You will find people refusing to screen, arguing against screening, making claims they can’t “test 200 hatchlings” (this is stupid), or that it isn’t in their part of the world - it is.
There are variants and we aren’t sure about species specific variants affecting cross species but most people will agree that BPNV is scary.
It is not difficult to avoid. Screen. Wash your hands. Isolate.
The so-called Ethical Keepers are the worst - they come up with rationalizations as to why they supposedly can’t get it and tell people it can be treated with lamps. It can’t.
On the flip side with the more traditional keepers you’ll hear it can’t be screened for. It can.
We’ve known all of this for years and no one wants to face it. At some point there is a possibility that this is going to start becoming endemic to captive pythons - much the same way that some researchers say IBD is to boas.
Using the right kind of setup, it is absolutely possible to prevent spread/transmission using light. That said, few places are going to have the financial ability and know-how to be able to set this up.
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No one says it cannot be screened for, they say it is an undue financial burden to have to test. And, depending on the keeper, that may indeed be a factual statement. We all know that a huge portion of this hobby will gladly spend huge money on a specific morph and then turn around and go bargain basement on housing, set up, vet treatment, etc.
Just because it is an ugly fact does not change that it is a fact. And no matter how many times a more “privileged” subset of the hobby preaches quarantine and quarterly testing and twice annual vet checkups, you will not change the inertia of the majority without regulation. And that way lays a very slippery slope.
You have stated that euthanasia is not the only viable option, but could you explain more about what can be done that doesn’t involve euthanasia? I just got a batch of imports in from Europe and had considered testing for nidovirus, but I was discouraged by multiple breeders to even have testing done because of that euthanasia aspect (I’ve only ever heard that euthanasia is the only option). I’d like to test, but I’m a small breeder with no large facility or completely separate space for quarantine, so I’d like to potentially know what the long-term care and biosecurity procedure of a nido-positive animal might look like.
Unfortunately, the emphasized are two mutually exclusive criteria.
Any animals that test positive for serpentovirus would need to be separate from the rest of your collection to prevent the potential for spread. You cannot keep them in the same area/room
What my comment was meant to convey, and I apologize that I was unclear, was the a serpentovirus-positive animal is not guaranteed to die and so opting to euthanize it under the argument that “well it is going to die anyways, I am just keeping it from suffering” is a terminal flaw that has pervaded the hobby with regard to this virus.
I know a number of keepers and breeders that have animals that tested positive but are still alive many years after being tested (current record is six years I believe…) A number of those animals have even tested consistently negative after some time, though no one I know has felt comfortable with moving one of those negative-testing animals back in with the rest of their collection.
Thanks for the clarification, that helps a lot. So in my case if I had an animal test positive I would likely need to euthanize, as I simply do not have the space or setup to be able to provide a completely separate collection area to protect the rest of my animals.
Short of seeing if you have a friend that would be wiling to take the animal in or returning the animal to the breeder, yes, you would be left with little option there
Nidovirus is a Big Problem - Update
First, I want to mention how awesome this community is and thank everyone for their responses. As a herp community regardless of what reptile(s) we are keeping we should never stop learning from what we read, see, experience, and share with each other so Thank You!
Good news came last night for the 7 ball pythons I have in quarantine that were exposed to the Nidovirus; all tests came back negative. Regardless of the outcome I would not have euthanized them unless they started showing symptoms. It’s a relief for the test to be negative but these 7 ball pythons will be staying in quarantine and get tested again just to be sure.
The cost of keeping animals can be expensive. They are no different than us as far as getting ill or needing a checkup. When we add in the actual cost of housing, equipment, feed, cleaners, and disinfectants most people can’t afford them but buy then anyway. Although many will throw caution to the wind those of us that really care need to be as responsible as we can to protect our animals, investment, and our name if we’re sell offspring to the public. It is our responsibility as pet and store owners, hobbyist, breeders, importers, and sellers to know everything we can about the animals we have, buy, or sell.
If you’re hobby has turned into a business, please treat it as such. You may not care of another person’s outcome or how much money one loses because of your negligence but as the old saying goes ‘What goes around comes around.’ Many may question this post or even laugh at it. If you do, your part of the problem.
I feel alot of the thing here is initial setup. People complain an animal isnt tested, but sometimes it makes no logical or fiscal sense to have it tested. If you test your adults, (and retest to ensure no false negatives) then you can generally say you have a clean system. If you practice proper quarantine and testing when you get new breeders, your system remains clean (baring a fluke where the test and retest come back negative).
