The Nymph Strikes Back

[serpenttongue]

Originally Posted by OuZo

...whatever floats his boat

....or blows his skirt up.

Without trying to hijack Zoes thread, there are some things that i would like to make aware to those reading. I would like you all to understand that this problem Nymph is having is not isolated just to Zoes collection. Dont assume that its only her problem and that it cant enter your own collections through means that i am unaware of.

This illness has also entered my collection and sunk its teeth into several of my diamonds, doing so in Sep last year as my diamonds were coming out of winter cooling. They show the same symptoms as Nymph and for the last year i have been back and forth to the vets having all manner of tests done to them without really finding anything and i have already lost one diamond that meant a helluva lot to me!!

My intention isnt to put fear into any of you but this disease has appeared in both mine and Zo's collection at roughly the same time and we are in different states. Also, we both care about our animals and dont keep them in an unhygenic state, so we are baffled as to what the illness is and how it came about. So if it can happen to us, it can happen to you.

My intention is to get as many herpers as possible talking about this problem and making them fully aware of it instead of sweeping it under the carpet with the attitude of "Oh, it wont happen to me!"

I dont know about Zo, because i assume she has lots of support from friends, but i have become very depressed at times and haven't had a full nights sleep in over a year because of this problem.....i dont wish this on anyone.

Okay, back to you Zo

[OuZo]

Well said Nick, hopefully people take notice of what you said but going by the response so far maybe not . We're working through it anyway, we gave Nymph his 2nd antibiotic injection tonight (first I've given him) and I think it went ok lol. He's pretty good but it's kinda difficult when you have to twist the syringe before you can take it out!

Any further progress with Cas? I'm sure I've asked you this but does she have any interest in chickens?

[rodentrancher]

Dave and I think that Monty our Brissie Coastal might be sick too. He is acting very strangely indeed. He finally started to eat after Winter, but decided he only wants birds I think. He ate some defrosted day old chicks no probs. Next time he ate, he ate two plump baby pigeons(live). The last two times we attempted to feed him, he constricted and killed the pigeons, but did not eat them. He pretty well wrecked the inside of his enclosure. Looked like World War 3 in there. This morning he constricted another pigeon but did not eat it. He is very rigid at the moment, also waving his head around a fair bit too. We noticed that his hemipenes are poking out and also that some creamy white stuff was coming out of that area(definately not faeces). When I was shifting him up to his basking area so I could clean out the enclosure, he constricted my hand and fingers and wouldn't let go. The only way I could get him off was to put him under the shower. Its no mean feat to try and get a nearly 6ft snake off your hand and fingers I can tell you. We have also noticed that he seems a tad disorientated, and goes over onto his back for some reason. I've made an appointment for the vet on Monday. Will ask for some blood tests to see if he is lacking in anything, and to make sure he hasn't got some sort of infection. Cheers Cheryl

[foxysnake]

Well thanks serpenttongue and rodentrancher (and of course Ouzo!), I wasn't aware of that and thought that Ouzo's snake was the only snake with umm, whatever it is. That's quite scary, and I'm sorry to hear you lost a diamond to this sickness serpenttongue, it sounds horrible. I hope the vets can figure it out, and I wish you the best with your snakes. Its horrible to see anyones snakes suffer for any reason let alone for you guys to have to watch it 'fit' almost and not know what's wrong with it or why, my heart goes out to you guys.
Cheers,
Dee.

[beknluke]

Well guys, despite the fact that I hear the updates on the phone and tell you then, I will say it again: Congrats on the improve and lets hope that all it is is an infection that's been left untreated up till now!!
You guys have done an amazing job with him - and for the record guys, I advised them to give up MONTHS ago, but they've stuck at it and even if money wasn't great, they did all for him that they could!
Looks like it might turn out that it was all worth it guys!
I'm proud of you both (esp. Zo for getting past her 'no comfort zone' in giving him his injections) so congrats and THREE CHEERS FOR OUZO, SOULEY AND NYMPH!! HIPPIP! HORAY!!!!

Bex

[OuZo]

Awwww thanx luvvy! emotional moment lol

Well he ate 2 chickens last night after his injection and we didn't need to pluck them (thank GOD - that sucks big time)

Fingers are crossed here....and for Monty too Cheryl, let us know how he goes at the vet!

[serpenttongue]

Originally Posted by OuZo

Any further progress with Cas? I'm sure I've asked you this but does she have any interest in chickens?

Well i haven't tried chickens yet as i cant find any in my area. When i buy chicks it's always from Sydney so i may have to go up there soon to buy some and try them.

For everyone else, here's some pics of my diamonds displaying the illness. Compare them with Zo's pics of Nymph on page 1 of this thread.

[serpenttongue]

Another.

