Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Hey everyone,
My sweet Albino Cal has a repiratory infection. I noticed sneezing ever now and then for a few days, then noticed that she was holding her head up all the time, and staying stretched out in her cage, and then noticed some open mouth breathing. I didnt see any mucus but got her to the vet asap this morning and as we handled her more, we noticed mucus inside her mouth when she opened it and congested breathing. I started her on the Antibiotic today and hope that she responds quickly. My intention was to breed her early this year, but now my intention is just to get her healthy. Poor girl...

For those of you who see some of these signs in your animals please dont wait too long before getting your animals to the vet. Too many times I see people asking "What should I do?" when they see symptoms such as these. The answer is SEEK PROFFESIONAL ADVICE AND TREATMENT. This set in with her quickly. From the first sneeze to today has only been 5 days. So the Moral of the story is... Don't hesitate to take action when things seem wrong!

Dawn

How did the snake come down with a respiratory infection?

Well that is the question of the year. She is just out of brumation. I just aquired her in November and immediately put her down for brumation. I was going to do an early breeding with her so I brought up up on Dec 28th and have warmed her up and gotten her to take a few small meals but have seen these symptoms develop during that time. All the other snakes are healthy and eating well.

Typically when you get a new colubrid snake, especially an adult, don't cool it right away. Keep a warm area in the cage and observe the snake for a few weeks. A stressed or weakened individual snake may have problems when cooled.

I understand your eagerness to breed it, but patience pays off in the end. Better to have kept the snake warm until you can assess the health.

How do I know this? Because it happened to me once upon a time. Fortunately the snake recovered, but was in no condition to breed that year.

Hello I would definately take her out of brumation(looks like you already have) and crank up the heat and keep her warm. Depending on the size of the enclosure I would keep the temps up not too high, (use the thermo stat)however a little warmer than the usual. let us know how she is. Good luck, Dave

Thanks for the input guys.

Mark, Your right about My rushing into the breeding with her . I was trying to rush it this year with this pair for a particular project and have left my others in brumation for normal period. That just goes to show that rushing nature can cause problems! lesson learned. She may still be okay to breed this year but at this point that is the least of the issues. I just want to see her health resume to a good state.

Dave,I totally agree with you too. I have quarentined her and put her in a room by herself for the next 20 days while I am giving her shots of antibiotic treatment. I have actually elevated the room temps to about 88 for her. I luckily haven't had to deal with a respiratory Infection with any of my snakes before so I am going on book knowledge and words from others here. DO you feel 88 is too high temp for her? I dont want to dehydrate her while I am trying to heal her.

When I got home from work tonight and checked on her..she was quite active but still wheezing of course. But she looked better than she did after going through her first shot this morning. I think she will be fine. But regardless of what people say about "Snakes commonly get Respiratory infections", I still know that it is "WE" the keepers that are in charge of their health and if they get sick, I feel like we are mostly responsible for it in some way or another . In this instance..I didnt give her the time to adjust as I should have. Terrible when they pay the price for our mistakes isnt it?

Make sure you bump up the humidity too. Mist the cage and keep an easily accessible source of water available at all times. Also, make sure you keep your snake on paper towel or newspaper so you don't have loose substrate getting stuck to your snake's mouth.

I think a lot of caresheets gloss over discussions on respiratory infections and basically just repeat what the next caresheet says about RI treatment. They tend to say "bump up the temperature and keep the environment dry." Absolutely useless advice. I dealt with RIs in a group of Kenyan sand boas I took in. I had a horrible time getting them back to health until I decided to not go with what the caresheets said. I started keeping them in constantly moist substrate and got much better results. Humidity aids in helping them breathe and keeps them hydrated. It becomes especially crucial when the snakes are coughing up discharge or else the mucous dries and causes more irritation.
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chickabowwow

Thanks for the advice. I do have her on paper towels so I can keep an idea of her drainage and so forth. As for the humidity, that is what I felt the least amount of concrete data on. It makes sense to me that humidity would help breathing just like it does in humans, but I kept hearing or shall I say reading to keep it dry.

There really is not much good working knowledge of how to DEAL with a respiratory infection to get back to healthy as quickly as possible. Most of information is about simply detecting one...