Morelia Python Radio

Dr. Randon Feinsod from Ani-Care Animal Hospital joins us.

In this episode we are joined by Dr. Randon Feinsod from Ani-Care Animal Hospital for a discussion about some of the more advanced topics when it comes to reptile keeping. We will be discussing a variety of topics including: RIMitesinternal parasites Better husbandry Check out Dr. Feinsod's facebook page https://www.facebook.com/pages/Ani-Care-Animal-Hospital/241074645660?fref=ts

Duration:: 2h 33m
Broadcast on:: 15 Apr 2015
Audio Format:: other

Hey Chad Brown here. You may remember me as a linebacker in NFL or as a reptile breeder in the owner of Proxox. I've been hurtin since I was a boy and I've dedicated my life to advancing the industry and educating the community about the importance of reptiles. I also love to encourage the joy of breathing and keeping reptiles as a hobbyist, which is why my partner Robin and Marklin and I create the reptile report. The reptile report is our online news aggregation site bringing you the most up-to-date discussions from the reptile world. Visit the reptile report.com every day to stay on top of the latest reptile news and information. We encourage you to visit the site and submit your exciting reptile news, photos and links so we can feature outstanding breeders and hobbyists just like you. The reptile report offers powerful brandy and marketing exposure for your business and the best part is it's free. If you're a buyer or breeder, you've got to check out the reptile report marketplace. The marketplace is the reptile world's most complete buying and selling destination full of features to help put you in touch with the perfect deal. Find exactly what you're looking for with our advanced search system, searched by sex, weights, morph or other keywords and use our buy-it-now option to buy that animal right now. Go to marketplace.the reptile report.com and register your account for free. Be sure to link your marketplace account to your ship your reptiles account to earn free tokens with each shipping label you book. Use the marketplace to sell your animals and supplies and maximize your exposure with a platinum ad. It also gets fed to the reptile report and our powerful marketplace Facebook page. Buy your own selling, use shipyreptiles.com to take advantage of our discounted priority overnight shipping rates. Shipyreptiles.com can also supply you with the materials needed to safely ship your animal successfully. Use shipyreptiles.com to take advantage of our discounted priority overnight shipping rates and materials needed to ship the reptile successfully live customer support in our live, on time, arrival insurance program. We got you covered. Visit the reptile report.com to learn or share about the animals. Click on the link to the marketplace. Find that perfect pet or breeder. Then visit shipreptiles.com to ship that animal anywhere in the United States. We are your one stop shop for everything reptile related. [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] Hello, everybody. Welcome to another episode of Morelia Python radio. Tonight we have Dr. Randin Feinstein joining us from AniCare Animal Hospital. He is a vet there and we're going to talk about some of the more advanced topics of reptile keeping. For instance, we might head on respiratory infections, mites, internal parasites, waste for better husbandry and such. One of the points that he brought up when we were going back and forth was what you should bring when you're coming to the vet to help the vet better prepare for the visit. We're going to have him come on in a couple minutes. I guess we'll just hit on what's new with you Owen. How's everything going? Things are going well. I have no idea still what's going on with my eggs or my animals breeding season life. We're waiting anxiously for potentially another clutch. Other than that, picked up a few things coming. I'll be announcing them later. I looked at the calendar to realize Carpetfest is not too far away, so I should be prepared for this and I started to do that. Yes, Carpetfest is literally a month and a week or a couple weeks away. It's on May 30, 2015. If you're into carpets, this is a must attend event get to hang out, eat some good food, drink some good beer and talk snakes. There's a lot of cool things happening in the Carpet Python world that I'm sure that there will be a lot of things to talk about, not to mention the fact that we'll be doing an auction to raise money for U.S. Army. We'll be making announcements that we're looking for donations for the auction. If you have an animal or you want to donate a voucher or something along those lines, we'd be more than happy to put that up there for you. That's a great way to do some stuff, and I hear it's back to the full. Something cool, it'd be something nice, and we usually have some good stuff. I know Buddy Bishami is offering a candro, like he does every year. I'm probably doing a certificate. You're probably doing a certificate. I'm probably going to end up trying to auction you off again. No one ever takes you. The snakes come with me. If the snakes come with me, then... Oh, yeah, we'll do that. So, when you take me, it's ridiculous. Oh, my God. What do I think about that? Yeah, there you go. It can't but have to be a really good time, and I'm getting ready for foods pretty much locked in already. It's weird. That happened so quickly and so easily. I don't know what to do with myself anymore. I mean, I had pretty much become the seafood event, huh? Yeah, I mean, we had people step up pretty easily and offer a bunch of stuff. I mean Howard's bringing crabs, Andy's bringing lobsters, Mike's bringing clams, and then Nick from Massachusetts. I'm totally blanking under the last name right now, Nick. I apologize. He's descending with Andy a bunch of shrimp. So, we have pretty much anything that would be a crustacean in the ocean. It's probably going to be served up at Carpetfest. So, really, all I'm looking for now for people to bring is freaking booze and side dishes, and dessert. Oh, there you go. So, it's like my work's halfway done. I don't know what to do with myself. So, yeah, it's looking really awesome, and we're going to have a good time, I hope. And then, of course, we go to Klypeeling's place, and then you have one. Yeah. It's like, I will see you for four days in a row. I know. I mean, I'm never going to want to see you again. I know. We should probably cancel the show for that Tuesday. We should be able to take some time apart to prepare for such things. We're going to have so much to talk about. What are you kidding? I'm sure I'll be drunk somewhere in a corner or something. I'm sure all vomitor did tossed off the fishing boat. So, yeah, I mean, this is obviously, they'll be coin. So, yeah. So, yeah, cool things. Real quick, before we bring the doctor on, I woke up this morning. It was about six o'clock in the morning, and I go in my reptile room first thing in the morning, grab my cup of coffee, and just kind of walk around and check things out. And I had a surprise clutch. I've never had that happen before. But there is definitely a look that a carpet put -- well, I guess it's really a python, but I'm going to speak for carpet pythons. There's definitely a look that carpet pythons have when they're beehived around a clutch of eggs. I looked, and I noticed it, and I said, wow, I didn't think that this girl was grab it, but apparently she was. And I'm pretty excited about it, because it's striped co-stools from -- and then Michael Pinnell, which, as we know from last week's show, goes back to Lemke bloodline co-stools. So, you know, it's pretty excited about that. The only downside is that she still has an egg in her, but it's real close to the end. So I'm going to let it go probably either early tomorrow morning or later tonight. I'm going to try to see if she lays it, or I don't know. I don't know what's going to happen with that, but we'll see. I guess if she doesn't get it out, and I can't palpate it out, I guess I will be making a trip to the vet. So, that's kind of how it goes. But that's the answer to breeding live animals, I guess. Yeah. Look at you. A year or two ago, I knew this boy, who is a little caramel, had an impacted egg, and he tweaked out and called me and several other people to come over and, you know, and you handling it all yourself. I put on my big boy pants. So, enough of us, Ramble, and let's get this party going. Hello, Dr. Feinstein. How are you doing? Welcome to Morelle Python radio. Glad to have you. Glad to be here, guys. Thanks for inviting me. Absolutely. So, Dr. Feinstein, if you could give us a brief overview. Tell us about your journey to becoming a vet. What did you have to do and where did you go to school? So, veterinary school is going to be quite a bit like medical school, so you're going to go to four years of college. Most of the time, you'll have to basically, you know, take courses that people would consider at a pre-med, and then after that, you actually have to get into vet school. Personally, I applied right away to a university called Ross University. It's outside the United States. It's down in the Caribbean Island. And they're sort of willing to take people and give them a chance. So, for me, it meant not going ahead and then doing master's degree or a Ph.D. But the average age starting in vet school right now is 26, 27. And I was actually graduated by the time I was 25. So, for me, I knew what I wanted to do. And I didn't feel that it was going to benefit me to wait. So, I left the country. I got my degree. I practiced for 10 years in New York City. And now I'm out in York, Pennsylvania. Oh, okay. So, you're up close to me, actually. That works. Yeah. So, where did you do your undergrad work? My undergraduate was near you as well. I went to the University of Pennsylvania. Oh, okay. You're pen. All right. Yeah, cool. You've been following me, apparently, because I used to work there. So, it's all right. Yeah. So, now, what can you tell us about your current practice? Are you just seeing dot-x or all manner of better? No, it's not a small animal practice. We still see a lot of dogs and cats. We play around with the statistics sometimes. We're probably seeing about 25% of dot-x animals right now. That probably, you know, most commonly is going to be rabbits and guinea pigs and cats. But, you know, we also see reptile birds once in a while, small farm animals. So, we'll see some chickens and ducks, and many popular pigs are getting pretty popular out here. So, quite a bit. And, you know, I'm lucky enough to have staff that are interested in all that. So, I have one of our staff members is a pretty big reptile keeper. My girlfriend is my practice manager. And I've kept reptiles before and helps me with all my own. So, we've got a pretty good base for the reptile community. Cool. Very cool. So, how far has reptile medicine come over the past couple of years while you've been practicing? It's really -- it's a totally different subject. When I graduated, I think that there was probably, you know, the beginning, captive reading. So, you were still seeing a lot of corn snakes and, you know, maybe some king snakes. But, there certainly wasn't the amount that people were the popularity of the captive reading. So, I think that's changed quite a bit of what we're seeing. And then, technology-wise, the advancement as far as the universities investing in their reptile departments and things like that, the science that's going behind reptile medicine is just exploding. So, what I thought I want to know is nowhere near what, you know, the current knowledge base is. When I graduated, Doug Mater's book from '95, '96, you know, was the reptile medicine Bible. And I think it was maybe 300 pages. Most recent book was 2006, which is most recent update. And it currently is probably about 1,500 pages. And so much has changed since 2006 that they've had to get published a transition book. It's basically not a new edition. It's just a continuum of all the dramatic changes. So, there's some good chapters on things like citrate and rhinovirus with frogs and then a lot of new advancements in reptile surgery and medicine. Probably, for many personally, I think the biggest changes has been, you know, the information that's come out about a lot of things like reptile viruses. So, I think it was last year that they've been able to classify mitovirus and ball pythons as being one of the primary causes of some of their respiratory problems. So, you know, it's taken up till 2014 to document the virus that most commonly causes those problems. So, you know, it's been a long haul. A couple of years ago, they documented the virus that they think is causing IBD. So, when I graduated, we didn't even know if that was viral. So, you know, again, advancements in the information that's been tremendous. Huge, huge change. Wow. That's crazy how that would go up so quickly. But, wow. Now, do you keep any reptiles or do you just strictly practice caring for them? I keep animals at home. We have animals at the clinic as well. So, yeah, we have quite a big collection for the carpet fans. You know, the carpet fans, they have three carpets at home. And my first carpet plus was last year. So, I now have eight babies that are growing quite well. So, do you name it? I've read green tree pythons as well. There's a quite a big collection right now of Amazon tree boas. So, quite a good connection. But right now, that's the stuff that probably pertains to you guys the most. Yeah, well, emerald tree boas and I have an agreement. I stay away from them. They stay away from me. Yeah, I have a good time with Amazon tree boas. But I haven't started in remote for a long time ago. But right now, it's just Amazon tree boas. Okay. Well, congrats on your first clutch last year. Are you going to repeat it? I'll talk to you later next year. Give me a redear off, make it Trisha, gain their way back, and then we'll see what happens. Cool. Definitely. As far as the research that's being done, is there a way that the listener could find papers that are written about the advancement in reptile medicine? Is that like, could you look that up on Google scholar? Probably. I think that there's a couple of online sites that you can look up as well. I can be pretty frank though. I've been doing this for 15 years. And when I was even looking up some of your questions just to make sure I was prepared, I found journal articles I had never even seen before. So every time I go and try to do research, it's amazing how much has been documented and how much isn't coming out to the public, let alone veterinarians. So just yesterday, looking something out to found a journal article with a collection of corn snakes in Europe that they documented three new viruses in the single collection of snakes. Wow. So it's pretty amazing how much is changing, how fast is changing. But I think some of those journal articles can be found personally veterinarians use a website called VIN, which is the Veterinary Information Network. It's veterinary only. It's a place for us to do research and get the journal articles. My brother is a human physician and when he has to order a new journal article, he costs him about 30, 40 bucks luckily for us. It's only about $11, $12 to download an entire article. But everybody's going to have their own sites and their own ways of getting that info. The tougher part is trying to really weed through the garbage. I mean, there's going to be obviously a lot of people publishing their own stuff online and it doesn't necessarily make it just science. So trying to actually look at the source that you're getting your info probably makes a really big difference. So there's certain names that I'll recognize and see. And when those guys' names are being published with these studies, it makes it a little bit more legitimate. So there's some stuff out there that doesn't always have good science or good medicine behind it. So you have to be careful with your sources. Gotcha. Okay. I guess I'm going to start with the easy question. What would be the number one reason that people would bring their snake or their reptile in to see you? The number one problem. Number one problem right now is probably anorexia when a snake's not eating. Probably most of those people feel that that's the secondary to respiratory infections. But, you know, it really does depend on sometimes even the season. So summertime I think we see a lot more mite problems. Probably pylons from rodent. Even trauma, escapes, things like that. Wintertime you definitely see a much stronger correlation with the respiratory infections. Okay. All right. And I was talking to Chris and he was telling me that you had some thoughts on about the use of three dimensional space such as caging and perches over. I guess you dropped out. Anyway. I can hear you. Okay. Good. Yeah. I guess my co-host dropped out