Several years ago I worked in a pet store, and occassionally we would get in animals with an RI. Back then what I would do is give them a large temperature gradient with the opputunity to get VERY warm (like 110), which they frequently utilized. I would also decrease the humididty as much as possible. The rational, as it was explained to me, was that although hot dry air might not be the best for your snake, it was also not good for the bacteria. Bacteria generally like humidity and so by essentially airing out the lungs you could help the snake get the infection under control. Made sense to me at the time, and it worked like a charm...
Recently however I have been hearing people saying that humid air is much less stressful to the snakes lungs and that if the air is too dry the lungs will be irritated and MORE susceptible to infection.
I don't work with lots of freshly imported snakes anymore and I have never had an RI in my own collection but I was just curious if anyone had any experiances with both methods.
I have been thinking recently that maybe the dry humidity thing could do more harm then good especially to tropical animals. Probobly whats best is to just follow the snakes normal humididty guidlines. Keep desert snakes dry and tropical ones moist and let them do their thing.
