R.I. Treatment

Please dont guilt trip me, we all have a love for herps in common, but all of our practices differ- who are any of ya'll to say your way is better or more rational than someone elses? I was looking for helpful advice from personal experience, not criticism.

Look at it this way, Zach...we don't know you. We don't know what kind of experience you have dealing with reptiles, or if your judgement in that area is based on anything solid. You say you've kept herps for around 25 yrs - which is an accomplishment in itself...but, if you haven't had to deal with issues, what do you base your decisions on?
I have a very good relationship with my vet (we've been friends for nearly 20 yrs), but that doesn't mean I rush every problem to her. I've encountered a lot over the years, dealing with a wide variety of herps (and a pretty good number of those were WC), and I've learned to deal with a lot. My judgement is usually pretty good about when to watch, when to treat, and when to seek help. What I rarely do, though, is dispense advice about treatment and medications on a forum...for a couple of reasons. The first one, as I mentioned in my PM to you, is that I haven't actually examined the animals. People's descriptions tend to be vague and/or inaccurate. Secondly (for me), I'm not a vet. Scope of practice has been drummed into my head for many years, and my license does not cover diagnosing or treating animals - I can do it for my own, but I won't do it for others. There are also a lot of other considerations that I just don't want to deal with. Bottom line - if a person doesn't KNOW what the problem with their animal is, or how to treat it, the best recommendation that can be given is for them to take the animal to a person with the knowledge, skill, and ability to diagnose and treat...in other words, a vet.

A lot of veterinary advice is given in forums...and a good portion of it is pretty poor. You might be surprised at how little the people offering advice actually know, or how much of that advice is simply parroted from something they saw someplace that sounded kind of like this. Those people will speak with as much authority as somebody that actually knows what they are talking about. If you don't know the qualifications of the person giving the vice, should you really be listening to them? (That's a general you, not YOU you)

I'm glad to hear you feel the snake is doing better already (super fast acting stuff, huh?). I hope she does well for you.

my dear...i posted a question once about substrate...and got some mild critisim for the fact that i feed my snakes in their enclosures instead of in some box away from their enclosures...whenever you give information about how your care for you reptiles...someone is going to disagree...read between the lines and ignore what you dont like or just deal with it and take the good advice that does make its way through it all

i hope your animal turns out to be ok...RI is not fun and can get bad fast

I can't say much that hasn't already been said, but I can share a personal story that I'm in the middle of right now.

I've got a 6 ft boa that's had a mild RI since I received her a month ago when she arrived wet and cold. I'm hauling her to my nearest reptile vet tomorrow to get a culture for her, and that vet happens to be 2 1/2 hours away. I've been treating her with Tylosin in the mean time because the research I've done has convinced me it's a pretty safe option, though after two doses she hasn't shown any signs of getting better.

If I wasn't "fortunate" enough to have a vet 110 miles away, I could still probably have gotten a swab of her mouth myself with some vet instruction and mailed it in a ziplock baggie, if not brought it to my local vet to have the bacteria identified. That's all there is to it.

I try my best to save money too, and in an effort to avoid the vet I myself first went with Internet advise and tried Tylosin/Tylan. Was that a mistake? Maybe. But Tylan doesn't have the side effects other drugs such as Baytril do, and it seemed a safer option at the time. However I jumped at the chance to get this vet culture done and make sure I'm treating the right thing as quickly as I can.

I don't have a huge number of animals; just a few. They're not just the beginnings of a breeding colony; they're pets. Maybe that's why I have a difficult time with the statement of "I'd only be out $30." My animals are worth far more than their monetary value.

You might want to call the vet before making that 2.5 hr drive...they may not want to do the culture since you started her on antibiotics.

She needs a general check-up anyway, and that particular vet is very hard to get a hold of as he's the only snake vet around these parts. :P It's worth the trip for me. Thanks though! I didn't even think that the Tylan I'm using now could screw up the culture. That makes sense, though I imagine if it's not combating the correct bacterium they'd still be there.

As someone who lives a LONG way from qualified herp vets I sympathise with Zachary: in that position you often have to do what you can with what you have, it's better that just saying "oh look it died"...

However it is also true that any vet can have a test done for which bacteria is the problem. In your position I'd learn how to take a test swab so that if anything like this happens again you can send it to a lab or close vet to confirm that the antibiotic you use is the right one.

That should save mis-diagnosis, wasted effort, and money!

i my self would go out of the way to help any of my snakes. in a earlier post you said
"id only be out 30 bucks"
true that it sometimes cost more to treat a snake then to buy one. but this sounds like something a snake miller would say. its about the life not the price you paid for it. would you give yourself a shot cause you told your doc over the phone that you had a fever? i think not. i have to agree with harald there are many thing that do and dont need meds. do what you like but put yourself in the snakes skin.