there. Yeah. Of course, three dimensional cages. There's actually been really good research as far back as the 80s. And there's even a welfare book written about reptile and about how they should be kept. And there's a lot of interesting studies and material just in that one book alone suggesting by use of studying things like stress hormones, which in reptiles, sort of a serum. And basically the three dimensional environments, the larger environments, the more naturalistic environments, all are associated with better growth rates, better health, and better reproduction. And lower stress level. So all those things are obviously going to interact within the individual snake and then give you either a healthy animal or a sick animal. So people need to understand when it comes to something like a viral infection, there are snakes that have viruses that are totally normal and don't act sick. So the difference ends up being nine times out of ten, the husbandry that they're given when they're being kept in captivity. So small enclosures are notoriously difficult to have good funeral gradients. So when snakes get sick, it has a situation we call behavioral fever. It's going to want to sit in the hot spot a little bit longer and raise that body temperature up to be a little bit higher. And when you get into the technical science, it could be as simple as certain digestive enzymes are working better at eighty-eight degrees against a certain virus than eighty-six, which might be more normal. So behavioral fever can be critical to them either showing symptoms or not showing symptoms. So a small, you know, rack system, you're just not able to provide that. Just as important as temperature, you know, for certain individual species, it's going to be exposure to ultraviolet light, exposure to humidity, exposure to light cycle, whether or not there's daylight cycles, you know, day-night cycle. When you look at snakes that have been studied in the wild, the Amazon Tribos have been studied pretty well, and they're going to see a different hunting strategy and a different foraging behavior if it's a new moon versus a full moon. So with the brightness of a full moon, they're going to have to avoid predators and they're going to not be as active. In a dark white, you know, in a new moon, they'll be more active. So there are those types of things that get discussed in those kinds of textbooks that, you know, make sure you really think about, you know, how we're keeping these guys in captivity. If you use zoological standards for what they use for other species, they typically recommend enclosures that are no smaller than four times the length of the animal by two times the length of the animal, and typically depending on if it's a terrestrial or a boreal species, you know, two to three times the length of the animal and height of the enclosure. So if you think about a carpet python or a green tree python being four to six feet, you know, you've got some enclosures sizes that should be based on AZA, you know, recommendations that can be 10, 12, 20 feet long, and how many of us are doing that. So three mentioned, also typically stretches, muscles, and works with cardiovascular system and the pulmonary system completely differently. So again, when it comes to welfare, you know, from the point of the well-being of the animal, yeah, you can't go big enough these days. Wow. Okay. Well, I guess I don't really foresee anybody putting 20-foot enclosures in their room, but... Well, first thing we expect to actually shift around a lot of our own cages that at least go a little bit more naturalistic, use things like live plants to help the humidity and filter in the air, even for most of our other larger animals, so I have an iguana. They all go outdoors for the summer. So the... And my iguana enclosure for the outside is 12 feet long, eight feet high, eight feet wide. So that way he can get a chance to, you know, run around and move and even have a pond big enough you can swim in. So, you know, I do think it's made for a much better situation. I don't know too many people, you know, north of the Mason-Dixon line at Brea de Guanas, and we've brought ours to sexually a couple of times. Okay. So I really do think that the increased complexity of a larger three-dimensional face is definitely going to make their lives better. Okay. So you would definitely recommend caging over racks and then offer perching, if possible, for... What? I don't know if you need a rack system that's being able to address things like a day and night cycle, correctly. No, it's true. You know, sort of fall for things, you know, like night time drops and things like that. So it makes it a lot more challenging. Yeah. Yeah, it makes sense for me. No. So, what about the use of basking spots versus standard flat temp method? And the long-term health effects associated with this type of keeping? Right. So, again, you think about the thermal gradients in the terms like behavioral fever. In some snakes, it's been shown that even in a porexia or the opposite of a fever, but cooling the body down can be just as important. So not being able to provide a good thermal gradient is tremendous. There's been some work done on the thyroid function in reptiles showing that if they don't get a night time drop, then that can be affecting their thyroid and ultimately the thyroid is going to affect all the other basic metabolic functions, so you'll have to increase the immune system. I don't know anyone who's ever kept the bulk types on, you know, 40, 50 years in a rack system, but in zoos, that's common. So, I think the longest lived snakes in the Guinness Book World Records for a while was a pole constrictor over at the Bronx Zoo, and that recently got to pass by Ball Python. So, you know, again, I don't know too many animals who've been in a rack system for 30, 40 years. So, I think that there has to be something to that. Wow. Yeah. I guess so. So, obviously, basking for parts or sites or what? I do think that having the basking site is going to be critical and having that gradients going from a high hot spot down to, you know, lower end temperatures, which are probably approaching for most of our species at least when temperature, if not colder, in certain species, you know, mountain type species, some mountain species, things like chameleons. If you don't drop them by 10, 20 degrees at night, they're not going to be healthy. Right. So, you know, when we're dealing with something special, you know, like a ballons or something like that, one of the high-end, you know, high-end high-flow cows for something like green tree pythons, that could be critical to have nighttime drops going 60s, you know, maybe even lower. So, the thermal grade answer are very important. Now, would you recommend a lamp with UV spectrum or is a radiant heat panel good enough or? Well, you know, again, I personally, you know, tell my clients that I think that there's a huge difference, but I don't think that when you get down to these things, that you can just make sort of a broad spectrum statement. So, certain products, I think, are far better than others. I personally only use the flow heat panels in my own house. Knowing that the owner, I know that his radiant panels are producing, you know, radiation in the spectrum that's consistent with the same spectrum that human beings and mammals need to improve digestion and circulation. So, I don't know how technical some of the other panels get, but that, to me, shows that the thought level going into a heat panel is tremendous. I've recently started using things like a square integer to look at the heat patterns within an enclosure and within the animal itself, and I definitely see a more uniform heat signature on snakes that are under, excuse me, a pro-heat panel. This is concerned, you have to, again, go back to things like the welfare textbook. Most of the cows probably see the ultraviolet light. So, if we're talking about having a proper day/night cycle and having a proper color spectrum, most of the time we think that most snakes probably see better color than we do. So, the human eye and the egocentric human doctors have always looked at the human eye as being the standard for color vision. Humans use three cones to see color. Reptiles have been shown to have two, birds have been shown to have two, but they're double-teaked. So, they function as four different cones as opposed to three. So, they actually see color vision better than we do. And one of those real ones was into the ultraviolet spectrum. So, ultraviolet A, which is the first type of ultraviolet outside of what human beings see, which is what ultraviolet means. It's in the blue spectrum outside of what a human can see. It's considered normal to an insect, to a reptile, to a bird. But, again, providing that, it may be important for things like stress hormone release and things like that. We don't know in a lot of these species. Recently, it's been shown that some of the snakes, I know for sure, corn snakes have been studied. Their body responds to ultraviolet B, the same way that a chameleon or a human would, in the sense that it converts their vitamin D to its active form. So, vitamin D level is linked to the immune system. So, it goes, again, back to help and herd immunity. With vitamin D and snakes, we know that it can improve clutch size. It can improve things like eggshell density. So, there's a lot of things that that could be benefitting. Now, the only other types on, I know, if it's been studied when it comes to ultraviolet, it's a ball python. And, as of right now, the ball python does not respond to ultraviolet B. So, it's vitamin D level, doesn't change. So, it fits more of a model of a true carnivore, something like a cat, where they have to absorb their vitamin D from their food. So, there's physiologically, there's psychological benefits. As for now, we don't know where something like maybe Morelia fit into that. No one's studied Morelia yet. I know of a forepetologist in England who did a study of ultraviolet transmittance through shed skin. And the green tree python allows more ultraviolet through its tissue than most other snakes. And, actually, it fits the roots of any reptile. So, you realize it's damaging, then why are they absorbing it? So, they must, you know, they probably respond anyway, I think, to the ultraviolet, you know, physiologically. So, yeah, when it comes to light spectrum, we think that there's a lot of stuff that we're going to learn. There's a lot of veterinarians that are practicing in university settings that are currently studying this stuff. So, we'll probably hear a lot more about that in the next few years. Wow, that's awesome. It's fascinating. Sorry, I dropped it out guys, but I'm back. That's just blows my mind. But what's the biggest mistake you see keepers making when it comes to reptile husbandry? You know, I think, unfortunately, I don't see a lot of breathers. So, I think that's the most common mistake for the average person keeping snakes. It's just not knowing their species. It's not knowing basic husbandry requirements. I think we touched on the fact that, you know, one of the things we wanted to talk about is what clients can be doing to improve their vet visits. So, by having things prepared, like, not just "yes, I have heat, yes, I have a mama", but, you know, what brand of life auger you're using? What brand of heat panel are you using? Because, again, I don't think all these things are created equal. I was telling a client just today a story where we had a boat restrictor come to us as a second opinion. The guy had already had biopsies on the skin done, had cultures and sensitivities of his lungs and these wounds that he was having on his skin done. They're over a thousand dollars. I took the snake, I put it in a six foot by two foot by 18 inch tall PPC cage with two radiant heat panels, but in two weeks he shed his wounds were half the size and he started feeding after not feeding for six months. So, what's the difference? You know, again, it's the enclosure. He was using an old wooden cage. Would we know absorbs the debris and pathogen and moisture really well? It can promote him to crumble broke. So, his enclosure just wasn't right and it just wasn't caught, you know, wasn't following good basic husbandry invites. You know, we see a lot of people feeding lives and the rodent bites statistically, I think, across the country has been shown to be one of the number one reasons why people go to the vet is when their snake gets bit by the rat. So, you know, they can't be one specific thing, but basically just the lack of knowledge of the species involved. So, you know, if you're a desert species and you're not keeping it dry, that could lead to fungal infection and a lot. So, you know, if you have a wild caught snake and you haven't checked it for parasite, if you have an iguana and it doesn't have a hot spot reaching 95 to 100 degrees and they don't have ultraviolet light. For me, when I'm looking at things like husbandry and things not being created equal, you know, you could go to a brand like Zoo Med by a coil lamp for resin tube or a mercury vapor bowl. And if you have a bearded dragon, I don't think you're doing the justice unless you're using a mercury vapor. If you're using a coil lamp, they've been known to be very concentrated up close and things like what they call like the inflammation of the cornea and the surrounding tissues of the eye can occur pretty easily from a lamp like that. So, you know, those different types of products can be very different, you know, for each species. So, for right now, my snakes are generally going under at least a full-spectrum lamp and then depending on which species we're talking about, most of my others will go under a fluorescent UVA/UVA/UVA lamp. So, certainly most of my diurnal snakes have, you know, flying snakes and they're under ultraviolet light. I've kept, we do a lot of rescue work and in PA, you're a lot of venomous snakes. So, we've done homework with the rattle snakes and we've had it where rattlesnakes don't eat. You put them under ultraviolet light and they start eating again. So, you know, it really does depend on the species and, you know, what's, how they're being kept. You know, unfortunately, in most common pet stores, you know, you've got a kid who likes reptiles who's still in high school feeding stuff. That's not going to compare to the information that I have. So, you know, when you talk about common snakes, most of the time, I hate to say it. It's just ignorant. It's not knowing your species. So, it's, you know, it's pretty, obviously reptile kidney states, it's pretty complex. So, it's not going to be a single mistake. So, the most common is just not knowing what's proper for that animal. Okay. What about when it comes to obesity in snakes? Do you see a lot of that? What's your problem on that? Absolutely. I mean, obesity is definitely one of the biggest problems that every American faces, so whether or not it's human, dogs, cats, or snakes. I definitely find, especially with snakes, you probably see it a lot with certain lizards, probably those things like chameleons, what people buy them to see the way they eat. People want to see a constrict or constrict. They want to see a chameleon shoot its tongue in. So, overfeeding is, you know, very, very common. I've gotten into, you know, some pretty conversations with cryptologists and zoos and things like that. Over, you know, what's the best prey item? Is a rat better than a mouse? And some people would argue the percentage of body fat in a rat is higher than a mouse. But, you know, just like a human medicine, sometimes you've got to think about healthy fat versus unhealthy stomach. So, for some of my own reptiles right now, I actually use red palm oil and put it into my frozen rodent because it's offering, then, omega-3 fatty acid, which you're going to be healthy fat. I lost an Amazon tree boa, and it was going on last year, that when I did an ecopsy, which is an animal autopsy, and biopsy some of the tissues, the most significant finding was steatitis. It was inflammation for the fat bodies and the total half of the body. And that turns out that probably was nutritional. If you overheat your frozen thawed rodent, you're actually damaging some of the vitamins. So, a slower thawed method, you know, could be really important there. And when you're dealing with the obesity, not having certain vitamins, specifically vitamin E, could be one of the triggers for something like the otitis. So, the obesity, it's a lot, you know, there's obviously the simple way of looking at it. You're overfeeding your animal. But then there's also, what are you feeding your animal? You know, it's a morbidly obese, thin, breeder mouse, you know, where the young rats. I mean, you know, those two animals, to me, are very, very different. They're way the same amount. But I think that the