bumps on skin and labored breathing

[Lori P]

Hi Romeo and welcome! Glad your snakes turned out to be ok. I would definitely do the stool sample; might as well knock out a parasite issue before it gets to be a problem. Hope you enjoy it here!

[drache]

if your vet was handling the snake, he probably knows something about them
some vets just will not see herps
I even had one who stopped seeing herps, although she has the qualification
hopefully with herps becoming slightly more main stream, more vets will study their health care and medical needs
at this point, just having a vet who's even comfortable with them is something to be appreciated

[rpguzman]

UPDATE #2:

My cousin, who himself is practically a herpetologist in training (actually, he's in sixth grade, but is really knowledgeable about herps), took his garter and mine to see another exotic animal vet (the mother of one of his friends who checks out all his animals for free). Well, that gut feeling I had about there being more to it that what the first vet told me...I was right. My cousin took in stool samples for both our snakes and it turns out that both of the little snakes had intestinal parasites. As for my snake's bumps, it seems that she did at one time have mites and the bites had left marks on her skin. The vet suspects that both of these snakes were not captive bred and likely had these ailments when captured. She also said the breathing is typical among snakes of this species. Which brings me to something very interesting...I did some more reading in this forum and came across a recent post by aSnakeLovinBabe that helped me to ID my little one. Lily--that's what I've decided to call her--is a striped keelback and not a garter at all. The other snake we got at the same time as Lily, which we've named Draco, is some kind of garter or ribbon snake. I'll post pictures in a new thread soon!

Thanks for the help everyone! We truly have an awesome community here and I look forward to continuing to participate in it.

[guidofatherof5]

Romy,

Great to see your care and concern for your snakes. Keep up the good work.
This forum has a wealth of information from great people.
Love to see those pictures when you get them.

[anji1971]

Glad to see you got a second opinion. With proper treatment, the little sweeties should be healthy in no time.
Keelbacks are beautiful, luckily this one found someone who really cares.

[Odie]

Hi, from Oregon, Romeo