Heavy parasite load found in ball python from Ed Clark

[Dr Owens]

I just want to add this food for thought: I know of instances where reptiles in a zoo collection were parasite free for years and then one day tested positive for some parasite or another. This particular zoo practices the strictest of quarantines and before a new animal is even put in the same building as the main collection it is tested multiple times by qualified vets and kept in isolation for many weeks or months. It happens sometimes.

Good point Kelli.

Another point of consideration is that it's not that hard to have a false-negative test when checking stool for ova and parasites, as there is a large opportunity for error given the way that the tests are performed, and the intermittent nature of ova/parasitic shed. This is why testing should be repeated multple times, and/or by different means of testing (fecal float vs. fecal smear, etc.) if there is a strong clinical suspicion of parasitic infection.

 

[cookreptiles]

Is it normal and/or likely when testing a fecal to miss an infestation of 3 different types of parasites?

 

[bud mierkey]

last time this is getting boring

I don't understand why anyone thinks I would lie or make this up? I have only presented facts but I can't control how other people respond to them. Ed sent me some photos of the snakes before he sent them to me--perhaps if one of those photos is of this girl I can post it and a photo of her now? Is that really necessary?

I started this thread 3 days after informing Ed of the issue. In my opinion that is plenty of time to "get back to me" about the origins of the snakes, especially when the problem is a serious one. I was originally going to wait longer to post, but the issue was being discussed on several other forums (where it was apparent that Ed had no intention of resolving things) so I decided that it would be best to bring it here.

"I don't understand why anyone thinks I would lie or make this up? I have only presented facts but I can't control how other people respond to them"

Facts that you caused by your lack of reptile husbandry

This is getting boring here --- I still see no point for 99% of this whine


1.When you get the new reptile its first fecal goes right to the vet or you do it yourself not hard if your a real serious herp keeper.
If you do not do this you have no right 10 months later to start trouble simple as that.

Even if that reptile carried IPV and killed all of your best reptiles you have to be the guilty one!
since you did not even have it tested when you got it DUH!


if i was him i would have no reason to "get back to me" why?
he is not liable for anything at all most of the snake slingers out there do not give year long warranties hahahah
here is a good one a extended service plan sorry not in this world.



"problem is a serious one"{ since you are to blame for the most of it.


" so I decided that it would be best to bring it here "

AS usual a waste of boi time no crime no malice and

from you no responsibility
you have let everyone here see your weakness not good.
so now you know what to do hope you get it figured out so it wont happen to you again.

learn how to identify and treat infestations many books are out there.
yes rodents carry and can be full of parasites when fed opon they go right into the snakes digestive system and some come out in the feces.
just by chance have you dissected some of you older rodent breeders
my guess is there will be tapeworms and round worms.
you know what this is a waste of my time later

 

[Dr Owens]

thanks for clearing this up. this proves that there is no way this snake could have gotten tapeworms after it entered my collection.

Not at all. Please reread what I said. I made my post in order to clear up some apparent misconceptions as to the mode of transmission of parasites. All I said was that the snake got the tapeworm from an infected food item. I made no reference as to the possible source of the food item.

 

[ExoticsExpress]

"I don't understand why anyone thinks I would lie or make this up? I have only presented facts but I can't control how other people respond to them"

Facts that you caused by your lack of reptile husbandry

This is getting boring here --- I still see no point for 99% of this whine


1.When you get the new reptile its first fecal goes right to the vet or you do it yourself not hard if your a real serious herp keeper.
If you do not do this you have no right 10 months later to start trouble simple as that.

Even if that reptile carried IPV and killed all of your best reptiles you have to be the guilty one!
since you did not even have it tested when you got it DUH!


if i was him i would have no reason to "get back to me" why?
he is not liable for anything at all most of the snake slingers out there do not give year long warranties hahahah
here is a good one a extended service plan sorry not in this world.



"problem is a serious one"{ since you are to blame for the most of it.


" so I decided that it would be best to bring it here "

AS usual a waste of boi time no crime no malice and

from you no responsibility
you have let everyone here see your weakness not good.
so now you know what to do hope you get it figured out so it wont happen to you again.

learn how to identify and treat infestations many books are out there.
yes rodents carry and can be full of parasites when fed opon they go right into the snakes digestive system and some come out in the feces.
just by chance have you dissected some of you older rodent breeders
my guess is there will be tapeworms and round worms.
you know what this is a waste of my time later

If you have such problems with everything why don't you just get the out of here. And bring your retarded, waste of space, scamming friend Bruce with you. As usual, YOUR posts are a waste of BOI time.