nutritional value is very different. When we think about, you know, how many different species of rodents and birds, something like a carpet type sign or a green tree might be able to eat in the wild. But obviously, variety is going to be the spice of life when it comes to diet and completing that diet. So, obesity is huge. And it also goes back to just like in humans, you've got diet on one side, and then the other side is the exercise. So, again, a rack system versus a three dimensional enclosure are going to be offering totally, completely different forms of exercise. Hauling your body up onto a tree is obviously going to be very different than sitting in a rack on a flat surface. So, again, when it comes to obesity, you have to look at things at both sides of that equation. True. Now, can we talk about respiratory infections in snakes? Sure. What do you find are the main causes of respiratory infections in snakes? So, I think just the definition of that question shows you how far apart I think veterinarians and keepers are. There's not going to be a common cause. There's going to be just about anything you can think of. We're taught in school when we think of a certain problem, you know, how many things could cause that same problem? So, pneumonia can be caused because you've inhaled a cocktail. So, how many of us, when our snake is bubbling at the glottis, you know, ever think of, you know, did I just bleach that cage and cause a literal burn to the tissue? So, when we talk about common causes, everybody wants to break it down to maybe virus and bacteria. But, you know, I can give you a ton of evidence for parasites, for fungus. You know, if anyone pays attention to what's happening with wild snakes right now, we've recently documented where people are calling snake fungal disease, which is the, I think it's a city of myses right now. It's a pathogen related to the yellow skin fungus, the beta dragon, and it's destroying snake faces. And if you look at some of the pictures, pretty similar to what people would call mouthrod. And I have an old reptile textbook that used to classify mouthrod as a type of respiratory infection. So, again, depending on species, there are going to be certain things that will show up more often. Again, I mentioned before that three -- oh, that goes through the virus with the ball python. Well, it turns out that three independent universities came up with the same viral pathogen, so the respiratory infection that you see in ball python. And right now, that's believed that fact is the, you know, that same virus could probably affect most other species of python. So for people who have a ball python and a carpet python, then something like night of virus might be very, very common. The other thing I think a lot of people make a mistake or an assumption with something like pneumonia is that it's bacteria. And what we're actually finding, it's not ever going to be one certain bacteria. A lot of these bacterial infections in the lung or the glottis, the trachea, are going to be secondary to the virus itself. So, the paramixal virus, night of virus, the arena virus, there's all sorts of viruses and reptiles that we know basically lead to secondary bacterial infection. So, is the bacteria the primary problem or the secondary problem? So, you know, again, you can get a mixture of the two problems. It's very common with a lungworm, which would be something that we've seen more often in a wild-class snake to have the lungworm and then secondary bacterial infection because of that. So, again, you can put them on antibiotics, but they're better. But then they'll just fall apart against because you never address the primary cause. So, defining the primary cause is probably the more important situation. So, certainly, if you ever have an outbreak, you really want to get some testing done. What I standardly do now, if a snake comes in with a respiratory infection question, we typically do what's called a transcriptial wash. It has a sterile tube down the throat of the snake. In some snakes, you can actually do this a week. Put a little bit of sterile saline in, mix it up, suck it back out again, and then put that under a microscope. If I see bacteria, then I'm going to culture it and find out what bacteria are living there and find out how to kill it. You can also find parasites. We had a boa constrictor, I think it was two years ago, come in with respiratory signs. And when we flushed its lung out, it came off with an unknown protozoa parasite and was able to clear that out pretty easily with a couple of those. It was an anti-parasite medicine. I've had something called a, if anyone's but familiar with it, a cat-eyed dog tooth snake. And when we did the wash, we found hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of worm eggs. So, it needed, again, a standard deworming. So, you know, as far as a common cause, you know, we typically think virus and bacteria, but you can literally see virus, bacteria, fungus, parasites, the old days of bull pythons, it was very common to see snake mice in the lungs. There was actually a separation of mice that lived in the lung of pythons. So, again, with the wild caught animals, you're going to see some very different things than you would a captive animal. But I think right now, especially in a large population of snakes, you know, the average thought would be the first thing I would think anyway would be viral. And then the second thing would probably be secondary bacterial infection. But, again, if we're going to find bacteria, after a memory, the initial cause was a virus, then it's whatever local bacteria can get into that wound. So, just think of, you know, as a kid, you're out of the park. You know, flip and fall and you scrape your knee. What caused the problem? So, the fall traumatized your knee would be the bacteria caused the infection. So, it was the trauma that allowed the bacteria in in the first place. So, you know, a lot of people, I think, get that way too confused when it comes to reptile medicine. I have literally had people call me up. I'm a snake breeder. I know what I'm doing. I just need bacterial. And it's like, why do you need bacterial? And the likely has an infection. I said, well, how do you know it's a bacteria? And they said, well, I've seen this before. I said, well, what bacteria is it? And they say, well, I don't know. And I said, well, how do you know Bachel's going to work? And they said, well, that's what I did last time. I said, well, 50% of infections are anaerobic bacteria, which means they grow without oxygen. And Bachel doesn't work on those species. So, it literally has a 50/50 chance that Bachel might help you. And that's just something there's no drug resistance. The other thing that's been documented with the bacteria recently is that for whatever reason, reptiles need to attract the drug resistant bacteria. You know, sugar bacteria when it's defined by the CDC is a bacteria that's resistant to four antibiotics or more. It's not uncommon for me to culture bacteria that are resistant to tenor more. So, those things are approaching, you know, the scare factor of fursa. Because, again, if those things get to you, your snake with mouth rot bites you, and you get that bacteria, there may not be a drug that can kill it. So, again, I think that when it comes to these kinds of questions these days, it's really complex. It's not going to be one straight-forward answer. You know, when it comes to the virus, when people want treatment, there are times that if you switch from a react system to a three-dimensional cage with a pro-heat panel on it, it probably gets better on its own. You know, if there are times that we can increase ventilation so that the humidity is not so high, some of these things would go away on their own. So, it's not like there's one specific thing that can cause respiratory infections. I remember a case study two years ago in a crested ghetto with mouth rot, and it turned out to be a parasitic worm in the gums of the lizard. So, you know, if we see that in a lizard, why wouldn't we see that in a snake? But how many people get the gum scraped and looked at on their microscope? So, yeah, there's not going to be one thing. But, again, in a large collection, probably taking along the lines of virus first. And then, like I said, I would normally sample the lungs and see what's living in there, and then try to make a good decision based on that. Wow. So, I guess your definite recommendation would be to take the time, spend the money, and get everything cultured to see the best way to fight whatever it is to see the correct mistake. And if you don't do the poultry, you're not going to necessarily get the right antibiotics. And, again, if it's my bacterial, then you're barking up the wrong tree altogether. And, you know, from walking away with the lemme, I know a lot of you guys have some pretty expensive snakes. You know, if you get a new virus that's going to bounce around and affect, you know, 25% of your collection, you know, how much financially is that worth? So, it doesn't matter if it's as thick as the cheap ones. Yeah, you can rack up the bills pretty high. So, yeah. That doesn't give you your total losses. Mm-hmm. Yeah, I find that pretty funny that you have somebody that would spend $5,000 on a snake, but won't they kick it, you know? They can spend the, you know, a couple of hundred bucks to check that. Yeah, you might not have to do something that we unfortunately deal with on a regular basis. They think that they spent $5,000. They know that snakes better than I do. And, you know, it's a little frightening. And they'll tell me flat out, no, my breeder told me all I need was bachelors. I thought that's because your breeder obviously has something in their system that they know responds to nature. So, they have a problem to begin with. Because, again, that's, you know, it's not worth it sometimes. It's definitely not a DIY project. Yeah, definitely. So, being that it is obviously important to catch it early, what are some of the signs you would look for in early onset? All right. Well, you know, you guys, you know, listen to your intro in the beginning. You were talking about waking up or having a cup of coffee and going to check in your snake. Mm-hmm. Gnomes are snakes and keeping records. It's probably the best thing that you guys can be doing. Because you're going to know when your snake is off-beat. You're going to know when a snake should be coming into shed. Or maybe that's why it didn't eat, you know? And you'll be having those tarts that can show you that this snake, you know, normally, you know, eats free meals and then poops. So, you're going to get those basics that sometimes people are going to miss. Obviously, if you have a tamed snake and you can do a basic physical and, you know, open its mouth and look at it, that can help. But on a more hands-off approach, just by observing your snake, I mean, I can't tell you how many people are going to see a snake yawn and see a little crud in its mouth. And when, oh, God, what happened? You know? And then if you keep him back there, you may remember that, you know, oh, you know, he struck up the glass the other day and he busted some teeth. Well, it's like the skin may hit the park. It's probably just a superficial infection and it could be cleaned out and probably would be fine. But certainly, if you have, you know, bubbling, if you could hear that click when they're breathing, some people talk about it as being a cooking noise in their throat. I personally got pretty good at looking at the glottis, the tubes that they breathe through. And you can usually see how things that look. You know, so the tissue might look inflamed. They're thickened. Sometimes it looks almost dry and sometimes their saliva is going to look thicker. You know, it might be more cloudy. There's saliva. So when it comes to respiratory infections, I mean, being hands-off, you can see some of that stuff without picking them up. You know, when we talked about, you know, human beings going through a stress test, you know, you pick up the snake and you're handling it. It's obviously increasing his exercise level and demand for oxygen. But sometimes, you know, handling the snake you might pick up on something. You know, sometimes you can feel the rattle in their chest when they're moving across your hands. So they're just being buried in their own snake, knowing their normal behavior, knowing what their normal anatomy looks like. Don Nader, the editor for the last couple of reptile medicine textbooks, lectures us all the time on knowing what normal is. He has a real classic story of the first period of dragon he ever looked at. And with the wild caught period of dragons, a lot of them are a lot of yellow pigments in their throat. So this was, I think, in the 1980s or something, he went to his mentor and said, "Hey, look, that, you know, I just thought he's no liver disease in a bearded dragon." And, you know, his mentor was like, "What do you mean?" He's like, "Well, look at his mouth. It's all yellow." But he had never seen a bearded dragon before. He didn't know that some of them have yellow in their mouth. But knowing your own normal is just as important as anything. So being able to observe your snakes and knowing the normal feeding pattern, when they are feeding, look at their mouth. Look at what's happening inside. And see if the glottist is bubbling or swollen, or, you know, again, has the stiffer saliva. But, yeah, you just got to know your own snakes, I think, in those situations. Makes sense. Yeah. Because, you know, you're going to be the first one to notice that they're not acting right. Yeah, exactly. Or you should be the first one to notice. Yeah, you should, exactly. Yeah, the next topic we wanted to hit on is probably the one who's reptile, keepers, probably dread more than anything. Shutter at. Yeah. I'm glad. It seems nobody likes to talk about them, but what would you say the best way to treat for mites would be? You know, I don't think that there's going to be one sex standard. I think that, you know, it's just like fleas and dogs. Prevention is going to be the key. So, for me, you know, I told you guys before that I do a lot more naturalist environments these days. So, I'm using, you know, a lot more mulches and even organic potting soil. So, I always spray myself straight with preventamite. I think it's still one of the only FDA approved products for reptile. So, you know, as a prevention method, that's going to be huge. Obviously, simple things in the schools for the respiratory infections as well. You know, quarantine is definitely, from my experience, way overlooked. You know, I talk to people and I'm like, did you quarantine the animal? And they're like, yeah, I put it in Iraq with the other three snakes. And that's why -- That's not quarantine. So, you know, in a zoo, the quarantine facility is not even located in the serpentarium. It's in a different building. You know, when it comes to quarantine, whether it's, again, mice or infection, how long is long enough? And in some of those situations, we don't know. There was, I think, a journal article recently of an infection from part of mix of virus in a snake. And it was quarantine, I think, for over nine months. And yet, it's still spread that virus. When it comes to mice, I think we've got that cycle down a little bit better. I think we know that those eggs can stay dormant. I think it's a couple of months duration. So, you know, again, you're not technically clear as far as I'm concerned with mites for probably three or four months. But being diligent about, you know, staying on top of it, catching those things early, you know, there's been times, especially since I'm using the natural substrates where I'll find mice in one cage and it's connected to three others, and none of the other animals have it. Because if you catch a quick enough, you take them out, you treat that individual animal and then spray those cages now, and you can really stop, you know, an outbreak and it's tracked. So, treating the snake with mites, I typically use Ibermectin. I've had good success with it. There's standard doses, you know, written in any medical textbooks for that. I use a compound formative, which is a formative to take a drug and make it into different forms or concentrations. So, the standard, you know, cattle Ibermectin is probably too strong for most small snakes. So, I have one kept at my clinic that has a more diluted concentration. So, I can use it in something that's 10 grams or 15 grams. So, if I have to deworm, you know, a small snake or if I have to, you know, treat mites in a smaller animal, I can do that safely. So, that's typically what I do in my own house and for my clinic is use Ibermectin to treat the individual snake and then have the cage spray down with something like preventamite. Okay. Something that they