[serpenttongue]

From the above pics you can see that they stretch out their neck skin on the inside of each bend in the neck. Another symptom is to slowly move their stomachs side to side, suck it in or tilt it to one side and also put irregular bends in the gut area. The diamond in this following pic looks normal enough, but its actually putting bends in the gut area and slowly moving the bends in a winding downward fashion towards the cloaca.

[OuZo]

It would be interesting to see if Cas can take chickens...would make me definitely think we're dealing with the same thing.

[serpenttongue]

Maybe chickens have an irresistable taste that even sick snakes find hard to turn down :wink:

[rodentrancher]

Well, Monty has decided that he prefers day old chicks and plump and featherless pigeon chicks. but he is now just constricting and killing them but can't seem to eat them at all. I'm just going to try him in a luke warm bath and see if that moves anything. I saw Peter Bredl today and described all the symptoms to him. He doesn't sound too hopeful about poor Monty I'm afraid, and suggested either constipation or a twisted bowel?? Anyway off to the vet tomorrow to see what he says eh? I don't feel very confident about this vet as he's not a herp vet persay, but at least he can do a phone consult with the herp vets I've got off this site. Cheers Cheryl PS Monty doesn't seem to have the open mouthed thing that the other snakes have.

[tweety2]

ouzo, pailsy has heaps of chickens atm, i brought 50 for $30 when i was there last saturday and he still had loads in the freezer good luck and keep the updates coming

[Wrasse]

I Havn't been following the Nymph saga, this is the first thread I have read.

What strikes me here is that the chickens stay down and the rats/mice come back up again. This would indicate (to me) there is a problem with the digestive system and as rats and mice take longer to digest than day old chickens, up they come.

I have copied here a post set in an American Forum I used to frequent. Julius had amazing results and further discussion with other members since shows they too have had a good response. I have also used Julius's advice with good results.

Something to think about.

.................................................

Originally Posted by JuliusSqueezer

Probiotic fix for nonfeeding or bloating - puking reptiles

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

This going to be a long read...maybe even a novel but this one post may answer a LOT of questions, problems etc...Please read on

There have been many topics on...
1- My "insert any reptile here" won't eat
2- My "insert any reptile here" puked
3- My "insert any reptile here" bloats up after it eats and lays on it's side

In a great many of these cases ...most actually, you can blame parasite, stress, dehydration, overfeeding or improper heating under or especially OVER). But even after a good worming or otherwise correcting the issue(s) the problem may remain. Why? Any of these things can and will cause a reduction or total wipe out of the animals gut flora. What is gut flora? In order for any animal (including yourself) to digest food, BILLIONS of bacteria must inhabit the gastrointestinal tract. Without the bacteria helping to break down the food, it will spoil and excess gasses will form. If this happens, a very lucky animal will have the wherewithall to puke it up. Others may parish. MOST won't even bother to eat because they KNOW somehow that they can't properly digest it. Overfeeding whether too large or too frequent causes a huge depletion of natural gut flora. It also put's an unmanageable growth ratio on organs v/s body and will cause premature death. Any old boa breeder can tell you (whether they will or not may vary) that powerfed breeder boas seldom live past 5 -6 years.

Ok now what? How do I fix ithis?

For many years, I have used Yogurt to correct this with varied success but mostly fairly good. Yogurt is chocked full of cultured beneficial bacteria.

BUT...then I ran into a couple of hard cases. Corallus (tree boas) are delicate as we all know and a couple of years ago, I took in a couple of rescue w/c emeralds. One wouldn't eat. The other would eat, bloat and puke. Yogurt did not help either and they both died. I even tube fed the nonfeeder and because the gut flora wasn't up to par probably killed him quicker than starvation would have. A little over a year ago, I bought what may be the only piebald amazon tree boa in captivity. I have heard a few reports where someone "used to have one" or maybe they saw one somewhere...but I can't find another one anywhere. She is a wild caught adult....very stressed and has refused food for a year now regardless of how offered. You can see all her bones and she has brought me much agony as I am sure I have caused her some too trying to get her up to speed. Yogurt has done nothing for her. I have been offering her various types of food once a month for the whole year and tube feeding her once or twice a month as far away from food offering time as I can schedule it. She is constantly dehydrating and having bad shed after bad shed. I KNOW her gutr flora has to be shot...I am extremely concerned about renal failure also because of all this.....THEN, if that's not enough, my 2 oldest emeralds start bloating and puking just like ther rescue female NL emerald that died a year ago was doing...If any of you know me at all, you know how much I love Esmarelda and Emilio and how proud I am of my pied amazon and how much I want her to pull through....but I gotta tell you, Those two emeralds are family. If anything happens to them because of something I did or did not do....I won't be any fun to be around for a very long time.

