DIY Reptile Fecal Exams/Kits?

[Aedryan Methyus]

Trust me you will misdiagnose most of what you see. You might get lucky and see things wiggling around but that would only be if you have a high load and prepared the float properly. I'm not trying to be arrogant, it took me years in school and months in field work to learn how to diagnose. It's still cheaper to just have a vet do it because as I said, you can't get medication without a prescription which means a vet visit which means a float anyway because he or she will still have to diagnose the right parasite to use the right treatment or whether or not to do it at all. Some parasites are not harmful to hosts and not treated.

So again, not trying to discourage you but unless you have training, you aren't going to know what you are looking at and will still need a vet to treat so that $60 cost is still going to happen even if you get lucky and see a flagellate waving their flagella at you.

Part of why I would like to be able to do this is because half of my collection consists of Bloods and Short Tails and due to their slow metabolism and the large amounts of time (months) in between when fecal samples can even be collected, it would be nice to have the ability to check on things when they finally go a couple/few times per year. I completely agree that they will ultimately have to go to the vet if there is an obvious problem. But, you don't think DIY precautionary fecal exams are reasonably simple enough for average people to learn enough about to be able to identify unsafe amounts of common dangerous parasites? Myself, I can't afford to be taking 20 + snakes per year in to the vet just for random precautionary fecal exams + all of the followup exams, etc...