I've had several pet store balls in the last several years and in each case I failed to get a fecal done and after they did well through a quarantine and where treated for external parasites I put them into my general collection without treating for internal parasites.



I have been doing group breedings (1 male with 2 to 6 females) of my adults in 3 and 4 ft Neodesha cages so after several years of rearranging for breeding and also housing two females per cage outside of breeding I've lost track of who has been with whom. I only have 30 or so animals but it would cost me about $450 to do fecals on all of them and the meds to just treat them all are a little less than that (although that much Droncit really adds up). I did one dose each of Flagyl (the fecals I did have done didn't show anything that warrants it but just as a precaution while I'm at it), 6 doses of Panacure for the Strongyloides (I’m told very contagious), and two doses of Droncit for the tapeworms. I'm also spraying them with dilute Ivomectin in case it helps. My idea is then to retest key players and random periodically to be sure I have everything cleaned out.



I’ve learned my lesson and of course any new animals from now on will be tested or just treated, not sure which is best. I worry about a fecal not finding something (apparently the tape worms are particularly prone to be missed as they don't always pass eggs). The down side of just shotgunning is that I don’t plan to add animals very often and I’m assuming the shelf life of the meds isn’t long so I’d have to go to the vet anyway for enough of all the meds for one animal, maybe just pay my $15 for a fecal and trust it.



I'm also hoping to build a new rack to get down to one animal per cage with the possible exception of some breeding groups.

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