A GREAT REASON TO ALWAYS QUARANTINE

Live arthroscopic samples can be taken of various organs, but requires a facility with higher end equipment, and a very reptile knowledgeable vet. It's not cheap either. That's the route I took after the Luis fiasco. It ran me in the neighborhood of $390 for Aurora's first round. And choose a vet that uses Northwest Zoo Path for their pathology work, or will use them at your request. There is a reason the Zoo's across America use them.

I would do like Harald suggested too. Just lock it down for now. Giving it a while will allow you to choose a couple animals if you go through with it, and start putting resources away to help out with the costs.

Fingers crossed for you.

By first round, I mean samples, in-house work, and pathology.

So after talking to our local herp vet,we are going to wait 2-3 months and will do the extensive blood testing on multipule boas and at 90 day increments. Dr Green is going to get in touch with the University of Flordia and their specialist thats working on the ibd problems. We will go from there and if need be,i will have to sacrafice a couple adults. With no ease either.

I will keep you guys informed as i go through this .

Thanks guys. Ladies.

Originally Posted by crotalusadamanteus

Live arthroscopic samples can be taken of various organs, but requires a facility with higher end equipment, and a very reptile knowledgeable vet. It's not cheap either. That's the route I took after the Luis fiasco. It ran me in the neighborhood of $390 for Aurora's first round. And choose a vet that uses Northwest Zoo Path for their pathology work, or will use them at your request. There is a reason the Zoo's across America use them.

I would do like Harald suggested too. Just lock it down for now. Giving it a while will allow you to choose a couple animals if you go through with it, and start putting resources away to help out with the costs.

Fingers crossed for you.

Toes too please. Thanks Rich

I will do whatever is needed to make sure my collection is healthy. And,if they are not and cannot be fixed,i will do whats needed. I would hate to pass this to anyone.

I would agree with Rich: test via blood. Nothing will ever be 100%, but for common boas this test is supposed to be pretty good. As for the humidifier, I think you're safe...I do not recall any evidence IBD (if the deceased animal even had that) is airborne.

I agree as well with NZP. I've had a lesser lab misdiagnose (read: false positive) before, and for this type of test would only use the best.

Thanks Cliff.
Thats the rt i will be taken. A couple months waiting and will start testing.

Just to protect yourself legally, Rich, I'd advise you to test a few now. If later tests do come back as IBD, the other person will claim you "had it to start with." The only way to counter that is to show a baseline negative. Fingers crossed for you.

Thanks Cliff. But We Wont Have Any Issues.

Originally Posted by AbsoluteApril

as far as I know, there is no test that can be done on a live boa. It cannot be tested via blood. You'll have to sacrifice some so they can be necropsied and the tissues sent for pathology testing to a lab. :/

edit to add - Dr Jacobson's page on IBD, he is, as far as I know, the leading source on this
http://labs.vetmed.ufl.edu/sample-re...ions/boid-ibd/
states there about blood testing "Blood films should first be examined before tissue biopsies are obtained and submitted for histopathology. However, we do not know how often inclusions are seen in a peripheral blood film of a snake with IBD. It must be remembered that absence of inclusions in a blood film does not necessarily mean the snake is free of IBD."

When I had Cinnamon put down and tested, it was $545. I'm *still* waiting for a copy of the test results from my vet, I pretty much gave up asking them about it but this reminds me I need to bug them yet again. (everytime I do, they say they need to get another copy from UC Davis and it will be sent to me, never shows up).

this was the thread I had posted about her: http://www.faunaclassifieds.com/foru...d.php?t=239951

Not true you can do punch biopsies of the liver, pancreas, and blood testing has been proven to work as well, just not as accurate. the punch biopsies take small tissue samples that can easily be regenerated and can be done with a little anesthetic, killing the animal is not necessary anymore.