treat, like, so for instance, if you're going to spray preventamite is that every time you change the substrate, I've heard some people that don't even really change the substrate because that would spread the mites throughout your collection. Right, so, you know, if you had the cage that had the mite, then, you know, I'm going to remove the snake. I have snake bags in my house, impilitations and stuff that are sprayed with preventamite. So, if I bring home a new animal, it's going to go to the quarantine, it's going in that bag before I do anything. And then, if I had a mite outbreak and kind of take the snake out and put it in the bag, give it the shot of Ibermectin, then clean that cage. So, in order to clean that cage, I would start with spreading the cage. And then, you know, I typically use a small dust pan to start scooping it out, and then a vacuum after that to try to clean out. You have to think of mites almost like the bacteria. If you don't scrub the surface, it's clean. You're probably not, you know, removing some of the eggs. So, if I have cages that are close by with other cages, then I'm going to spray those cages too, so that if I do kick up some dust or something and spread those eggs around, then those other cages are up to date, you know, on their treatment. I think, currently, with a product, like pro products, I think it's staying power, it's about a month. So, if I haven't sprayed those cages, that goes back to the record keeping. So, if I haven't sprayed them within that month, you know, then I'm definitely going to re-spray them, you know, and make sure that everything else is up to date. And I have probably over 50 enclosures in my house, and, you know, I had a mite infection last year, I think it was, was when I got some fresh organic cotton foil, and it never expanded past that one cage. So, luckily enough, I stopped it and it tracks. Now, one good thing I have is kind of like a home remedy I've heard about that could potentially do some work. I think it's mixing like a dip solution with mixed life shampoo. Have you ever heard of that? Yeah, it's just, you know, it's people making up their own techniques. The difference between me using ivermectin and preventive mites, and someone else using mics, is the stuff that I use that's been proven in science. So, ivermectin has been clinically studied to be proven against the mites. It's been, you know, as far as the dosages and dos recommendations, they've been studied at, you know, at university level to not be toxic. When it comes to provenomite, you know, it has government standards for the same issues. I mean, it was studied to be sprayed directly on forces. So, you know, as far as the safety track record, it's a proven effective treatment that has scientific research behind it. You know, I've been in the business since 14 years old, you know, as far as working at a pet store, and keeping snakes in from eight, we've used Listerine, Dawn dish soap, you know, neck. You know, off, you name it, I've heard some pretty amazing things out there. But the reason why I use ivermectin and preventive mite right now is because it's studied. It's been proven. And it's been proven, you know, it's not a court of law, but, you know, it's the science court of law, because it's got journal and references and university studies to Mac. So that's why I use those. I've experimented personally with revolution, which is a dog's flea and tick product. They did some research with the deworming effect of some of these topical on some, I think it was, with turtles and some other stuff, with some of the other topical stuff from dogs and cats. But the research is pretty limited. So, you know, after 15 years, I've stopped, you know, using things like seven dust and some of the other things that I used to do in the past, because this is what works for me. And as a veterinarian, the tougher part at making a recommendation like using mix is that when it's not been studied before, and if something goes wrong, then, you know, there's no way for me to say it wasn't malpractice. If I can say that, you know, the pharmacology textbook on page 73 recommended this dose to this species, that unprotected if something goes wrong. So it's a little bit harder for me to stray from what other people do, because I have to go by what's in the scientific literature. It makes sense, and that's, you know, obviously everybody has their own tricks to, you know, home remedies and stuff like that. So, you know, but... Again, if you think about some of these things that people do, you mentioned nicks, you know, nicks means for a lot. Lights are insects and mites are arachnid. So, how many flea products are out there that don't kill ticks? So, you know, what you're talking about is essentially the same thing. So is it really just not the soap cleaning off the mites itself, you know, and just removing them? Or is it something that's actually killing them? So those things, there are kinds of questions that commonly get mistaken by owners. You know, "Oh, yeah, he's on flea tick product, and what are you using?" I mean, advantage, I said advantage. And they're like, "Yeah, well, that just killed flea." Well, they'll tell me they're on a program, which just sterilizes flea. It doesn't even kill flea. So, you know, in dealing with these big growth regulators versus, you know, pesticides and arachnid sites, they could be very, very different things. So, again, when it comes to experimenting, you know, basically, it's what's what we're talking about. Yeah, there are these some home remedies that have worked in the past. I'm a big fan of Don Dissel, just because I think it physically removes the eggs easily. Because it is a detergent that's cleaning the oils and getting under the scales and things like that. So it's not that I think it killed them, but it can help clean them. So it could still be part of the program, but I'm not going to use that and say that it's killing them. Because we don't have proof of that. Okay. No, it's obviously there's several reasons and you said you inject the animals with Ivermectin or do you use it as a topical? So I inject it. Okay. Again, depending on different species, you can get very different absorption levels. And because I'm a bit of an injection in the clinic, and again, it's an adult's range that makes it easy for me to use in small reptiles. I'm either going to inject it or I'll give it orally. Okay. Okay. So now for other internal parasites, because I know that some of the listeners do deal with certain wild caught species. What should they do to try to establish an animal successfully? So, you know, there's a lot to that. It's not such a simple black and white issue. There are parasites that may be more commensal-like where they're not really harming the animal. So the bottom line is you've got to get an idea on the species. So, you know, right now, probably the most common way to do that is with a fecal exam. When we do fecal exams in our clinic, we typically do a fecal floatation. So that's where we mix the feces with a salt solution. And just like an ice cube, the egg parasites will float to the surface. There are certain known species that sink instead of float. So sometimes they have to do a splintment rather than a float. And that's one way to find parasites. But a lot of the smaller species, they'll pick the entire fecal sample, mix it with the saline, and look at it under the microscope directly. And again, by that being the least egg down to a group of parasites. You know, sometimes we're not going to know the scientific name of that individual parasite. But it may be, you know, like a scrongile is a group of worms. So it could be a scrongile-type egg. And if it is, well, we know that tyrantils and bendazolacin probably will kill that. If it's a tankworm, we may need something like some bendazol or prosicwantsil for that. So identifying the species is the first and foremost. And you're getting a fecal exam. It's not particularly stressful on anybody but you. So getting a fecal in that looks at, you know, it's no real, you know, stress for the animal. And then once we know with species, we can better identify, you know, is it normal for that species? Is it common in that species? Is it known to cause pathology in that species? Because one of the common things that's happening these days is, just like with the viruses, you're going to see parasites that are in species that it doesn't belong. So if you're a wild snake and in the wild, your species is used to a certain parasite, you learn to live with it. You learn to adapt to it. But if all of a sudden you have a carpet python and you're mixing that with a green tree python and those parasites don't belong in that green tree python, then if you potentially kill that snake. So for the purposes of being technical, then actually in order to know whether or not it's pathological, you're talking about getting something like a biopsy. So, you know, when it comes to parasites, it can be pretty simple or it can be pretty complex. So the bottom line is you've got to figure out what the species is and then whether or not that's important to that individual snake. Because again, there are times, the tin worm and the bearded dragon or a guana, I'm going to ignore. A sconzo species and a python, I'm going to take a lot more seriously. So that's one of those species that can be invading things like it's lung and then causing the aurisins. So it depends on, again, the type of worm and parasite we're talking about. And that's something to point out to you. A lot of people think of the term parasite and just think worms. The parasite is any animal that infects any other animal. So there are parasites that live only in the blood. So if you don't take a blood sample, you'll never find it. Recently, we have a snake in the clinic with two different parasites within its blood and talking to the experts down at the University of Florida. They don't even know what species it is. So I just think, you know, paid them to do DNA testing on the parasites to figure out what it is. So I can figure out whether or not it's important and whether or not I need to try to kill it. So, you know, it's something that, you know, there are things that we don't even idea. So here I am trying to get the genetic studies done on this parasite to even know whether or not I'm going to try and kill it. So, you know, parasites come in a lot of different forms. So with their wild cut snakes, I mean, if we're going to get back to that, I think, you know, set them up as appropriately as you can. Get the proper thermal gradients in humidity and cover and, you know, if it's the rainforest species, maybe having live plants in it. You know, try to get that to the snake fields as at home as possible. Try to get it as natural prey sources possible. And if you're needing to be deprecating and doing other things normally, tracking things like body weight, you know, and growth and things like that might be more important than whether or not he has a parasite. True. So, now, I know that some parasites can be really stressful in getting rid of. I think it's like heartworm and dogs can, you know, is really not good because there's something like that in snakes where it almost is like that the treatment would be worse than to living with it. You know, again, I think it depends on the parasite. They're all, you know, they talk about chest full and invasive. There are species of reptilian lungworm that can cause a pretty serious damage to human beings. So it would be considered what we call zoonotic parasite. So I think that pentastones can actually get into your body and cause tissue and tumor-like swellings and things like that. So at what point is it more about you and not about the snake? And, you know, in a species like that, it's this large, almost all-emplated worm. So it's not something you're going to deworm that snake and expect it to go away. So when you talk about stress on the animal, yeah, it's causing the problem and it's going to cause problems like pneumonia if you treat exposed to those viral infections again and all that other stuff. You do want to get rid of it so that the idea ends up becoming what are you willing to do about it? So there's a good case study in an indigo snake. And I think this was from Doug Nader, the guy who wrote the textbook, where he went in endoscopically with a flexible endoscope camera. And then I used the biopsy four steps to physically remove the worm and the snake recovered unevently and started eating immediately. So treating the disease and treating it and identifying the disease is probably more important than, you know, how stressful it is. So I can't think of too many times if I thought a parasite was hurting the animal, I wouldn't address it. It just depends on half. We had a Russian tortoise come in that had worms in its lungs. And again, I could have gone in with it with an endoscope and cleaned up the worms. No one didn't think it was necessary. She decided to euthanize that animal. So somebody that is not just what we can do, you know, it's what owners are willing to do. So, you know, it's pretty complex. I think the bottom line is every parasite species would be different. If you have a venomous snake who has probably, you know, a parasite in the blood that's not going to hurt it, yeah, you just leave it alone. Because it's not worth handling that snake and it's not worth the stress of giving that snake medicine to something that's probably not bothering it. So it comes down to the species and it comes down to the specific problem. The other thing that sometimes we have to keep in mind is things like the toxicity of the parasite medicine. I don't think enough people realize that some venesal or panicure can be very, very toxic to a lot of reptiles. It's known in several species, including some mammals, to subtract the bone mammal. So there's a study with tortoises of five days of panicure in a row and literally wipe out its bone marrow. And then you basically just pull that animal. So Ibramectin is known to get into the brain of some of these reptiles. You can't use it in turtles. And I think the indigo snake can be a couple of specific species. So again, it comes down to knowing you're normal and you're species. Wow. I'd never heard panicure being something that would affect the bone now. That's pretty hardcore. Everybody thinks it's safe because it's very safe in dogs. But if you look at the dog and cat dosage, it's 50 milligrams per kilo, and that's standard. A goat can use only 5%. So you're literally using a goat, a tenth of what you would use in a dog. So, you know, even species to species, mammal to mammal, there's dramatic differences. So why should reptiles be any different? You know, obviously some python and a carpet python are more closely related. But a carpet python and a bald python aren't that closely related. So, you know, again, a lot of people think python and there's huge differences even within python. So there may be drugs that are not safe for one species that's fine for another. So, again, it comes out to knowing that species. That's cool. I never thought of that way. That's quite an interesting look at it to make sure you kind of really take a second look at it. Guess what you're pumping into the snake? Yeah, it kind of makes you wonder a little bit. Wow. So we're in breeding season now, or I should say laying season now here in the northern hemisphere. And one of the things that I thought might be a good topic is egg binding. What is, do you have any thoughts on what is the, maybe some of the causes behind egg binding in python? So we know with a lot of reptile species that they have the ability to basically know if the environment is correct. Pythons, I think, are going to be a little bit different. I think their cycles are a little bit more hardwired. But just to give you an example, we know that turtles can hold onto their eggs sometimes for weeks and months before they'll actually lay them. So is that egg binding, or is that just you didn't offer it a proper nest site? You know, we think that they're able to sense the pH of the soil, the humidity content of the soil, you know, the temperature in the substrate. So when a python has trouble, you know, could it be as simple as you didn't offer a proper environment? I don't know if you guys made it to the arboreal seminar a couple of years ago. Was it in Washington, right? Yeah. Yeah, I can't. Do you remember? It was in Maryland? Yeah. Yeah. It's about, you know, how a lot of the carpet pythons in the natural environment are actually, you know, not carrying that same humidity as something like the green tree pythons. So, you know, maybe using a little bit lower humidity might be more important. So again, those conditions haven't been ironed out. Probably the first thing I'm thinking about is environmental conditions. You know, if that next box doesn't feel right, if