Helenthereef

Well, I sucessfully gave my first Baytril injection yesterday at the vet's office, surrounded by a fascinated vet and 3 technicians, none of whom had even touched a snake before. (We are taking some of the healthy ones in on Saturday to run a handling session for them).

He seems fine this morning - it's very strange, he literally went for weeks between symptoms, but when he is having a problem it's dramatic and loud wheezing, and an obvious physical struggle to breathe in, with his mouth wide open. I can literally feel his lungs vibrating when he's struggling. His glottis was visibly open during one bout, though, so that's something.

For future information if anyone's in the same position, the dosage the vet and I agreed on is 5 mg Baytril / 1 kg snake, so as he weighs currently 2.6 kg, he needs (5 x 2.6) 13 mg of Baytril. (If it was to be given orally, it would be twice that).

Baytril comes in different strength liquids - my vet has 50 mg/ml (= 10 mg / 0.2 ml, or 1 mg / 0.02 ml), so to get the 13 mg, we need (13 x 0.02) 0.26 ml of the Baytril solution.

Because neat Baytril can cause cell death at the injection site, we are diluting this 50/50 with sterile saline, so we draw up 0.26 ml Baytril, then 0.25 ml saline, and let them mix in the syringe before injection of the total 0.5 ml.

So now it's just fingers crossed, I'm giving injections every 2 days for the next 4 weeks.

Thanks again for all help offered, this is the true value of these forums for me, and I really appreciate it.