How contagious is a URI?

[CLP]

I have 3 veiled chameleons, and I believe my old guy (5 years) has a URI as he has been lethargic with surpressed appetite lately and I noticed a lot of mucous in his mouth tonight. He was a rescue I got back in October and I'm still working on getting him back to optimal health. I'm going to try Reptaid initially as I'm concerned about antibiotics being too hard on his system. Will go with the antibiotics if the Reptaid does not seem to be helping in the next week or so though.

Anyhow, my concern is the other two chameleons. They are in a separate room from him, but how contagious are URI's generally? How careful do I have to be about infecting my other two?

Thanks for the input!

 

[ataraxia]

Honestly there should be no reason for your other chameleons to come into contact with this chameleon and even with that said I dont think there is much risk. What are the possible reasons why this chameleon now has a RI? If these reasons can also be related to the care parameters given to the other chameleons. They may also fall ill due to the issue causing this.

Not many of us do this with established animals but you should clean your hands illness or not after handling each animal.

 

[Sohumvet]

You need to go to your vet and do a culture and sensitivity tomorrow. Don't delay. And I would get him started on antibiotics if he were mine. And if they are in the same room there is a possibility of it spreading. I've seen it happen. Reptaid is ok for am immunnostimulant but if he's got some bad bacteria like E. coli it's not going to do anything.

I have 3 veiled chameleons, and I believe my old guy (5 years) has a URI as he has been lethargic with surpressed appetite lately and I noticed a lot of mucous in his mouth tonight. He was a rescue I got back in October and I'm still working on getting him back to optimal health. I'm going to try Reptaid initially as I'm concerned about antibiotics being too hard on his system. Will go with the antibiotics if the Reptaid does not seem to be helping in the next week or so though.

Anyhow, my concern is the other two chameleons. They are in a separate room from him, but how contagious are URI's generally? How careful do I have to be about infecting my other two?

Thanks for the input!

 

[djfishygillz]

RI I would recommend upping the basking temp and heat of the entire ambient temperature. Heat really helps get rid of RI's. But a vet visit still may be in order.

 

[DavidBuchan]

RI I would recommend upping the basking temp and heat of the entire ambient temperature. Heat really helps get rid of RI's. But a vet visit still may be in order.

Good advice...but the vet is not a maybe imo....take the advice of the vet on the thread

 

[CLP]

Honestly there should be no reason for your other chameleons to come into contact with this chameleon and even with that said I dont think there is much risk. What are the possible reasons why this chameleon now has a RI? If these reasons can also be related to the care parameters given to the other chameleons. They may also fall ill due to the issue causing this.

Not many of us do this with established animals but you should clean your hands illness or not after handling each animal.

No, they don't come into contact with each other. I was just wondering about me spreading the infection as I move from enclosure to enclosure in my daily routine. There is no "sharing" of feeding cups or anything, and I have starting tending to him last, so hopefully will be OK.

As for the reason for the URI, the only thing I can think of is I don't think he has been able to get to his basking spot lately. The spot is there, warm and accessible to a "normal" chameleon, but this guy came from an environment where he literally had only one branch to climb on and only a couple of small, low growing plants at the bottom of the cage. In addition, I am pretty sure there is a mild MBD (he has a crooked casque and underbite). Anyhow, he has always been very clumsy when climbing and really only stays on the top two branches in his enclosure. Over the last few weeks, one of the plants in his enclosure has grown a lot and was sort of in the way of him getting from where he was to his basking spot. He'd only have to climb over it, so I thought he would be fine. A few days ago, I started to wonder if it was actually possible he wouldn't cross this branch since I hadn't seen him under his basking spot, so I cut the branch. He is now back under his spot. I feel really bad, but it just never occured to me he would be so relutant to cross one branch! I think perhaps he was cold for too long, resulting in the URI.

That actually brings me to another question re: cross contamination. I had been thinking of switching this guy out of the enclosure he is in since he doesn't use 80% of it. My other guy is younger, and very active but in a smaller enclosure at the moment. I was going to switch them so my young guy can have a nice big enclosure to explore and the old guy one that is perhaps more suitable to his lack of mobility. He has also fallen once and the smaller enclosure is not quite as tall, so if he fell again, it wouldn't be as far. BUT, now I'm concerned about moving my young guy into the enclosure the older one is in. How do I ensure the enclosure is germ free? I assume get rid of all the live plants and put in new branches etc. Is there anything else? Good dose of bleach?

 

[jannb]

Sorry to hear about your little guy. It sounds like he has had a rough life. I hope you will do the right thing for him and get him to a good chameleon vet for proper treatment. I have been around RI's for years and there's no way to know if it's contagious until you get a culture and find out exactly what kind of infection it is. Some are contagious and some are not. He will also need a sensitivity test to find out which antibiotics his type of infection will respond to. My vet also recommends a higher temp both day and night and a warm mist humidifier both day and night.

I would recommend thoroughly washing your hands after each time you touch him or his enclosure. If you decide to ever use his cage with any other chameleon I would recommend a good thorough cleaning (40 volume peroxide kills everything) and that's what I would use.

Do you have a good chameleon vet? If not you can check though this thread linked below and read each post, not the links, where the members here have recommended their vet. https://www.chameleonforums.com/area-area-country-vet-list-32880/

 

[Alexl]

When talking about respiratory infections, you commonly mean bacterial infections. Virus diseases don't play a big role in chameleons yet. Most bacteria found in respiratory infections (e.g. Pseudomonas, Citrobacter, Acinetobacter...) always live inside the chameleon's mouth and only become a problem by immunosuppression and "good" conditions to grow. Healthy reptiles can cope with lots of ugly bacteria species, which would harm humans much more easily. Of course you as owner spread bacteria from cage to cage. You're carrying bacteria around all the day as every other human and every other animal. I'm pretty sure there are some colonies of e.g. Pseudomonas or E. coli among them. That's not a problem itself and you even can't prevent it completely in a non-sterile world as ours.

The most important things about respiratory infections are cage setup and immunosuppression. If cage setup is checked and completely suitable (for the other two chameleons, too), the others shouldn't be in danger to get any lung issues. Then his rescue situation and MBD could be one cause for bad health condition, which afforded bacteria to grow until a stage the chameleon couldn't deal with anymore. Remember as soon as you see a "mild" MBD, the chameleon has really bad bone calzification and other health issues yet which aren't visible on the outside (you can see one example here).

Well, what I would suggest to do: Don't wait to visit your reptile vet for proper diagnosis (including x-rays to check bone density, swabs and resistance tests to identify bacteria and finding best working antibiotics). You surely will not be able to fix this on your own and wrong antibiotics can worsen and/or lengthen sickness. And the sooner you begin to treat such patients, the higher is the chameleon's chance to recover. Meanwhile check your cage setup or let members check it, better twice than having other ill chameleons additionally soon.