it's not the right temperature, you know, she may be reluctant to go in that box and lay appropriately. We're actually talking about a retained egg because I think a lot of keepers confuse the particular development that occurs. So, reptile has to make their eggs from scratch, so some mammals, humans just think they're a good example, they're born with a certain number of eggs and that's all they have. Makes make their own eggs. So, they're going to go through that follicular development. They're going to develop follicles. And then you actually have ovulation. But now those follicles have left the egg and gone into the shell gland. But now they're either going to get fertilized and develop a shell or going to come out as a flood. So, when we talk about egg binding, you know, one of the first things we're thinking about was this follicular stasis? Did we have an animal developed follicles and they not ovulate? So, that's one condition. And then the other condition would be, are these fertile eggs that are stuck? Or are they slugs that haven't been passed? So, you know, is there 15 eggs in the next box and one stuck in the snake? So, there's different definitions of that. So, I think it really matters on what we're talking about. I think that there's the potential for these snakes to get exhausted. You know, where they're just not physically thin enough to lay all the eggs. We talked already about the three-dimensional environment. Snakes don't have that strong uterine muscle like a mammal does. So, they're relying on the muscles of their body, of the sides of their body, like the muscles around their rib cage to squeeze that egg out. So, if it's made that they're in a two-dimensional environment and it's not physically fit, it doesn't have the physical strength to push all those eggs out. It may just get stuck as it's exactly. And that, you know, could wind up needing surgery or something like that to get it removed. So, you know, that three-dimensional environment may have offered it for the last year, two years, whatever their cycle's going to be, of having, you know, exercise, where those muscles are physically developed, and then that snake wouldn't have had that same problem. So, I think it was in milk snakes, but there was a lecture presented a few years ago at the Rec gyllanativity conference of a, particularly the milk snake leader, where he was using one male to about 9-10 females, and he had the whole rack that's been gone, and he had about a 10% binding problem. And the vet had recommended it, "If you're using the one male to the 10 snakes, why don't you try to connect all the cages so they can go up and down all these different levels?" And after that, his egg binding went down to less than 1%, just to emphasize. So, I think that it's for a cause. I'm sure there's nutritional issues. I'm sure there's husbandry issues. I'm sure, again, things like physical fitness can literally play into effect. I think the difference between fertilized eggs and unfertilized eggs can be very, very important, because we've all seen where it looks like half a clutch is fertile and one isn't. So, as far as I'm concerned, it means the sperm made it into one overdox, or up into one of the shelled lands and fertilized one side of the body. So, maybe just the left ovarian eggs got to capitalize, but not the right side. So, if you're getting half blood and half fertilized eggs, then, again, the unfertilized eggs, even though they're smaller, I'm sure you've all seen it, they're kind of sticky. So, sometimes they'll get stuck more frequently, and that's causing more stress on that female. Wow. So, again, I think each case is going to be kind of specific that way. What about supplementation as far as snakes? I know this is kind of off topic, but would it be-- Well, I'm going to take a dent for today to the reproductive stuff, because, again, we know that certain vitamins, certain nutritional support is going to be really critical. So, I do try to vary the different prey items. So, in my own house, I always have rats, mice, and chicks. You know, if you can go through different species and things like that, that might actually help. I think there's going to be some differences, even, you know, if you are what you eat, then your food is what it eats. So, you know, you've got to sometimes talk to your rodent breeders about what they're feeding their rodents. So, my rodent distributor uses Missouri, which is one of the diets that's made for things like zoos. So, they have a couple of different veterinary nutritionists that work on making these diets appropriate for the individual species. So, we were looking at the differences between guinea pig food and rabbit food recently. And rabbits can get by on below 12% protein, but guinea pigs need closer to 15% to 17%. So, you know, again, is somebody just being cheap and using the rabbit pellet to feed, you know, their guinea pigs. So, if a guinea pig is low on vitamin C, and the snake eats that, it's going to be low on vitamin C. So, you know, sometimes it gets boiled down as far as what those rodents are being fed. The only thing right now that I'm supplementing my snakes with is a red palm oil. The company that makes it is originally started off as an organic bird food company, and they make this organic red palm oil that specifically is very high in omega-3 fatty acids, and specifically very high in vitamin D. It turns out that vitamin D is one of those vitamins that gets destroyed if you use basically really hot water to the frosted rodents. So, you know, use lukewarm water, even let them fly out over time, and then heat them up before you feed them, you might be better off. But I, again, think that that's one of those things I might be species related. I haven't seen it before, but I think I said earlier that I actually lost an Amazon tree ball to see a titan. And in the research that I've done, the best I can trace that back to was the vitamin E deficiency, which is one of the reasons why, you know, I'm not supplementing it. And I have over probably right now a dozen adult amazon, so for me, that was pretty important to do. I think that's the only difference with some of my other snakes. I think their body musculature looks pretty good. When we talk about egg binding, vitamin E is going to be a pretty critical vitamin for the yolks. It's going to be pretty important to the muscles of the snake. So, another species they call it white muscle disease because it affects the muscles. So, again, if those muscles aren't strong to begin with, then she may not lay her eggs and get all those eggs out of her body. So, the supplement, I think, does tie back into reproduction because only the most physically fit snakes should be breeding. So, nature sort of designed it that way. So, it's probably weed out for weeks. And, you know, I think that's something to be considered that, again, you are what you eat and the same thing for those eggs. You know, if mommy is not perfect, then the babies aren't going to be perfect either. So, you know, it goes back then to hatch rate and everything else as well. So, yeah, some supplements, I think, are probably just a good idea. What I do is the red palm oil is literally just use a feeding syringe and either put it down the throat of the frozen rodents or put it up the rectum and the snakes have no idea it's there. So, you could probably do something similar with a multivitamin. I don't think that's well documented. That's not really a research thing. That's not really a vet thing yet. That's just from breeding snakes. So, again, I use the red palm oil periodically of vitamin dust. So, if I feed once a week, then probably it's every fourth to fifth meal, probably good vitamin dusting. Okay. Do you find that just curious on your thoughts on a female going into, say, the breeding season? Is it a good idea to have a little extra weight on that female to prepare for the breeding season? I think what a breeder called weight and what I would call weight are probably different. Okay. You know, I don't have the complete corporate python, but I have the Greg Maxwell book on green tree pythons. There were numbers thrown around like a thousand grams and all this other stuff. And I have a green tree python right now in my house that I can trace back a couple generations. And I remember when my friend had bred, I think it's the grandmother or the great grandmother of that snake. She was maybe 700 grams. I think she was a three-year-old. It was kind of like stuck in between, you know, trying to give her an extra year. But as you can clearly see that she had ovarian, some ovarian swelling. And my friend had had a male that had stopped eating. So, for me, I'm going to listen to nature. If she's cycling and he's ready, you know, they're telling us what to do. So, I told them, I think you should put them together. I think you're going to wind up with problems if you don't. My worry would be that you'd go through the particular development, then she'd ovulate. They wouldn't be fertile, then she'd be stuck with unfertile eggs and get found. So, I thought it would be better to get them fertilized. Even if it's a small clutch, it's still better to be fertilized and get out of her. Even if they didn't raise the babies, but just to have a healthy delivery. And it turns out, she had 12 babies. They were perfect. They were, I think, a little higher end on the spectrum, gram-wise, for his snakes that year. I think there were eight, nine grams and some of the other questions he had that were larger from larger snakes with smaller babies. So, they were really healthy babies. And I had the great, great grandchild to prove it. So, when you talk about extra weight, I think a lot of people go by the numbers. So, if a six-foot snake, which is thousands of grams, is that healthy? I mean, that goes back to, is a five-foot, nine-man, 200-pound healthy? Well, is it, you know, short behavior and spallone? You know, or is it Danny DeVito? You know, and I know there's very, very big differences, but they might weigh the same. You know, they're like about swings and that's two totally different subjects, whether or not it's that week or multiple weeks. So, we know that most reptiles are going to start breeding when their muffled math reaches a certain weight. If you guys have paid any attention to some of the stuff going on with the Burmese Python, if you've ever seen any of the TV shows where they open up those females and you look at them, you would look at them from a distance and think that those were horribly underfed animals. They're wrinkles in their skin, they're long and lengthy, but yet, you know, they have a hundred follicles inside of them and they're obviously reproducing in the wild. So, I have yet to see a captive bred snake look like a wild snake where you can't tell the difference usually just by looking. You know, whether the captive bred snakes are usually much fatter. So, the weight question marks, you know, that concerns me a lot. So, the pushing and feeding them heavy doesn't necessarily make it different. The science that I know for sure is actually what you did last year is more important than what you do this month. So, for cycling purposes, how they were fed the season before is more important than how you're feeding them now. So, if they were fed well a year ago, then now have a more successful clutch than if you've power feed them for three months before the season. Really? Okay. That's pretty fascinating. I think most of that work is more on like temperate snakes, those snakes that are going to hibernate. So, essentially, if you have a snake like a rattlesnake, which is going to go into hibernation and then come out and ovulate and then have it young, you know, she sometimes could be fertilized in the fall and then carry those sperm through the winter and stuff like that. So, you know, it may not directly apply to something like tropical snakes, but the theory certainly seems to pan out time and time again. So, I think that is one of those. Maybe we shouldn't compare tropical snakes to temperate snakes, but everything else seems less similar, then I find it hard to differentiate the two. Right. Okay. What about, I guess, what is the best preventative, would you say, when it comes to egg binding? Or is it something that you're already in on or is there other things that... Well, I think it's everything we've talked about. You know, again, I think with my own snakes using the three dimensional enclosures and getting them the proper body weight, it took far body mass because now in a larger enclosure, you know, so like for my Amazon tree boas right now, one of my more favorite cages is the five foot long cage. And just seeing Amazon boa and completely straight at the narrow, you know, hanging from branches, which to me looked more natural than one sitting on the ground, you know, obviously the muscle map, the balance, the muscles that are required for that are going to be stronger. And, you know, right now in that one particular cage, you know, I have one male that seems to bring two females a year, you know, and every year there's actually four females with them, so two females go one year and the other two go the following year. They think out of that natural cycle no matter what I do. And, you know, since I've gone to this, you know, like a leaner prey item, so again, using a small or an adult mouse is opposed to a jumbo mouse so that there's less body fat on the actual prey item. Since doing that, enlarging my enclosures, you know, using the supplement with that size cage being five feet long, I use two 18-inch fluorescent tubes, one has ultraviolet and one doesn't. Because since the Amazon's haven't been studied, I don't know if they need it. So I alter it, and if they want to sunbathe, they can sunbathe, but if they want to just hide in their head box and they don't have to come out, so it at least gives them the option. So I think things like that have, you know, ended up giving me healthier, larger babies. So as far as prevention, it still goes down to the health of mom and dad. So all that prevented the health that we've already talked about, you know, whether it's parasites. I mean, again, to use the -- we talked about blood parasites a little bit. So some of these wild-caught snakes, they're getting blood-borne parasites because they're getting bitten by things like mosquitoes. So the transmission would be similar to something like malaria, you know, or horkworms that's using the dog. When I'm doing that research, I told you I was looking into this carrot with the help of the University of Florida to try to figure out whether or not that species of blood parasites actually didn't hurt that reptile. You know, everyone says it's not hurting the individual, it's not hurting the individual. But you guys are breeders. So I think that you guys sometimes need to look at something a little differently. And something that I found in the research, I'm trying to figure out this parasite in the family of Antriboa is that the snakes that do have blood-borne parasites, they're clinically normal, they're eating, they're drinking, they're gaining weight, they're reproducing, but they're particular size and smaller. They're 25% more testical. So again, if you're using that animal as a breeder, if you have a high-end snake that's worth, you know, I'll use the Amazon because that's what we were dealing with at the clinic that time. If you have a red Amazon, it's worth $2,000 on the market, and he produces three babies versus 12. That's pretty substantial. But unfortunately, it's not economically important for most universities to figure that out. So I had to do my own research. I found the paper on this one kind of parasite, and then it reduces ovarian and testicular size. All of a sudden, my life bulbs went off, and I said, "I have Amazon G-Bones." That's pretty important to me to figure out whether or not that's going to affect my snake, you know, and where that, you know, $500 snake then raise up and produce babies that could be more expensive or less expensive. So, you know, it's -- physical fitness is a pretty broad topic. And avoiding the pitfalls of, you know, the mites and respiratory infections and everything else, it actually translates to a healthier captive snake. And in that way, it translates to a snake and, you know, reproduce year after year 40. If you -- again, I don't know if you guys did you were at that arboreal seminar, but the hepatologist who worked at the zoo with the tree vipers, you know, was talking that the vipers were reproducing into 30, 40-year-olds next. So how much do we have, you know, 25-year-old green tree python playing in it? I don't know of any. So, you know, again, how cool are we doing it to correctly? And just to get two, three clutches out of one snake, is that a legitimate goal? Should we not be thinking in terms of production for a decade or so? So, you know, I think