves showing symptoms. For this specific case, quarantine seperates the sick animals, and the "most likely" healthy animals. 6 months is a good time period though.

Ian