Yes, you could spend 60+$ per baby you produce, and then pass that on into the price for your animal to financially protect yourself, but most buyers arent looking for that testing, and will just buy the cheaper animal. So you are left with a choice.
You have a fully tested and negative system. If it remains closed, then Nido should never enter the system, and as such all babies produced should be negative. Do you test them all to satisfy the few buyers that may ask? Or do you hold confidence in your quarantine procedures and testing of the breeders to indicate the babies are safe?
I havent done any kind of survey here, but I would imagine that most breeders take the first option. Ensure the adults are safe and the facility is clear of Nido, and you wont need to spend thousands of dollars a season on testing the babies.
If you buy a python under 6 months old, im pretty sure there is no way it was properly tested and retested to guarantee its safety. Its far easier to leave that responsibility to the buyer to properly quarantine and test. Whether you test or they test, for the business to succeed, the buyer is going to be the one paying for it. Either in the purchase price, or out of pocket after getting the snake.
I do not have any specific reading lists but this can probably fill your nights for the next month or two:
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On the front-end, your logic is pretty sound.
Let me bring out the sharp pointy stick though… It is undoubtable that serpentovirus has been around for decades, long before a test was developed. Ergo, basically every breeder/keeper prior to the past three or four years has been incapable of setting up their initial setup as you detail. And the vast majority of those are proving reluctant to do the retroactive testing necessary to show their collection is cleared. This then pushes the onus on to those that have gotten into the hobby within these past few years with access to readily available testing. Unfortunately, the vast majority of those people are, by and large, ignorant of the issue, ignorant of the tests, or, as I noted above, fiscally unwilling/unable to initiate their colonies as you have outlined. And thus the cycle will continue.
Unless and until both ends of the spectrum work to meet in the middle, the reality is that we will be dealing with this virus for a long, long time
I know the UV thing is popular and great but this simply does not work in practice. Yes there’s SODIS, yes there’s UVC, etc, but this is not a good approach at all. This is a completely ridiculous approach.
In practice many people keep morelia under UV to enhance colors. Doesn’t stop outbreaks. Bearded Dragons are one animal people keep under UV pretty much from hatchling and it doesn’t stop ADV transmission. Controlling disease with an Arcadia lamp does not work. That’s all there is to it.
If you want to side track into UVC sterilizers for air or water that’s an entirely different subject that’s mostly out of scope, anyway.
Screen, isolate, hygiene. That’s all there is to it.
People say it cannot be screened for. This isn’t new - this travels all the way back to IBD and other diseases. Last year there were more videos about “We just don’t know anything about nido and there are so many different strains” - this is 100% wrong. If you want me to sling links to YouTubers I definitely can.
This is fear mongering.
Testing your animals is not going to bring in a new era of regulation. If anything, not testing your animals would cause that.
This is, again, entirely subjective. Histology of nidovirus shows damage to lungs and systemic effects on other organs. People with affected animals usually report cases of respiratory infection and more severe respiratory disease.
On diagnostics confirming nidovirus the #1 question isn’t “How much to euthanize?”
It is nearly always “Can I responsibly still keep this snake?”
Even during outbreaks euthanasia is a last resort until disease sets in. To be clear, the virus isn’t the disease. Disease is the symptoms of that virus. When snakes become severely affected people begin questioning euthanizing entire collections but not before then.
Immediate euthanasia is not the practice we see. With nidovirus we have no proven vertical transmission (parents don’t transfer it to offspring through birthing). People with nido+ snakes usually go the route of attempting to continue their breeding until disease becomes unmanageable.
Don’t waste your time. For nidovirus a good soap is all you need.
Save the UV setups for crypto.
This is a very, very bad conclusion.
Specifically for nidovirus we aren’t actually sure how it is transmitted. In collections with outbreaks it is rare that 100% of animals develop disease (if this were true we would selectively not breed them or they would remove themselves from the breeding pool by dying).
Even in affected collections it is unlikely 100% are affected. Even in collections containing affected snakes there are still biosecurity practices that have literally been suggested for care of animals since old Semelweis. If people wash their hands, avoid sharing areas, tongs, food, etc, it is even more likely that they have snakes that are “uninfected”.
If this was “all or none” it wouldn’t be problem - everything would be dead or dying.