that preventative medicine is just good husbandry. You know, keeping that snake as healthy as possible, looking at that snake as an individual and saying, "What can I do to make that animal's life better?" That's all going to translate to better breeding. Right. Absolutely. One of the -- this has to do with egg binding as well, but, well, I guess it's laying eggs in general. One of the things you see a lot like on Facebook, especially this time of year, is that the female is due at a certain time and she goes maybe a week over. When should you get nervous that the female's not laying that you might have a prop or should you just let nature take its course? Well, you know, I think there's a couple of different ways to look at that. When you say, "Let the nature take its course," how many of us are really willing to let our snake go? That makes that question more theoretical. It's more specific. What worries me more is that if you do have an expected due date and the snake hasn't laid the egg, there are hormonal changes within the snake's body that's going to essentially close what would be their equivalent to the cervix. So, when that happens, you basically then are dealing with something like cesarean infections. What I found with, you know, Marrelia, again, I've read you twice on the next year, but the corporate python, is that, you know, if you follow the textbook, you know that, you know, there are these certain ranges between follicular development and ovulation, and then once they've ovulated, there's certain intervals between ovulation and egg length. If you're doing, you know, three days' tax, your expected date, you probably have reason to have concern. Knowing as much as I do about physiology and the stuff that I've looked into, you actually have a very, very small window, formonely, to give them drugs to try to get them to lay those eggs. So, I tried to look at that question from my own purposes, from my own snake, and things like oxytocin don't usually work in snakes. We typically rely on prostaglandin F2-alpha, which is a drug you can get for things like cattle and horses, because that can help induce a snake to actually lay its eggs. Phattocin is another drug that, you know, from a theoretical standpoint, it used to be good at that, but as of right now, that's all experimental. You can't, I actually have looked into it, I couldn't get that toasting, so something I could get with the F2-alpha. But if you don't give it, within, I think it's 48 to 72 hours of their delivery time, it's probably not going to work. And then it got me, you're dealing really with surgery. So either, you know, I've heard stories of people using a needle to aspirate the egg and to see if that'll get it out. I've done it endostopically, where when the cervix is still open, you can go in with the camera, see the egg and then pull it out. Or you're just dealing with straight-fold surgery. So I open the side of the snake, get in there, remove the egg, fill it up. You know, something I always find amazing is that, you know, breeders will wait a week, two weeks, and then they bring it to me, and then a lot of don't want surgery. Well, it's too late. You lost your window of opportunity. And I don't think that, again, there's any hard-fetched rules. I don't think this stuff has been ironed out. I can't say it's black and white, because if not every species has been studied. But for me, if you're expecting, you know, on a Monday and a Thursday, nothing's happened, you either have one or two possibilities. Either she's not laying appropriately and she's something wrong. Or you're wrong. You miss the date, you know, and that at the top of the park. Again, hearing you guys start off this morning, I forget who it was, but one of you guys had that unexpected clutch. You know, anytime you think you have something figured out, nature's going to shove you back in the ground and stay spot over, because you don't know anything, and we're not going to get it right. So, you know, that part of the discussion is difficult, because, you know, if everything is exactly perfectly right, then a snake is five days late. It's five days late. That's a problem. But if you were wrong and your numbers were wrong, then it could be totally normal. And it's happened to me before with my own personal snakes. I've gone in on a funeral boat that I thought just had slugs, and she'd only had slugs since I had her. She had two beans that were the forms. I'm like, "This snake is a genetic nightmare. I'm just going to spade the snake and remove her ovaries and just keep the saddle over the text." And sure enough, when I went in there, it was a healthy baby. So, you know, it wasn't something. I had checked over an ultrasound. I just didn't see it. And so, you know, here I was, because I had waited. And in the long run, again, I think she was producing, you know, abnormal babies. I still did the right thing, but at the time, my heart sunk when I saw a baby in there. So, you know, that sucked. But in the long run, it was the right decision. So, again, is there a perfect time? I doubt it. You know, if we have a few eggs late and there's some eggs inside her, if they're not out within 24 to 48 hours, then you've got a problem. I read in the books all the time where other vets that I know have gone in. They've had eggs. They've cut them out surgically, and then they still incubated them and they passed. So, there is still that possibility of literally doing, like, a cisterion and then still having a healthy baby out of it. I haven't had any success. I know of reports where people take, like, horse-knapping turtle and then raise the eggs and they'll hatch. You know, they'll take them out of the dead female and they'll hatch. And I haven't been that lucky, but, you know, it can happen. So, it's still worth trying and then preserving that egg. I think especially if you guys have a high-end, you know, $1,000 plus NAICS, you know, if the surgery costs $1,000 and you save that one egg and you save the female, and in the long run, you probably still make money. So, you eat that something that I've seen, I think, is a bit of a misconception, too. Just because you surgically go in and remove that one egg, I thought it means you want my egg next year. I remember early on in my career, my friend was a corn snake breeder, and I'm talking my first year or two out of school. And he was like, "Now all the breeders say don't cut them out. She'll never have eggs again. Blah, blah, blah." And I'm like, "Good, it comes down to the snake. I mean, do you want me to save the snake life for the egg more important to you?" He said, "Now you're right. The female is more important." So he went in surgically. I removed the eggs. I had to make two separate incisions, one for each side to remove all the eggs that she had. She -- and again, this is what corn snakes, but they're obviously pretty tough snakes. She healed completely that year. The following year, she doubled costs to 100% fertility. So, you know, again, I think surgical techniques and she'll go, "And if these are these days for reptiles, it's getting far better than what they used to be." So, you know, as a vet, obviously I'm going to -- I'm going to be prove that on those situations. But, you know, just because you have to go in search of it doesn't mean it's the end of that snake. So, you know, if you swell that uterus up well and you keep that surgery clean, there's a very good chance you can still breathe. Yeah, not to be all dental. I know that a lot of people were always worried that if there was anesthesia for your snake, it was pretty much like kiss a goodbye. You had, like, a 15% chance of it even coming out. So, at least that was the rumor. Well, I'm not going to knock on what really, really fast, because -- Okay. -- I don't know when it says it. So, there's not 100 reptiles surgeries this year? Yeah. Probably 100 reptile surgeries this year. I've not lost one of them. Wow. Wow. A couple of vell canines comes from my friend's rescue. And I just wasn't prepared at the time to stay the female. So, I let them breathe. I ended up patching the eggs. They've never done it before. So, I wanted to experience chameleon, you know, egg meringue, since they have to go through these 90 degree temperatures of daytime and down to the 60s at night. So, I was pointing around with a wine cooler and an incubator. And, you know, it was almost like a mental challenge for me. So, I ended up patching out the eggs. And we started staying with females. And we stayed a couple before they've laid eggs. We're going to stay a couple while they have the ovules, while they have the eggs to see, you know, if there's any benefit to one method over another. And the first two females that I stayed, which was gone on two, three months ago, I think the first female, we did eight within 24 hours. The second female was eating, I think, within 48 hours. And these are female walks any weight more than what we removed from them. So, one of the females had follicles developed. So, I mean, they were, you know, 20, 30 grams in follicles. So, 100 grams lizard all of a sudden became, you know, 80 grams. But other than that, they didn't actually move any weight from surgery and they were eating in 48 hours. Kings make a few years ago that had eggs stuck in it for like three, four months, hadn't eaten with skin and bone when it was presented to me from my friend's rescue. It was, "Here's the smell of snakes that's not eating." And I picked it up and said, "Well, it's a female full of eggs. Well, it's going to move the eggs. You know, we're not going to save this animal." And they first didn't believe me. So, I emailed them, the x-rays of the eggs. And they said, "Okay, thought of now." And she ate within a week. So, four months of my eating, falling apart, nearly dead. I removed the eggs and the uterus and she was fine. So, you know, I think when it comes to the reptile medicine, I think it's like anything else. So, one of the things that I think was in your outline was, you know, how to find a reptile vet. So, I've belonged to today. I graduated to the ARAB, which is the Association for Reptile and City and veterinarians, and on their website, it's ARAB.org, right? So, it's ARAB.org has a list of their members in every state. So, you know, they have a find of that page. So, not only are they seeing reptiles, but they care enough to be part of the association. So, obviously, not all of them can go to the conference every year, but at least they're getting the journal articles. You know, at least they're doing their studies. So, you know, your average dog and cat vet may not be as good, you know, or have the experience level that I have. But, you know, half of my experience comes from my own pet. So, you know, it is something that I've worked on. I recently, 2011, was able to kind of hit your ride on the University of Georgia's project for the illustrating turtle. So, they had tried, in previous years, to cast rates in turtles for some scientific purposes, you know, what the effects would be of castration and whether or not those babies would be fertile and things like that. So, the previous pilot study they did, I think them with all their turtles died. And because it was a university study, they went ahead and they did necrops. And every single one of those animals that died was sick. They had parasites, they had salmonella, they had liver outsteppes. They all had some sort of disease. So, again, when we're talking about a healthy reproductive animal who's been in good care, I think the expected outcome is going to be positive. So, when you get a red-eared slider shipped in from the host killer and there's been no quarantine, there's no bin, you know, there's no health status or anything else, a future outcome is going to be very, very different. So, when we got involved, I got involved specifically because I told them, as a friend of Des Gresney, we have hundreds of red-eared sliders. As it does, it pays for me to castrate a couple and give you guys the data. And one of the guys from the University of Georgia turns around and says, you know, it would be better. And if you want, why don't you bring them down to Georgia and you'll be able to study with us. So, I got to sit with Steven Divers, who's the editor of the new -- he's the co-editor with Doug Mater. And due to this study with him and Charlie Innes, who's the director of medicine at the New England Aquarium, we sat and castrated 25-mil turtles. All 25 survived. The only complication was from the most inexperienced surgeon. So, myself, Steven Divers, and Charlie have all had, you know, experience with reptile surgery. All of our cases is great. The one complication we had recovered completely. But because those animals came from the rescue, I had kept them in my care for 90 days minimum before we did the surgery. So, I mean, children were mostly before we did anything. So, we all -- we had the deworming and the pneumonia and everything else they can care of. So, you know, again, I think it shows me the difference between the same species, you know, a year before using the same medicine, the same techniques, and they had a horrible, horrible success rate. But then the following year, we had basically 100% success with surgery and survival rates, you know, going on years now. But what was the difference? It was starting off with a healthy animal. So, you know, these horror stories of reptiles not surviving anesthesia, those are sick animals that were dying. One of the things I always tell people about reptiles is if you brought your animal into my clinic and they haven't been eating for six months, they've been dying for six months. So, don't expect me to give it a shot of petrol when it's going to survive. You know, he's going to get that shot, he's going to go home and die, and who gets blamed? I get blamed. But for the last six months, the animal's been dying. And, you know, you think about these turtles and stuff from the drop of those that went years without eating, you know, with the voyage of the bugle and stuff like that, you know, and they survive. So, reptiles are survivors. They're going to hide their disease. You're not going to know it there half the time. And then, you know, when something goes wrong, get it all taught me. Because we need to know why. Why did that animal die? And if you find out that it was in kidney failure or had a parasite or had, you know, heart disease, well, there's your answer. It's not that the surgeons know this. There's something else to it. So, you know, I hear those things all the time, and again, you know, you got a snake. It's got, you know, five eggs stuck inside of it, a late ten, and it's three weeks later. Who killed that snake? It wasn't me. It wasn't me. Because I think that's too little too late. And that is where I think reptile medicine sometimes gets a bad rap. You know, an example from this year, we locally just started our own reptile show. So, now there's a York reptile and petex bone. It only started last year. We had a booth. Someone saw them on our card, whatever. They bought a turtle. They couldn't get it to you within the first week or two. They brought it to me. She literally came to me. And this was one of the best clients ever said, "I put a bank account aside for my pet. I have $1,000 in this total bank account. So, try to do the best you can for that money." So, we started our own good work. That turtle had elevated uric acid, which would be consistent with kidney failure. I said, "It's very high. It doesn't look good." I said, "But you want my honest opinion?" I said, "The best way to know whether or not this is fatal and whether or not we can help the turtle is to do a kidney virus." And she said, "It's in my budget." I said, "Yeah. When it costs you about $4,500 bucks." She said, "Do it." And then we talked about if everything looks okay visually, let's put a feeding tube in so now we can medicate this turtle because turtles are really hard to pull their head out of their shell and then give them medicine. But we wanted to align injections and stuff. So, we put a feeding tube in. We got the biopsy back, and the biopsy came back. There's a mild kidney inflammation. So, we treated it with inflammation, you know, anti-inflammatory fluid and put him on an antibiotic, and he made 100% recovery. So, if I had only done the blood work, you know, he wouldn't have made it. But because it did the biopsy and we figured out that it was only a mild problem, we treated him and he got better. So, again, he was a big turtle. Technically, my blood work was in kidney failure. Not only made it through surgery, but survived, and then got better. And I just saw him for his one year, checked up, and he's totally normal. So, they got to find rats. There is spoons in medicine out there. So, it does take sometimes a little effort to find the right vet for you guys. But, you know, there are people out