22/07/2023
Still captivated by these green gems!
If you’ve been wondering why we’ve been quiet lately…
2022 was rough… we discovered nidovirus had found its way into our collection.
The typical reaction is “who did you get it from”. This was honestly just a crappy situation between good people and it hasn’t impacted on any other collections, so we have no intention of passing any blame.
It is yet another reminder for every reptile keeper out there to always quarantine and test new animals. We did quarantine but didn’t test, we accept responsibility for that.
Nidovirus was only discovered in 2014, testing has only been available in Australia since 2018. In hindsight, we let our guard down and didn’t realise how prevalent it had become in Australia.
Once we knew we had a positive animal in our collection, we tested everything. This was a big and costly process, but how else can you move forward? Unfortunately, we ended up having to euthanise most of our adult Green Tree Pythons due to them being positive for Nidovirus. These were animals we absolutely loved working with, many we bred here and were the cornerstone of our breeding projects that we’d built over the past decade. It was nothing short of devastating. One shining light is that none of our younger holdback animals in racking systems were positive. I wonder if younger animals are less susceptible to this virus? Also of note, we hatched a small clutch in Jan 2022 from what turned out to be positive adults, the offspring have remained negative – once again proof that vertical transmission (from parent to offspring) doesn’t occur.
We contacted everyone that had taken on an animal from us in the previous year once we knew we had Nidovirus in our group- this was an uncomfortable task, but it had to be done for the fear of having spread this virus further into our community. Everyone’s tests came back with negative results. What a massive relief to know we haven’t spread this virus to other collections. I’d like to say thank you to everyone we contacted who’d purchased from us, I was ready to accept some strongly confrontational conversations, however everyone was very sympathetic to our situation and appreciative of us contacting them and being open and honest. Green Tree Python keepers really are quality people!
See further useful information about Nidovirus in the comments section if anyone is interested in doing some research.
We were very ready to call it a day and “hang up the perches” after this experience – it’s pretty heartbreaking to say goodbye to animals that have been part of our family over the past 10 years. Motivation to continue certainly wasn’t strong initially. Bloodlines have now been lost forever that we were trying to establish. Over time and with discussions with some of our chondro mates in this community, the passion we have for this species returned. Its returned now with a vengeance and our resolve to produce some cracking animals for others to enjoy has never been stronger! Thankfully we had kept youngsters we’d bred from some of our favourite animals and have this group to be the cornerstone of our re-build.
For fear of missing someone, I still want to give a shout out to people that are important to me in this journey. James Lyon you’re a great mate and my “chondro brother”, it’s been a bit of a parallel journey we’ve been on at times in this hobby- riding the highs and lows of breeding this species. Thank you for the support and keeping the fire burning for me- I hope I can be as supportive to you as you’ve been to me should the occasion arise. Russell Grant, you’ve been a great mentor, always sharing your time and thoughts and guidance – thank you. Brian Champion and Troy Macnab, you’ve both been an enormous help and I love the chance to draw information out of you both. Thank you to some of you keepers and breeders that I’ve been living vicariously though while not being able to breed animals myself, particularly Daniel Boswell, Jason Allen, Mitchell Bourke & Aaron Di Rienzo. Also a shout out to Ryan Stacey, Miles Brown and James Palinkas – your all ripping people that I miss in the Chondro community, cheers for helping me out along the way.
Last but not least, a huge thank you to my Supreme Green partner and partner in life – Jen Lewin. You’ve always supported me and shared this passion for reptiles, particularly Green Pythons. I’m fulfilling a dream I’ve had since I was an 8 year old kid gazing at an image of an Australian Green Python in wonder and amazement.
We bounced back after losing our animals in the Black Saturday bushfires, we’ll bounce back from this.
It's now been around a year of having a nidovirus free collection, we've re-done all of our enclosures and our group is humming along beautifully!
Thanks Supreme Green Tree Python family, we’ll talk soon-
Andrew
