Sending swabs in today!
One for reeses, the super ball
And for chili and pepper, my boas.
Eventually I would love to have documentation on all of my snakes for nido, crypto, ophidian paramyxovirus virus and arenavirus.
But so far the majority only have nido tested documented outside of snakes I have added over the last year who have been tested for everything. The rest I’ll be doing in small groups when I have the ability to do so.
Testing is a big deal to me and I wish more people would test their breeding stock vs many seeing it as taboo
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Beautiful animals and great ethics as a keeper. That’s really awesome and great to have documented.
I think the only thing really holding most people back is cost. I had a couple of mine tested. It’s honestly just good practice. Like routine bloodwork for yourself or a dog/cat.
The only downside is the occasional negative because of cycling viral loads but I think that’s still fairly rare.
At the very least, It would be great for people to start testing new acquisitions by default as a breeder… Or if you can’t test your whole collection yet, consider testing your cycling breeder males. They’re going to be the ones going tub to tub.
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I dont think its too expensive personally, atleast not compared to 1,000$+ animals. I test all new additions at pick up or the day of if i get them local and send them out to RAL same day. But, i see the cost of testing as peace of mind and i feel better about the long term health of my own animals and knowing for sure that i wont be sending out any animals that could be carriers.
Ive only had one false negative and unfortunately it was with an adult boa i had who was tested multiple times and then started showing signs of IBD after having her for 5 years
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