there. Yeah, the biggest thing I think, again, is you can't wait. You know, if you think there's a problem, you guys know you're animals. There probably is a problem. You know, the question is, we need to find out how to veer that problem. But with the modern technologies now, you know, with things like endoscopy, it's amazing what can be done with your very small incision. We had emeralds. We had an emerald tree ball with a tumor on. And when we took out the stitches, the client was like losing his mind. He's like, "There's not even a score." And they can heal, amazing. So, you know, the sooner you get some stuff addressed, the better. Yeah. Oh, yeah. And that's an underpoint. Like I said, my girlfriend's my practice manager, so she's cheerleading me right now. One of the biggest mistakes, I think, reptile keepers make, they shut around and vet lose their animal sticks. If I move you, and I know your collection, think about how many dogs, cats, birds, rabbits, whatever, come into the animal clinic because they were just bought. Right. That's what I call a post-purchase exam. When I graduated vet school, when birds were as popular before the recession, it was automatic. You did blood work. You checked them for chlamydia. You checked them for polyoma. You did a fecal sample for tyrosine. You did a fecal gram stain for gram negative bacteria. And that was normal. And a post-purchase exam was three, four hundred bucks. And nobody points an eye at that. But how many people do I see three days after a reptile show? None. And we have tingered an hour and a half away from us. But if you could make it to amored, you could theoretically make it to my hospital. You know, we make it there in an hour and ten minutes every Saturday after work. So, you know, what is a will is a like. And, you know, again, having that relationship, you know, what we call it as a client's patient, veterinarian relationship. So, legally, I can't describe anything to you. I can't recommend anything to you unless I've done a physical exam on that animal. So, you can have a hundred snakes. I can see 99 of them. But if it's the one snake I haven't seen, I can't describe them in the medicine. So, you know, legally speaking, if I'm going to protect my license and do this for the next 30 years, that's more important to me than your snake. So, you can ask me for baseball all you want. I'm not giving it. Because unless I've proven it to bacterial infection, I'm not giving it antibiotics. So, you know, those things need to be discussed long before. Because that makes the huge difference. Which people, you know, throw up again. But people give in vitro out. Like, you know, I hear that a lot as well. Is that something that they could build up a, you know... Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. When I was in the best school, so we're going 20 years ago, it was already told in the internal medicine class that when Bachel came out, when Enerofloxacin as a drug came out, its original drug label was for urinary tract infections and drugs. 100% of E. coli at the time were susceptible to Bachel. When I was in vet school, you already had a 50% resistance rate in dog or urinary tract infection. So, you know, again, we talked already about the culture sensitivity. So, what you're specifically doing is swabbing that bacteria so you take this spit out, you know, from the lung, you culture that. Just like stuff goes to the kid, they smear that on a petri dish. Then you see a bacteria grow. Once they grow, they separate that out again, and then they learn out what children. So, they take that bacterial isolate, they smear it on a new petri dish, and then they take these little antibiotic discs and put it in a petri dish. And what we do to determine resistance and susceptibility is to see if the bacteria grow around the antibiotic disc. So, you actually measure the distance of the nearest growth to these discs, and that determines whether or not it's resistance. When it comes to Bachel specifically, I would say that right now, I would say probably 40% of the bacteria we see are probably resistant to Bachel. The other thing that a lot of exotic animal protection is joke about, we call it Bachel Physciency, like we make fun of normal people. So, one of the biggest mistakes is that the Bachel injectable has only been approved for a single injection. You're not supposed to give that multiple injection. And the reason for that is that Bachel has a pH of 11.4. It's basically like injecting battery acid into your snake. So, I'm sure you've all read this stuff about sterile abscesses and skin fluffing and all that other stuff. I've had people tell me, "Well, I just diluted it daily and then give it." So, you realize that you are modifying the way the drug is meant to be given so that you have less complications. Well, how do you know it still works? Right? I mean, those things aren't studied. Is it meant to be diluted? It needs to be diluted. That's what the company would have on its label. You talk about the stress of treating a parasite, you talk about the stress of injecting bachelors, you just injected battery acid. You don't think that snake hurts for the next three days? Yeah. You know, all of these times it's had the flu shot recently, but people complain for over a week that they got a little microscopic, you know, tuberculins or inside needle injected into them. So, you know, I think that those types of things make a big difference. No, there's definitely a ton of resistance. The newer drug that a lot of people were falling in love with is septavidine. So, for the last five, ten years, you know, most of the exotic practitioners have started to use that. You don't get the injection-side pain and the process from it. The way you do it's bachel. And it's thought to hit some of the anaerobic bacteria. But they just published a journal article that because of the trends in popularity, there's actually more resistance to septavidine now than there is to bachel. Yeah. So, I think it's based on pseudomonas. I think it's what they looked at in that study. So, yeah, your culture sensitivity tells you everything. You know, and all these people are using facial? Yeah, like I said, that's how already are known to carry some of the most resistant bacteria in nature. So, you need to be adding facial for that list. Yeah, that's a big problem. Wow. Geez. So, with all this, is there anything that can be done preventatively? And then we talked about, like, five visits where somebody buys this name, maybe taking the vegetable wellness check for the drinking health. Well, you know, in our specific clinic, if you have a young animal, a young reptile, I'm going to recommend that you try to get two to three visits in that first year. I haven't kept every reptile out there, but I'm coming pretty close. You know, I've had, you know, in my hands on at least, you know, half a dozen different crocodilians. You know, I've had it on dozens of diseases of venomous snakes, I've bred corn snakes, I've bred both constrictors, I've bred green tree python, I've bred gortersnakes, you know, I've raised tons and tons of these things. I have friends that have bred bearded dragons and veiled chameleons and, you know, monitor lizards. So, I know what their growth rates are. So, half the time, I think, we could be cutting these things short, you know, and catching these things earlier, especially with these babies. You know, by getting those, all those husbandry issues ironed out in the first year. We're in the middle of a two-week period where every, probably, third day, I'm seeing a vast million come in with vitamin A deficiency. Every one of those lizards is nine months to a year old. Every one of them is crusty-eyed. None of them are using vitamin supplements that have vitamin A in it. So, every one of those cases would have been prevented. So, I think, again, looking up and developing that, that patient-client relationship is huge. When you're dealing with a wild-class snake, probably getting, you know, three sequels to the vet first year. One sequel is not going to be diagnostic. So, three sequels separated, covered by at least a month. You know, it's going to be a minimum if you talk to pathologists. You know, yearly visits to the average pet snake. There's a lot of breeders from some of my friends that literally do pre-hibernation and pre-breeding exams. They do blood work. They check blood counts. You know, they check weight. They do x-rays, look for ovarian follicles and the same follicles, and just make it better, you know, database. So, what's normal in their animal? You know, if you have an unusual species, even though it's actually handled and done physical exam on a bull and python, it doesn't mean I know what the normal blood count is. So, you know, the level of knowledge that can be attained from your vet experiencing just doing that physical exam every year, then when you actually need them to help you, they're going to know better. You know, and that's something that, you know, it's all going to catch those every year. We have statistics that show that dogs can count to go to the vet on a yearly basis that's two to three years longer than one to don't. Even if they're not vaccinated, even if they don't feel hard work, it's more important to get the physical exam done. So, from a preventative maintenance at home, it's keeping your husbandry as good as possible. As far as the veterinary relationship, it's yearly physical exams. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, we're still here. So, again, at home, it's the proper husbandry. And then, you know, as far as a vet/plantation relationship, if I don't do a physical exam within 365 days, I can't prescribe medicine. So, having that relationship established is the key to everything. All right. Makes sense, and I guess it would be like, again, it's kind of like a reversal where people are willing to do it for dogs, cats, and everything else. Why not with your reptiles? Oh, again, if you put things in perspective, a dog lives on average 13 years. I think cats are 14, 15. But the longest lived bald python went over 50. Yeah. So, you know, certainly for our pet animals, you know, they're living longer, and they're going to need more in the course of their lifetime. So, and if you get a 50-hour exam once a year, you know, what they're worth at the end. Mm-hmm. And like I said, I think most of the people, especially the people, who are just starting out in the business, you know, I tell them to buy a $100, you know, our, you know, key panel, and then the guy at the pet store says, "No, just use anything that's in my book." And that's meant for the specific radius, you know, infrared wavelength that stimulates digestion. I don't think so. So, again, knowledge, you know, even husbandry knowledge that you could probably build, you know, by working with your vet, you know, would be huge. True. Absolutely. So, if somebody wanted to get in touch with you or to bring about your, to bring a patient into your practice, how would they go about doing that? Well, you know, obviously, they bring it into practice. I mean, the simple explanation, obviously. Right. All the clinics are making up things. Right. But, you know, we have a Facebook page. We accept the email. The bottom line is, you know, if we don't have the appointment, you can send me all the pictures in the world, I can't help you. Because, again, if we don't have my patient relationship, legally, I can't even make the recommendation. So, technically, if I even told you to change your life holds, you know, you can -- that could be considered a veterinary prescription, and I would be liable without doing the physical exam. So, you know, the easiest thing to do is to call the clinic number. It's 717-741-1320, and make the appointment. I mean, that's an honest, but not answer there. Because, like I said, I mean, I've had people call me up and ask me the dosage for metronidyl. And I'll say to them, "Well, what are you treating? Is it a secondary, bacterial infection? Do you have a protozoa? You know, are you using it as part of an antifungal treatment?" And I was like, "Well, what the hell are you talking about?" And I said, "Exactly. I'm using it as part of an antifungal treatment." And I was like, "What the hell are you talking about?" And I said, "Exactly." I'm using it as part of an antifungal treatment. And I was like, "What the hell are you talking about?" ARAV.org. That's for the association for reptons, for the veterinarians. So on ARAV.org, they have the fine event. So obviously, if it's not me, it needs to be somebody else. We're on that page, so our information is on the ARAV website. So in Pennsylvania, I think there's like half a dozen or more people. I think we're towards the bottom. The tickets play out of that. So we're in New York, Pennsylvania. And for most people, even from Maryland, the Baltimore is only an hour away. Harrisburg is 25 minutes, Philly is about an hour and 45 minutes. So I still have clients that are my clients from New York City that will bring me animals. And I've actually met them in places like Hamburg because they know I'm going to be there. And they'll drop their animals off to me at Hamburg. They'll bring them to my clinic. This way, I can do a physical exam on them and develop that relationship and continue that care. Awesome. That's great. Well, I'm glad that you're in Pennsylvania, because if I ever want to head out that way. And oh, and you're not even that far from there, right? No, I'm closer than you are. Yeah. That's good. Well, we appreciate the support. I mean, the only way that I can do what I want to do is to get up top people in my clinic. Right. You know, I can keep all the animals at home I want, but luckily I don't have to do surgery too often on my animal. But, you know, it's up to them. Even again, I told you my girlfriend, my practice manager, she's a licensed veterinary technician looking into getting her board specialty eventually with an exotic animal. So, you know, again, we've invested so much in reptile medicine between the two of us that she's actually considered one of the co-authors for that castration study. So I guarantee it's not so many people, you know, nurses that are published right along with them, you know, in the textbooks. So, you know, we do try and we try pretty hard to be good at this. And the only way we're ever going to stay good at it is to see the animals. You know, I see, you know, five hours a day or 15 years, you know, working a five hour week, you know, it's really hard to compete with that in the reptile world. You know, I can only do my own animal's exams, you know, so many times. But yeah, every patient counts. Well, yeah, we'll, you know, support you any way we can. Luckily, I don't know about you. I learned a lot tonight. Yeah. Luckily, I don't have anything sick right now, so I can't bring anything to you. But, you know, it does be driving. Sometimes we got to see the healthy ones, you know, true, true. Maybe I'll bring a rough scale. You can poke at him for a while. But the, it does beat driving an hour and 45 minutes to my old reptile, but down near Philly. So, sweet. Very good. Well, we appreciate you coming on and spending your time with us and, you know, educating us on various topics. Welcome back anytime and we'll be sure to pass along all your info and can't say thank you enough, you know. No problem. My pleasure. I had fun. All right. All right, guys. All right. Have a good night. Good night. Good night. That was very enlightening. We're all doing it wrong. That's basically whatever it's, you know, it was very enlightening. And it's very much the whole, like, I wish we were all, you know, more aware of the things that can happen and can twist and contort and can hurt our stuff. It's like, you know, I set up a quarantine cage in the quarantine cage in Iraq, up in my office, in my bed, in my new house. And it's like, I almost want to make a quarantine rack because every once in a while you get pairs or trios of animals. And technically, everybody should go up there for 30 days, at least. And that's if you get it from a source that you, you know, know. I mean, it's like, if you were to send me an animal, I know that your guys are healthy to the best of your knowledge. And it's like, and I should be able to trust me through the animals in there. But honest to God, you know, I shouldn't. It's like, I -- Even knowing the people, I think, can lead to trouble. Because I couldn't tell it. I mean, I'm not saying -- you know what I mean? What if there's some kind of virus that -- You don't know about it. It's stuck its way in from the last show and it has a dormancy of certain number of days. I mean, it does put the fear of God in you. And it is something scary because we do put a lot of time and effort into our animals. But it's like, it's almost like you've got to set these quarantine rules and you've got to set