Anthony Allis
[email protected]

 

[cookreptiles]

emily I take it you do feed F/T I do not want to assume but just a question.

Has Ed answered you about what he sent. I know he said in the emails before the trade that they were CBB. But here he states he does not remember. Has he said anything at all anywhere that he may have sent WC or CH?

And do not let anything get to you here. People are just asking questions and probing about. I know it can get upsetting at times. In the end most of the time it works out.

Just hope everything goes well with your snakes

I feed both live and f/t. The girls I got from Ed will eat either. As I said before, I produce my own rats and all of my rats have been treated with Ivermectin as a precaution.

Ed has not responded or contacted me in any way other than the one private message that I posted where he said he would look into it and get back to me. I didn't think that he would ever get back to me unless forced to do so by my starting a thread here.

I am not discouraged by this and I will definitely continue to keep ball pythons. I appreciate your support in the matter.

 

[Dr Owens]

Is it normal and/or likely when testing a fecal to miss an infestation of 3 different types of parasites?

I'm not sure the point of your question. I made a statement about false-negative test results. In your case you had a positive test result. With this kind of testing you really can't have a false-positive unless the pathologist (or whoever is doing the read) doesn't know what they're doing, and they simply misread the slides.

 

[KelliH]

So... maybe this snake contracted tapeworms, strongyloides and coccidia randomly out of nowhere...?

The tapeworms would most likely have to have been contracted by ingesting a rodent that had them. Same goes for the strongyloides, although it's possible these could be contracted by ingesting contaminated water. Coccidia has a direct life cycle and is spread in a completely different way, including coming into contact with spores in cages, cage furnishings, or even on a person's hand if they have previously come in contact with an infected animal.

 

[Dr Owens]

I feed both live and f/t. The girls I got from Ed will eat either. As I said before, I produce my own rats and all of my rats have been treated with Ivermectin as a precaution.

Dosing your rats with Ivermectin does not preclude them from having parasites. Not at all. In fact, Ivermectin doesn't kill most tapeworms.

Freezing is the best way to kill most parasites, but feeding F/T exclusively isn't always practical...especially with ball pythons.

I am not discouraged by this and I will definitely continue to keep ball pythons. I appreciate your support in the matter.

Good. Just so you know, I am not at all trying to give you a hard time here. I just want to make sure that the facts about parasitic infections, and the treatment of them, isn't being overly distorted. People have a tendency to draw conclusions based on false info in these types of situations...and that's not fair to anyone involved.

 

[KelliH]

I produce my own rats and all of my rats have been treated with Ivermectin as a precaution.

Ivermectin is useless when trying to erradicate tapeworms.

 

[Stardust]

Actually I have no axe to grind with Ed. I don't always like what he has to say but I did buy from him and the animals I bought are doing great, something which I have always said.

I was thinking that it had been a week with no response from Ed when I posted prior, so this is a bit of a quick move to the BOI with the time frame being less.

I still think that Ed should at least respond, put forth some effort here.

 

[KelliH]

I still think that Ed should at least respond, put forth some effort here.

He certainly should. If it were my name in the title of this thread I would be posting vet reports right and left, and defending my name!

 

[WebSlave]

Tapeworm Life Cycle

With few exceptions, all cestodes require at least two hosts, and the adult is the parasite in the digestive tract of vertebrates. Often one of the intermediate hosts is an invertebrate (most often an arthropod such as a flea, louse or copepod) that is eaten by the final host. The eggs within the proglottids are shed daily in the feces into the soil where they may lie dormant for quite some time. Sometimes the egg-bearing proglottids crawl out of the anus by themselves and can be found wriggling about on an infected dog, cat or child or on infected clothing and bedding. Once the eggs are released, they must be ingested by an intermediate host in order to hatch into hooked larvae called oncospheres, which bore through the intestinal wall and picked up by the circulatory system where they are transported to skeletal muscle, heart or even some other organ where they encyst as cysticerci (bladder worms). Each cysticercus is essentially an inside-out scolex that everts after the infected tissue (so-called "measly meat") of the intermediate host is eaten by the final host. The scolex then attaches to the lining of the intestine by means of suckers and/or hooks.

Another lifecycle description

H. diminuta uses two hosts, the rat and an insect, such as a beetle. For laboratory maintenance it is convenient to use the flour beetle Tribolium confusum , but, in nature, a variety of other species would serve this function. The tapeworm reaches sexual maturity in the rat and releases eggs into the rat's gut lumen where they become incorporated into the faeces for subsequent discharge by the rat. The egg already contains a fully-developed larva called the oncosphere.

