Agh internal parasites

Sorry to interrupt right in the middle of such a great learning session... Sorry to hear about the trouble April! :( But it sounds like Becky is gonna get you through! Kudos to Becky!! :) Good luck with the treatments!! And, BTW, long time no see! Well no type, whatever... Enough rambling... Good luck!

Oh yes, protozoan infestations can be the worst. Not to be graphic but... usually they get anorexic, dehydrated, bloody diarrhea, vomiting(or regurgitating) and if it goes on long enough, the animal will die from it. Definitely not something to be taken lightly.

Giardia and coccidia aren't "too" common, but if you are getting animals from a sheisty pet store that doesn't clean their cages or have clean water available, then you may see these parasites. You will definitely see them in wildcaught animals the majority of the time because the water they drink isn't Evian :).

On the same subject, I did a fecal on Amani, my Ball, this past Wednesday and found 4 pinworm eggs. The eggs were distorted and looked "digested". A friend of mine was doing a fecal on the same sample just to get a good reading and found 2 eggs in her sample, while I found two in mine. I then mentioned to her that my mice also had pinworms and we concluded that since the mice had pinworms, the eggs just passed through Amani's system and were showing up on the fecal float, hence the "digested" appearance of the eggs.

Like I've said many times before, if you happen to feed a parasitized prey animal to your snake, the snake will not contract those parasites. Now, if your snake was kept with another snake that happened to be infected with parasites, and you fed a mouse that had stepped in the infected snake's feces, yes, your snake would become parasitized because of that. Mammal parasites and reptile parasites are quite different and need optimum environments to reproduce.

Ok.. I am back.

I am going to have to weigh the snakes most likely on tuesday since that is my next day off when I will have the time and energy to weigh all of the snakes.

So if I understand correctly, a parasite infected rat (say with tapeworms) will NOT pass these on to the snake? Very interesting..

Nope, although when doing a fecal you may come across some digested remains of the parasites themselves or segments(eggs).

You may want to treat the rats as well, since breeding colonies can sometimes contract parasites just from living in cramped quarters. A parasitized rat may be eating, but it isn't absorbing that nutrition that they and the snakes' need. It would be as if you were feeding a malnourished animal that is skin and bones to your snakes(not YOUR snakes in particular, just an example) and the snake wouldn't be getting anything out of the rat/mouse.

I just recently treated my mouse colony for pinworms as well as some new additions that had the human tapeworm(Can we say QUARANTINE!? and gloves...Not that it would be a bad thing if I got infested... I could lose weight and THEN deworm myself *giggle*). Treating around 50-75 mice was an ORDEAL to say the least, makes you tired just looking at all of them and knowing you have to scruff and restrain EACH one just to give them some Strongid... And then the mice LIKE the Strongid and wonder why they were struggling in the first place...

Oh yeah.. not that long ago I was giving all the rats (around 100) the ivermectin for lice. Thank goodness I haven't seen another louse since..

How did you dose the strongid? Do you give it like the ivermectin and just wipe it on their tongue (it would help that they actually like strongid)

Ok Becky, I weighed (almost) everybody. I didn't weigh my biggest (female dumeril) but she's in the 21lb range. I also didn't weigh the foster baby sand boa, my new JCP, my hog island boa, or my mom's corn snake. I will weigh them tomorrow.

Can you help me figure out how many of each size syringe to buy tomorrow? And do you think I will need more than 75mL of pyrantel pamoate and 69 mg of praziquantel? If so I will pick up more at Petsmart tomorrow as well.

Here is the list:
12g albino nelson milk
14g greyband king
30g honduran milk
98g mexican black king
132g anery kenyan sand boa
176g normal kenyan sand boa
228g speckled king
280g roughscaled sand boa
290g albino cali king
452g small female surinam red tail
482g small male yellow anaconda
528g female cali king
614g ball python
636g albino stripe cali king
1850g female yellow anaconda
2180g male surinam red tail
2380g granite burmese
4550g large male yellow anaconda
4610g male blood python
5000g female blood python
7060g large female surinam red tail

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Shelby

12g albino nelson milk

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12g?! Are you sure you didn't get a worm mixed up in the batch by mistake? :giggle:

:P the foster sand boa is 6g (at last weigh) so there.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Shelby

:P the foster sand boa is 6g (at last weigh) so there.

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<Gulp> :O Do they even make pinkies that small to feed that little guy?

Problem is she doesn't want to eat. She could get a newborn pink down easy if she wanted to, but I've been resigned to force feeding rat tails for now..