these vet rules. And you can't break them not for anybody. And that's what -- if I were to take away something from this episode, that would be it. You know, you never do know. And viruses and bacteria can be tricky things. And basically, trust nobody. Basically, it's just, you know, don't trust anything at face value. I mean, I don't trust anybody. Don't trust animal with face value. Because they're very good at hiding on this. And it can be scary. Do you imagine a virus ripping through your collection and taking out half your things? Ooh. I mean, I'm pretty sure I'd find you, like, in your own shower kind of drown yourself with the clothes on. I mean, like, you know, that's -- I mean, so it's like you have to put forward that you have to take that extra effort. And I hate to say it, but it goes back to what you've been preaching about for about four or five years now. Three years. How long have we been doing this? To being a student of the serpent. And -- yeah. And knowing what the hell's going on with your animals. You're going to be the first person to know that it's not acting right. You know, you know the difference between it's not eating because it's in shape versus it's not eating because it doesn't feel like eating. It doesn't want to eat because it doesn't feel well. And, you know, you know what to do then. And of course, it's the next step is to be a responsible person. You know, if you have illness or a sick animal, I'm not saying you have to go on Facebook and present yourself to the firing squads that will be waiting for you there. But don't bring it to a shuttle. Don't send it to somebody. Be honest. You have the front. You know, I've had several times where -- I had one time where I had a trio of warmups. Preferably healthy animals. The male, two days before he was about to go, wheezes at me. And I'm like, "Oh, hell no." So I had to keep in those three animals for an extra two months paying for a vet visit for all three of them. Medication for all three until they were perfectly healthy and eating before I sent them to my customer. No additional charge for the guy. Just told them, "Hey, they're sick. They're the voice sick. He's not -- I don't know what's going on. Take him to the vet tomorrow. Hold them off on shipping. If you want your money back, you send it back to you now. If you want the animals, you've got to wait until everybody's healthy." He waited. He got the warmups. Everything was fine. He was ecstatic that actually took the time to, you know, take it to the vet. Make sure everything was good before I sent it to him. And that's just being attentive. Because imagine how I would have felt if I sent that thing out and then, like, his entire collection bust is his boy, Walma. Ooh. Yeah. Yeah. This is why I never understand why people send, like, "I opened up the box and it was, like, posses running from its face." It's like, "Well, the guy who packed it, looked at it." It's like, "Who looked at it?" It goes perfect. That's exactly how they should look. And then, you know, it's one of those things that perplexes me about our industry. But I digress. Yeah, it's definitely food for thought. That's for sure. Some people aren't supposed to be able to close their mouth. Yeah. And how they evolved, isn't it? Yeah. But I do like the idea that you brought up about doing your research on the species. Yeah. That's why I think it's imperative that us, you know, I'll just say, I don't have a lot of vitamins, but, you know, educate future pete customers about these species and why it's, you know, important to learn the natural history of what's going on with the animal and where it came from and, you know, how does it function in the wild, et cetera. I've also thought about the fact, I also thought it was interesting that he brought up the whole variant of diet. Yeah. I think I might have heard it somewhere on, I think it was reptile radio and it was Derek Roddy. And he had maybe said something, you know, like, if you ate, you know, cheeseburgers for the rest of your life, you know, you'd survive, but would you be healthy? You know? Yeah. He was talking about black-headed pythons and some of the things that he was running into. Yeah. But, you know, it just kind of makes you think, like, I know that pythons are opportunistic, so they're going to kind of not really be picky with what's coming in front of them, but, you know, nature has a way of working that kind of thing out, you know what I mean? Right. And also, like, the fact that he brought up is that, and something that I keep coming into is that before you even get a reptile, shouldn't you know where your vet is? Like, shouldn't you know where a reptile vet is? There's been several times where a customer or not even a customer, just a would-be reptile person has approached me about an illness striking their animal, and I'm like, okay, well, you know, what have you tried, tried this, tried this, tried this, and has it worked? No. Okay. Hey, to break it to you, but it's vet time. Take it to the vet, check it out. Where's the vet? What do you mean, where's the vet? It's like, well, don't you have one? No. Where are you? I live in such and such a place. I'm like, well, my guy is here. This is my vet, and then this is my secondary vet. I use this one when that one's out of town, if ever that has happened. And it's happened once or twice, but it's like, well, geez, that's like three hours away. So there has to be one closer to you. Who would you recommend? I don't know. Ask Google. It's like, you know, how you don't take the extra steps to know if this happens, this is the person I'm going to is beyond me, but that's another here and another. Again, it's just a lot to think about, a lot to do. Now that we've scared the entire audience, yeah, now we've scared the entire audience shitless, and they probably are bleaching their cages right now and checking everything they'll do. One of my carpets is going to be like, you know, I don't know, like bump its head against something tomorrow and make some noise. I'm like, oh my God, what's happening to you? So it's like, I don't know. I'm going to be flexed there and be like, yeah, my week out. So yeah, let's see. I guess we'll just, I don't think, for some reason I think there's something else that we were supposed to hit on, but I'm just going to go with it. Anyway, we're just going to roll it. Next week, we have Tim Tyndall is coming on and we're going to be talking about labeling carpet python. Tim is probably, hopefully he's going to have a clutch this year. I think they should have a good form, maybe even two. He has a fabulous collection of inland carpets and it's very passionate about that species, I guess I should say, in particular, and I couldn't think of a better person to discuss that species, subspecies, we want to look at it with. He definitely knows his stuff when it comes to inland carpet python. I don't have inland yet, so this could be a dangerous show for me. Oh, that's true. Usually after the episode of the species that you don't have, somehow you wind up with the species two days later. Shut up. How about that? I'm just going to say that Nick Mutton has inland carpet python. Tell him. Got it. Now you were talking about a different project at one point. I was talking about a different project and I will get to that at some point. inland. I know what I wanted to say. I know what I wanted to say. What? You see that our good friend Wayne Glarps down there in Australia produced a moon glow. The moon glow carpet. It's pretty. Yeah. Basically, we're looking at a hypo, alpino, and examples. A combination of everybody's bucket shots. That's what everybody does. Yeah. Very cool. I'm curious of what it's going to look like as an adult. I'm curious what it's going to look like with some more. Give me some more generations of examples. Give me some more generations of super caramel and really bump up the color and give me some moon glows and ghosts and sun glows after all that stuff. We'll be cooking like this. Selective breeding right there. Yeah. Let's see. We have, next week, we have Tim. I'm not sure what we have lined up after that. We'll probably be going into a pre-car professional at some point there. Yeah. If there's a topic that maybe you want us to have Dr. Feinstein on again, let us know. I get in touch with him and maybe you can come back on it in a couple of minutes. Yeah. He could be our official radio show vet. It's awesome. Yeah. Just to talk on various subjects, obviously, like you said, it can't diagnose without seeing the animal. Yeah. So nobody sends us pictures of animals or anything like that. I mean, he kind of seems to the guy who would lose his mind if somebody's like, "I need the animal that I've had here for three weeks is breathing with his mouth open. Can you prescribe me something for it?" You know, I hate it when people post that up on the Facebook and be like, "What's wrong with him?" I'm like, "I don't know. Take him to a doctor. Why are you here?" So it's like, you know, I imagine that that was just maddening to me. It was maddening to me. I can't imagine what it is to him. All right. So I'm going to run down our list here and then we're going to get that out. So, Mariah Python Radio, we have several things for that. First, on our website, pretty much for everything Mariah related. That's where you want to go to check out. It's MariahPythonRadio.com. If you have a question or a comment for us, to the show, you can reach us at info@MariahPythonRadio.com. You can follow us on Twitter @MariahPython and please like our Facebook page. Mariah Python Radio. But the show, which you can download for free, is on iTunes, Mariah Python Radio. Or whatever your favorite podcast app would be. I'm sure you will find Mariah Python Radio on that as well. Next up would be CarpetFest, Northeast CarpetFest, May 30th, 2016. It's Bird's Barrow PA. Pretty soon we're going to be putting up the announcements that we'll be looking for donations for the U.S. Arc auction. So if you're interested in that, if you already know that you want to donate something, feel free to get in touch with me. It doesn't have to be a snake. It doesn't have to be anything of that sort. It could be some type of supply, maybe an artistic something as far as Mariah's concern. Whether it be painting or sculpture or something like that. I'm thinking of Zack's Blue Tongue Skink Sculpture. That would look cool if that was like a Carpet Python or something. That would look cool. I'm a real person of tree. Maybe a rough girl with a display. I'm listening, yeah. But yeah, anything like that will be cool for the auction. Just get in touch with us. The website is carpatfest.homestead.com. For some reason, I can't get that switched over. Even when I look at it, it says carpatfest.com. I don't know. For now, it's carpatfest.homestead.com. Don't forget the Northwest Carpet Fest is September 12, 2015. There's also now a Southwest Carpet Fest. That's hosted by designer exotics. That's going to be held at prehistoric pets. There's already about, I think, 10 people headed to that. That should be an awful time as well. You have quite a few places that you can meet up in. Rub shoulders with some fellow carpets on easiest for sure. You can also follow carpatfest on Twitter. You can't follow it on Facebook on our Facebook page. We have all the updates for all of the carpets. Going through that page. Go over there and like it for updates. There's a past carpatfest. It's a future carpatfest. What we have going on. As far as me personally, E.B. Moralea. My website is ebmoralea.com. My email is eric@ebmoralea. I am having a pretty decent season. If you're interested in anything, you can check out my website. If you're interested in something, feel free to contact me and put you on the list. I will be at Hamburg with Owen. Owen might not even know that. Saturday. I'll be out there at the show. I don't really have anything to sell per se. I will be there. Maybe if there's something that you're interested in as far as head albino stuff goes. If you're there with me, you're only selling my stuff. It's another deal. You can feel free and message me and I can bring it there. No problem. God damn it. Make sure you like our Facebook page. E.B. Moralea. You can follow me on Twitter as well. E.B. Moralea. I'm also on Instagram. E.B. Moralea. My other hobby is taking pictures. There's plenty of pictures for you to look at on any of those social media sites. I got Owen. What I would say is you can go on to rogue-reptops.com. Check out all the stuff that gets going on at Rogue. The entire thing is in Flux right now we're updating again. It kind of always seems like it's never right where I'm finished updating. It's like everything sheds and it doesn't look anything like it did so I have to retake pictures and crap. Bear with us. You have some animals still available. I'm down to one last super caramel jag. E.B. the last one. Everybody else is gone. I'm down to one last caramel. One last caramel jag. It's like we're almost gone out of caramel. It's not like that. If you have some fun. So that means that you'll need some of my stinks. God of you. (Laughter) I got some tigers still, some red light. I got another clutch of tigers and another clutch of jag that I'm saw raising. Of course we're down to our last male Dominican Red Mount Boa. The rest are girls. They're all on rodents. Now they're being unscented. Holy crap. All the hard work has been done. If you want one of these things, now they've found the gravity. Other than that, I have no idea what we're doing with clutches this year. I'm kind of waiting to see who lays and who doesn't. We do have one clutch in the incubator and that is to our red tiger. It's our red tiger jag. So we've read goodness from amazing things. And I'm pretty sure I have a clutch of zebra jag coming. And that one was my zebra jag of bread. Stop it. Stop it. Wait until I finish. Okay. Because you have to know the full effect of my shame. All right. Okay. It was my remember to a brattle. No. No, dear God. I'm not insane. I am a monster. It was my zebra jag bred to a high contrast Queensland jag. Oh, wow. Do I jack the jag? I know and I hate myself for doing it. But no one else would bring with this female. Like, apparently she used the ugly female in carpet pipes on the world. So, like, I tried her with high con. Nothing. You know, they had no freaking interest. I tried her with this straight Vebra. No interest. Zebra jag all over. And I'm like, whatever. Do so. I don't know. All right. Wow. It's full on jag cart. Full on jag cart. I'm using an MBB line icon jag to breed to a zebra jag. My coastal blood is screaming at me. So... I would... I hope you... Well, I hope one of the eggs are at least a loose cystic. So that... I don't know. I'll come over here. No, you want to see that? Well, he's going to see my dead babies. Yeah. Oh. That sounds so fermented. If somebody was laughing at her, it's like farts. I'm just going to be like, what the hell is it? Talking about jag cart. He wants to see his dead babies. Good Lord. Good Lord. Yeah. Nick was telling me that he should have, like, the first ever, like, despite mere standpoint of if he gets the animals he thinks he's going to get, he should have, like, the first ever, like, example Lucy or something like that or something like, like... You should be getting different morphs of Lucy. Oh, yeah. That will be born. Just because he has to hit on those things. Number wise. And I'm like, please, line them up against, like, normal Lucy because I want to see the difference. And I'm like, I want to see the, like, the all white one dead. This is the silvery white one dead. And this is like, you know, I'd like, I'd be like, oh, they look cool. It's the only way it lives. It's like, that kind of stuff. Oh, man. I'm weird that I find that intriguing, but either way. You can go there. You can also go to, on Facebook and find real Grefels. Facebook, as far as shows, there is the hamburger show in the 25th of April. So, it's coming up. We will be there. We will have animals there. Also, there is the white plane show. I'm not bending, but I might be going. So, if you want me to drop something off, I can do that too. And I think there's a habit or a great show coming up too. I don't know when, though. And that's the same thing. I can drop stuff off, but I refuse to go inside that building. So, you can come meet me in the parking lot. Anyway... You only get thrown out of the show so many times for you. You're for a few years to go back. I digress. So, keep your eye peeled for updates to the carpet best. We're going to get the food already. We're going to get drinks ready. If you ordered your t-shirt, they should be coming out soon. Thank you for anybody who participated in that. And that's all I got, and that's all we got. So, thank you all for listening, and we will catch you all next week for some more Moralia Python radio.