SO....with my 3 closest to my heart snakes facing premature death....I went into hardcore research mode and learned about bene-bac and other products like it (probiotics). Nutri-bac has some rave reviews too but I couldn't find any local and ended up buying benebac. I should also mention that the problem with my emeralds stemmed from me using crappy petstore dial thermometers. I knew better but the cages were set up identical and they both showed the same temp within a degree...how could two be wrong the same exact amount? I dunno but they were. Nicole Russel sent me a nice PE-2 laser guided temp gun for my birthday (Thanks again Nicole) That's when I found that the spot my emerald cages and a few of my amazon cages were reading 83 were actually 90-91 freakin degrees. Sheeze...I can't believe they aren't all dead....so back to bene-bac. This is how I used it and it worked! I have to give credit to Danny Mendez from Urban Jungles. I used his writings more than anyone elses on this subject to figure out a treatment plan.

If your reptile pukes. they will usually drink a lot of water right away. This is good because puking dehydrates them. Unfortunatly when they puke up a rat or something, they also puke up most of their gut flora. If you don't see them drinking shortly after puking, you may need to tube feed them some water or preferably some pedialyte

From here out a great deal of patience is crucial ! And you can not feed your snake for quite awhile to make this work but the payoff is grand!

For any boid:
Wait one full week and give 2 grams/kg of benebac NO FOOD till the 3rd dose 3 weeks later!. Really huge snakes I would give 5-6 grams just to get it down there. It's a thick green paste and it's not easy to get them to swallow it. As long as some gets down there though you are in good shape. It's alive and it multiplies. One gram has 10 million viable colony forming units.

Do this again every week for a total of 6 doses. On the 3rd week along with the 3rd dose...you can offer a very very small meal. Nourishment is not a goal here people. Conditioning the gastrointestinal tract is the goal. If it's a 6 foot boa, feed it a small weaned rat. If it's an adult emerald tree boa, feed it a pink rat. THINK SMALL! It is very important that this meal does not cause any bloating or regurge and in all actuality, you aren't feeding the snake. You are feeding the bacteria inside the snake.

Continue feeding very small meals every other dose ending on that 6th week. then VERY GRADUALLY start increasing the prey size back to normal

For Colubrids, pitvipers and elapids.... fast metabolisms, fast recovery. give them a dose 3-4 days after puking if they puked or asap for any other problems...wait a week ...dose and feed a small meal...go ahead and keep them on the same feeding schedule just keep it small and get 3-4 doses of benebac down a week apart. for most 1/2 gram to a gram is more than plenty. then gradually return to normal sized prey but not as gradual as you will with boids.

bug eating Lizards...dose and feed dose and feed....just keep feeding them normal ...keep checking for worms ...worm as needed...

monitors, I would find a good herp vet. A non feeding monitor has some serious issues. impaction maybe? huge parasite load? A puking monitior? what could possibly make a monitor puke? You probably would miss that anyway because they will re-eat it lol....I have very limited monitor experience so I really don't have much to offer here.

Bene-bac and Nutri-bac are brand names of Probiotics (opposite of antibiotics). There are many others. Some even come in powdered form.


How are my snakes doing now?

Esmarelda and Emilio are doing great. They have held down their little pink rats and beneback with no bloating. I fhave increased from pink to fuzzy to hopper rats and they ate 3 nights ago and are curled up happily asleep right now with no bloating or sign of trouble. They were weird. The both bloated at the same time and puked within minutes of each other and are in seperate cages. They also always poop within minutes of each other. Might have something to do with same size and species...identical cages and identical feeding schedule.

Spot, my piebald wasn't so easy. Easy enough to dose but I had to puree pink rats, benebac, egg yolk, pedyalite and Vitamin B12 in a blender and tube feed her. BUT...now that she has finished her benebac doses, I left her all night with a f/t fuzzy rat last night and I am very excited to report that she ate it! GO SPOT GO!

Here is what Bene-bac looks like. Trust me on this one guys. This may very well be the best 12 bucks you have ever spent. I would have paid anything I had or could could get if I had to to save these snakes.

.................................................. .

http://redtailboa.net/forums/showthr...ght=probiotics

There is further reading on that thread from a few other people using Probiotics. The most interesting point being that when using antibiotics, the nature of the antibiotics is that it kills of bugs and unfortunately, gut flora is one of the bugs to go. When the gut flora is wiped out, diahorrea, regurge, bloating become commonplace.

I used to use powdered Acidophilus when treating sick snakes, now I know of probiotics, I use that instead. It is available in an avian form here in australia, under a different brand name. I will drag it out of the cupboard tonight when I get home from work and let you know what it is called.

Hope this helps.

[Wrasse]

OK, so I didn't wait until tonight....

The product available in Australia is 'Probiotic' by Vetafarm. 3 Bye Street, Wagga Wagga, NSW, 2650 Ph: 02 6925 6222 Fax: 02 6925 6333. http://www.vetafarm.com.au

Dose rate, mixed in water and tubed is : 1 gram Probiotics per 1 kilo bodyweight.

Do not administer if the antibiotics are tubed, until after tubed antibiotic dose is completed.