Faeces provide food for many invertebrate animals, including insects, so it is likely that sooner or later the tapeworm eggs will be eaten by an insect wherein they hatch to release an actively moving oncosphere. Its function is to migrate to the haemocoel (body cavity) of the insect where it will grow and differentiate into an encapsulated juvenile worm. This stage, the cysticercoid, is dormant and resides in the insect until both are eaten by a foraging rat.

Within the rat stomach and intestine the juvenile worm responds to chemical signals and is stimulated to emerge (excyst) from the cysticercoid in which it has been living. The juvenile worm so released comprises the head (scolex) of the new tapeworm which attaches to the intestinal surface (mucosa) and grows to an adult.

There are more, but I believe some people can read between the lines here.

If you raise your own rodents and they are not in a perfectly controlled environment that absolutely excludes any intrusion by ANY type of insect that could be eaten by the rodents, or even the feces of the insects contaminating the food of the rodents, the POSSIBILITY exists of parasites being introduced into your closed and strictly quarantined collection via that vector. Of particular note is that some parasites (particularly tapeworms) can be zoonotic in nature. Meaning YOU can wind up being a part of that parasitic life cycle if you are not careful.

 

[Dr Owens]

Meaning YOU can wind up being a part of that parasitic life cycle if you are not careful.

And THAT is why you shouldn't eat rat poop.

 

[jasballs]

And THAT is why you shouldn't eat rat poop.

Op buy from Rat Poop!

 

[jasballs]

Op buy from Rat Poop!

or even!

 

[cookreptiles]

I'm not sure the point of your question. I made a statement about false-negative test results. In your case you had a positive test result. With this kind of testing you really can't have a false-positive unless the pathologist (or whoever is doing the read) doesn't know what they're doing, and they simply misread the slides.

Sorry i wasn't clear. What i was getting at was if Ed says he always gets negative results and some of those were due to false negative results then sure, he might think his snakes are clean. But the likelihood of getting false negative results on snakes with 3 different types of parasites seems rather unlikely. That was my only point.

 

[cookreptiles]

Thanks also for the lesson in tapeworms. Another question though--if it is so easy for them to get tapeworms from their food, why aren't tapeworms insanely common in snakes? And if this snake got tapeworms from my feeders, why don't the rest of them have tapeworms too?

 

[SPJ]

Here are a few points from my perspective.

1. 10 months is a long time so Ed may or may not have sent infected snakes.
2. Ed should test his animals just to make sure nothing is wrong which will also aid in future sales.
3. Ed needs to address this even if it is just to dispute it.
4. Bud and Bruce are idiots.
5. Emily should have given Ed a bit more time before going to the BOI.
6. Ed needs to stop with the comments about gifts which he may think is funny and breaking the tension but comes across as arrogant.
7. Bud and Bruce are idiots.
8. Emily should have tested the animals if they were eating but not gaining weight.
AND
8. Did I mention Bud and Bruce are idiots?

 

[ravensgait]

Quote""I DID make a thread about this on ball-pythons.net--that is thread that Kelli is talking about where she disagrees with my having posted Ed's name.

I don't normally post on the forums here and the only other forums I frequent are gecko forums. Why would I post anything in those places? Why is this not exactly the place for this type of post? """

So you started a thread before you told Ed of the problem?? This is a place for business deals and if as you have stated IE that you wanted to warn others about Ed's Ball Pythons then why not post in the Ball Python forums instead of here?? I think more Ball python owners and prospective owners would see it there than will see it here.. I don't recall mentioning Gecko forums so don't know why you brought that up.

As has been stated Ivermectin doesn't work well on tapeworms nor if I'm not mistaken does it have much of an effect on coccidia . Though your Rats will for sure be free of Heart worm!! So treating your rodents with Ivermectin doesn't preclude them from having and thus transmitting these parasites to your snakes. You add in the 10 months that you've had these animals and yeah I wonder why you now post this on the BOI.


Quote"" Thanks also for the lesson in tapeworms. Another question though--if it is so easy for them to get tapeworms from their food, why aren't tapeworms insanely common in snakes? And if this snake got tapeworms from my feeders, why don't the rest of them have tapeworms too?""

The way I see this is that it is very possible that they got the parasites while in your care. It really doesn't matter where after 10 months they got it but it's time for you to stop the blame everyone else game and realise that you could be very very wrong. Can you with all honesty say with 100 percent certainty that these animals got all these parasites before they were in your care?? You've said as much in this thread might want to rethink your stance...

Good one Steve especially 4,7 and the second 8 ....Randy