hey all, read somewhere that it's a good idea do do a fecal examination once or twice a year. due to my growing collection of beardies it occured to me that perhaps i could save myself a lot of bread and do this myself with a decent microscope and some pictures of what is normal and what is not. found a 600x student microscope on ebay for about 20 bucks and am wondering if this would be powerful enough. also does anybody know where i could find a good collection of slide photos?
Keep in mind, the stronger the microscope, the clearer the view. Doing fecals are not difficult to do. I have done fecals for the last 3 years. I do have a vet microscope that I got on ebay for a couple hundred dollars. I also work with my vet. I do the fecals, any questions I have he answers. If I see something weird, I just take a fecal in and have him look at it. I started doing them not because I am cheap, but because I live 45 minutes from the vet and it is much more convenient to do my own. I tend to do them more often then if I relied on a vet.
thanks gofast, thats awesome. will swing by a library and see if i can put my hands on either of the books they mentioned. did a bit of searching and it looks like the best method is centrifugal floatation although i can't see myself shelling out for a centrifuge anytime soon. maybe i'll just put the sample in a really tiny bottle with a screw top lid, drop it into my golf sock and swing it around my head a few times lol. anybody interested should follow this link http://www.capcvet.org/recommendations/fecal.html# there is a cool little video there called "the scoop on poop" which is aimed directly at vets.