Follow-up fecals for Hook/pin treatment?

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npgeorgeuw

Hatchling Member
Hi all,
I was just wondering if anyone had done their own fecals shortly after de-worming their dragons. Long-story shot we did a three day course of panacur/fenbendazole (at 35mg/kg) for pinworms. Monitoring fecals during this time showed that we had cleared the eggs by day three but on day four their were clear pinworm eggs and now a few hookworm eggs in the floats. We followed up with two more days of 50 mg/kg and on day six found shedded hoorkworm eggs and copious fillarial hookworm larva on the direct fecals. Day 6 we gave a single dose of 100 mg/kg and today (day seven) more fillarial hookworm larvae (dead) and a single hookworm and a single pinworm egg. This other dragon hasn't shed eggs since day three but is still shedding dead larvae.

This whole time we have been steaming the cage and have limited furniture to simple stones and cardboard egg cartons/paper towels that can either be thrown out or baked at the end of the day. Every night we are also steam treating the vivariums. All fecal matter gets cleaned up within an hour of eliminating. We have also been washing the dragons and soaking them in povidone. It seems odd that we might be shedding hookworms/eggs still so has anyone had a similar experience??? This has been a frustrating experience to-say-the-least.--At this point we are going to re-check in two weeks and re-treat for any larvae that hatch between now and then.
 

Drache613

BD.org Sicko
Staff member
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Hello,

It has been awhile since I have done follow ups on fecals quite like that.
They will shed out all of the eggs, eventually. Remember that reptiles' systems take awhile to flush everything out of their system.
Are they doing well & have an increased appetite now?

Tracie
 

npgeorgeuw

Hatchling Member
Original Poster
Drache613":j2thiayi said:
Hello,

It has been awhile since I have done follow ups on fecals quite like that.
They will shed out all of the eggs, eventually. Remember that reptiles' systems take awhile to flush everything out of their system.
Are they doing well & have an increased appetite now?

Tracie

The youngest has been weaned off of liquid food and has started eating dubias again. She had to get starved out a bit before she started this but her weight has gone up throughout this endeavor and she's been eating some greens (I can tell from the fecals). Her follow-up fecal was clean for eggs or larvae and remarkably low on coccidia. She had a mild hookworm infestation though.

The oldest dragon is a different story. She's still quite blah and closes her eyes if you try and entice her with insects. She has been eating around 4mLs per day of liquid diet and has gained 4 grams this week alone (she's now 34 grams so that's over 10%) and each day she seems to eat more and have bigger BMs so it's looking better. Her persistent stress marks have also gone down by about 80%. She'll get her follow-up fecal tonight (collected it this morning). She was pretty high on coccidia so she (and our youngest) will get treatment for that when the package comes tonight.--Needless to say our steam cleaner, spray bottle and oven are going to get quite the use this weekend.

-On a separate note, why does it seem that whenever I give them a towel to lay on (when we take the rocks away to bake at night) do they always have some form of mutant BM all over it the next morning? :cool:
 

Drache613

BD.org Sicko
Staff member
Moderator
Hello,

It sounds like they are both on the mend now. It just takes some time. Hopefully their appetites will start kicking in really well also. At least the youngest one is now eating dubias, that is a great sign!
Once they start eating greens more regularly you know that they are feeling better.
Usually they stop eating greens when they don't feel very well.
Coccidia & hookworms can definitely interfere with their appetite & growth.

Hopefully your older one will start feeling better so she can start eating solid foods again!
The stress marks should gradually disappear altogether.
They love to mess up their blankets sometimes!
Let us know how they are doing.

Tracie
 

npgeorgeuw

Hatchling Member
Original Poster
another update, so still shedding singular dead/fragmented hook larva for both dragons but only 0-1 per entire smear and eggs have now been gone for floats for 8 days. Yesterday was day 3 of Baycox treatment and one dragon has 1-2 oocysts per entire float (had less of an infestation) and the other dragon has decreased by 80-90% as of day 2. We are considering extending her treatment by a day considering the still sizeable amount of shedding that's going on although there is so little solid material going through them it wouldn't be surprising to see it take a few more days until the oocysts taper to nothing (although the oocysts do originate from the large intestine so they shouldn't take more than a day or two to go and maybe we are seeing oocysts that were already getting ready to burst out of cells, etc.)--Either way my guess is that people should probably be still keeping their cages under the strictest of hygiene for 1-2 weeks post-treatment considering that even with a mild infestation they are still probably shedding singular oocysts.

Since the Baycox treatment neither dragon is now eating greens and they are both getting two full syringe feedings daily. They still lap it up so their appetite is not completely gone at least. They've both gained 10% of weight in the last week so we are not doing too shabby on that front.

The eldest dragon has had some retained shedding problems and a crusty eye which we are now starting to focus our efforts on via topical antifungal. It doesn't appear to be yellow fungus (we may culture once we have clear official 1-2 week fecals) but is getting slowly better. I'm guessing it's a surface fungal issue on the retained shed but it's hard to tell unless we culture and even then results aren't fast and can still be inconclusive.

After all of this I have some very strong words for the dragon-mill breeders the major pet stores are relying on. I'm amazed there isn't a more prominent change.org petition for stuff like this. Based on the large amount of dragons with sores or that are sick or dead that I'm finding in many of our area stores it's beyond ignorance on the part of these breeders--It's negligent and intentional.
 

Taterbug

BD.org Addict
npgeorgeuw":3rj9phfk said:
After all of this I have some very strong words for the dragon-mill breeders the major pet stores are relying on. I'm amazed there isn't a more prominent change.org petition for stuff like this. Based on the large amount of dragons with sores or that are sick or dead that I'm finding in many of our area stores it's beyond ignorance on the part of these breeders--It's negligent and intentional.

I couldn't agree more. It's not just your area, the ones around me are terrible too and there are so many new owners who come here with sickly little babies. It's aweful. It's not just dragons either - I've yet to see healthy herps at any petstore :(

Glad your fecals are clearing up, hope your little ones bounce back quickly.
 

npgeorgeuw

Hatchling Member
Original Poster
Taterbug":2pycye8l said:
I couldn't agree more. It's not just your area, the ones around me are terrible too and there are so many new owners who come here with sickly little babies. It's aweful. It's not just dragons either - I've yet to see healthy herps at any petstore :(

Glad your fecals are clearing up, hope your little ones bounce back quickly.

Thanks for the well wishes and I couldn't agree more. The odd thing is I have been seeing a bunch of hypos and leatherbacks and vividly colorful babies at the local pet stores so at least someone is breeding for genetics, their husbandry must be atrocious though.--I can't even imagine...
 

npgeorgeuw

Hatchling Member
Original Poster
Final update for this thread:

Hookworms and pinworms have been cleared in both dragons for three weeks now. Both dragons have also been cleared for Coccidia for 9 days now. For those of you that are interested, we cleaned the vivariums every other day with professional quaternary amine cleaner (coccidiacidal) and steamed every night swapping all paper towels each evening and singular paper towels after bowel movements. We only left rocks/paper towels in and baked the rocks every night. As soon after BMs (if possible) each dragon got bathed and vents/tails scrubbed. For those of you that have the ability to follow these things we saw larval hookworms (but not eggs) being shed for 1 week after panacur/fenbendazole treatment and ~0-3 coccidia oocysts for ~2 days after Baycox/toltrazuril treatment. I think it a very wise plan to continue some minimal cleaning of the cage following treatment for up to 3-5 days.
 
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