We are nowhere near the point of no return or endemic serpentovirus. PCR tests are cheap. Extra tongs are cheap. Bleach is cheap. Artificial incubation is cheap.
Could this be because the UV lights for animals are for UVB and some UVA rather than UVC? Have there been any studies done with this and shown not to help? I’m just asking out of curiosity trying to learn more.
Very true, I imagine the long established breeders likely all have nido somewhere in their collection just by virtue of having had no information to go off of sooner. Some old time breeders will refuse to test because they know once they do, they no longer have plausible deniability, and once they open that can of worms there is no turning back.
I believe the current belief is that it doesnt pass through to the offspring, so if they use artificial incubation and proper hygiene and quarantine procedures (i.e. keeping the babies seperate from the adults) it doesnt become a problem. At least thats what ive seen in Nido talks.
It becomes a simple question, test and potentially lose a large chunk of your breeding stock, or keep up good husbandry so none get secondary infections, and just assume they have it, and quarantine the babies from them as such to protect the buyer.
Obviously some may not be as careful, and mistakes happen. You are right the method definitely changes whether its a new breeder starting out that can take the time and opportunity to make a closed system vs a veteran breeder who has to make due with hygiene and quarantine as a just in case measure.
At least these are what i see as the optimum scenerios where the buyer is protected and the breeder doesnt have to restart from 0.
Funny that you can quote my post and yet still completely miss the entire content of it…
Riley gets the hole in one!
This is exactly the reason Elijah’s argument about the use of UV in the hobby is horribly flawed - people using UV on their animals are using UVa and UVb. No one uses UVc because doing so would be cooking our animals with damaging radiation and giving them cancer and causing blindness.
It is entirely possible to set up an air-gaped, isolation rack that is externally bathed in UVc and has all air coming out pass through triple HEPA-filters. It wold probably cost you a couple thousand dollars and would require specialized knowledge on exposure times, air turn-over, electrical engineering, etc.
So my initial statement stands as absolutely correct: Using the right kind of setup, it is absolutely possible to prevent spread/transmission using light. That said, few places are going to have the financial ability and know-how to be able to set this up.
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I can point to more than enough YT vids that are just full of misinformation too, but let us not bother cluttering things up there
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Once again, you manage to quote me directly while still completely missing what I said…
I did not, anywhere, say that testing would bring about an era of regulation.
What I said was that the only way to get the entirety of the reluctant/non-compliant majority to quarantine and test and schedule regular vet visits would be by forcing regulation. And that doing that would be a very slippery slope
So you are saying the same thing that I said. And yet you call me a fear monger…
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No, this is not “entirely subjective”.
Your comment illustrates my point about our ability to test having vastly outpaced our understanding of the virus itself.
The histologies that have been done have all been from necropsies on animal that have died from the disease. No one has done histology on animals that have tested positive but were otherwise healthy and asymptomatic. Likewise, no one has done histology on animals that had mild clinical signs, tested positive, were isolated and cared for, returned to good health, and either continue to sporadically test positive or now test negative.
So the damage that we have seen from histology is what is cause by the lethal cases of the disease. We are completely in the dark as to how both mild and asymptomatic cases impact the body.
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This is demonstrably false. Look right here in this thread, the OP has specifically stated that if he gets an animal that tests positive then euthanasia is where he has to go.
I can point to no fewer than three other threads where other keepers have euthanized animals that tested positive but were not showing symptoms and even a couple cases where people put their entire collection down out of fear.
If you believe that the only people opting for euthanasia are the ones with animals that are already on death’s door then you are wearing blinders.
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I find it ironic that you feel you can prescribe that soap is all that is needed when we do not even know how it is transmitted…
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And that makes three times that you have blatantly and flagrantly quoted me and then very pointedly misrepresented what I said. At this point, I am fully convinced that this is not accidental but is, instead, you having deciding that you are going to prove some kind of point over me while make yourself out as the self-proclaimed expert on this matter and ignoring what anyone else says.
I would suggest that you not go down that road.
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This is not how epidemiology nor infections disease studies work.
You point out that “it is rare that 100% of animals develop disease” or that “it is unlikely 100% are affected” as if that is proof that what is being done is more than sufficient. And yet you also point out that “we aren’t actually sure how it is transmitted”
No disease is 100% transmissible. So your 100% criteria are pointless. And if we have no knowledge of how it is transmitted then we cannot say that the current practices are actually the best practices we have. To borrow from your own use of Semelweis, if we had simply stopped medical best practices with him, there would still be a great number of unnecessary cases of disease and death. So to take the attitude that where we are is good enough and there is no need to go further is reckless at best and dangerous at worst.
