Do you test for Crypto?

Colubrids Western Hognose
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Hello hognose fam :wave:
I am not new to the hobby, but I am currently building a much bigger collection than I have ever had. Having just recently gone on a deep dive into Cryptosporidium, I am now pretty scared. I did not fully understand this danger until recently, and in the meantime, I’ve been handling my new snakes by hand with only hand washing between snakes, sharing one dish for weighing them on the scale, offering rejected mice to my more agressive eaters, etc. In short, I have not been nearly careful enough.

For those with large collections from multiple breeders - do you test your collection for crypto? If you do, do you test every snake, or only a portion of them? How many times do you retest? (I’m aware that it’s recommended to retest 4-7 times depending on who you talk to, I’m just curious what folks out here in the hobby actually do)

How common IS crypto in these snakes?? It’s talked about so little, I honestly don’t even know if it’s a rare thing or fairly common.

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Hey, I am new as well, but I looked into testing and found some resources for you to start with.

Crypto is harder to find a test for but you can get it done through Research Associate Labs. You buy the swab and then print off the PDF. Take a fecal sample and mail it to them. I think a round trip for crypto is around $45.

For other GI tests (parasites) I get the Pet Home Tests kit from Amazon (you can get it from their site too). It is $32 and the same process but comes with everything in it, just doesn’t test for crypto.

Hope that helps. I am sending off some parasite GI samples from my adult acquisitions but don’t plan on testing for crypto unless I see symptoms. Just a good quarantine period. Recently learned it is terminal so just gotta be careful and check on any changes in health.

Would love to hear advice/experience from more experienced breeders!

Cheers,
Will

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