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You have absolutely no evidence to support that claim.
As I have pointed out so many times in this thread, our understanding of this virus is barely in its infancy. People need to stop talking about it as if everything were known
I dont get your arguement. You accuse wyman of going off topic, but they have remained consistent. You have been throwing in additional factors and minimalization. Testinf is 60$ a snake. Lets assume a breeder producing 500 snakes a year, thats 30,000$. Lets say you are a small scale breeder, you make 2 clutches, lets say 10 babies. Thats still 600$. Snakes are cheap? They are hundreds of dollars.
I truely dont get what you are argueing, you have just been getting more and more aggressive and makes your points look petty. If its something you feel strongly about you need to take a look at how you are presenting yourself, as your behavior is attached to the message you are trying to portray. Right now, it screams of ignorance and arrogance.
Im not trying to attack you here, this is constructive feedback. Take a step back, get your thoughts together, and keep the discussion professional. Not everyone has a good grasp on this issue and are going to lean towards the person who seems more reputable. Acting like you are having a FB arguement does not make you look like the one in the right. You are argueing against a person with nothing but hearsay in an aggressive manner trying to use youtube as scientific evidence. Peer reviewed articles to source your info ti would much better plead your case. Remember, you are trying to convince others of your point, telling us to research it isnt going to end well. If you cannot find such articles to support your case, why is that? Is the science not there? Is less known about the issue than you thought? Where did your information come from, and where did they get the info?
Misinformation and scare tactics is why euthanasia is so prevelant. I personally havent seen any cases of an animal testing positive, and the owner / breeder keeping the animal seperate and safe. I see collections put down, animals returned to the breeder who puts it down, or paying for the animals euthanasia and refunding the money. Obviously to have the limited data we do, some havent been out down, but anecdotally, those that are kept alive are the minority.
Take a step back, reread your posts and see how you are presenting the information and how it is being received. You are a steward of the viewpoint you are sharing. Even if you are correct, if you present it poorly, others will not believe you.
Just as an example, this would be what i consider a fairly valid source. It can be wrong, as science constantly evolves, but the format and methods used are far more reliable than hearsay.
I’m not responding to anyone in particular but here’s what I’d like to add to this discussion for someone new or someone who might be thinking where do I start. Disease testing is a management tool. Treat it like that. When acquiring any new animal: test on intake, demand from sellers a return guarantee if something comes up positive. It’s not really germane to your current purchase if A.) some snakes can clear this virus (which no peer reviewed evidence for that) or B.) some snakes are asymptomatic positives indefinitely. At the time of the transaction you bought a “100% healthy snake” and this is one additional way of verifying that claim.
If you have long term members of your collection who are positive then you can make the decision if you’re going to euthanize or isolate based on your personal circumstances. But choosing not to know just means you’re giving the virus a chance to spread unabated. Again testing is a management tool not a prescription for treatment or action. Everyone should test in my opinion even if the results would be euthanasia.
Testing should be used in addition to (not in leu of) normal biohazard procedures: isolation of cohorts, sanitation between contact of animals/breeding groups, sanitization of shared surfaces, artificial incubation etc. If you never tested the adults and just isolated your youngstock could effectively guarantee your production was serpentovirus free.
Python people should be happy frankly. There is vertical transmission in boas with arenavirus and it’s devastating. Boas are very well adapted to arenavirus infections and they can last a long time potentially but they do pass it to their offspring and euthanasia is the best course unless you can find a long term pet home. Their bodies are being ravaged even if it takes years for the virus to show symptoms.
The other thing to keep in mind is that testing and management for a disease that’s a little bit cryptic, sometimes lethal something not, isn’t something new in animal husbandry. We “manage” Feline leukemia virus (FeLV) with a combination of testing, isolation, and pet homes for positive animals that are stable and may clear the infection with the same sort of mindset. There’s no reason not to treat the diseases that we’re discovering in reptiles with similar approach. First line of defense though is testing.
Testing, did I mention it enough? I firmly believe that testing is better for the community than not.
Most people agree that testing all of a facility’s neonate production is an onerous burden and it’s not necessary if proper cohort isolation is in place. Buyers should be verifying that proper isolation was in place themselves. It’s their money on the line.
