Reptile & Amphibian Forums

for best deworming technique's you must get the flagyl right into the stomach right?
if you inject it into a dead prey would it work?
thanks
alex

Yes, you can put most antiparasiticals into dead prey. You just need a patient who eats reliably enough to stick to the dosing schedule.

However, Flagyl (metronidazole) doesn't kill worms. It's an antibacterial and antiprotozoal, basically an antibiotic, used for giardiasis and amebiasis. It doesn't have much effect on multi-celled organisms like parasitic worms.

For that, the most common treatment is 50 mg/kg of fenbendazole (Panacur, Safe-Guard, other trade names), either 4x weekly, or
3x every other week.

I thought it was once every other week for 3x?? 4 or even 3 times a week seems like a lot...and if you're injecting it in dead prey 3 or 4 meals a week seem like a lot!

Steve

You're right; that's what I meant to write. It's:

3 times, biweekly (now, two weeks from now, and four weeks from now), or

4 times, weekly (now, a week from now, two weeks from now, and three weeks from now).

yes i ment panacur my bad i actually went 100mg/kg and had good results there were just some debates about injecting into dead prey so i always tubed them but if putting into prey works as well then hey even better saves me some time and the risk is diminished.

Injecting into dead prey is not as effective as giving the meds directly.

I have noticed that if the meds are diluted with a mixture of meat baby food and water rather than just plain water it is a little easier on the stomachs of sensitive species such as pigmy rattlers and small crotalids (like sidewinders)

Think about it like this, you have to figure that you're diluting the meds with both x cc's of water and y cc's of mouse when you inject it into dead prey. You also slow the spread of the meds out over a period of time,... rather than giving Z cc's of meds at one time you're giving more like .25Z cc's of meds over the course of 4 days.

What happens if you're dealing with worming a problem feeder?

It's much easier to cut off a midwest restraining tube to a length of about 8", put that inside a slightly larger restraining tube, tube the snake, pull the head back so that it's inside the short tube, pull the snake back away from the larger tube with the head still inside the shorter tube (electrical tape works good for temporarily anchoring the two tubes together for the tubing process)

insert a bovine urinary cathether into the snake far enough to get past the esophogial sphincter muscle, inject the meds, et voila, in two minutes you've done it the *correct* way.

disclaimer: if you have not been professionally taught how to do this, get someone who has been to help you. Venomous snakes can maim and kill. The above mentioned method can REDUCE the chances of a bite.

While there are some recommended dose schedules for specific conditions in snakes, it is very important that you know how to do the following:

1. Know what the problem is before you give drugs. If the snake has nematodes, you want fenbendazole. If the snake has cestodes, you want praziquantel. If the snake has a protozoan load, you want metronidazole. If the snake has coccidia, you want sulfamethoxine. While there is some cross-reactivity between some of these drugs, for the most part they will not be effective if you pick the wrong one. A microscope is the snake keeper's best friend. Even if your vet will not see venomous snakes in the office, none will refuse to do a fecal exam if you just bring in a fresh wet poop.

2. Know what current research is saying about effective doses and potentially toxic side effects. 100mg/kg is the old, accepted dose for fenbendazole (Panacur) but recent studies suggest that 50mg/kg has the same effect. Some of the doses for metranidazole (Flagyl) published in the older editions of Frye have been shown to have negative side effects, so it is now recommended that lower doses be used over longer periods of time rather than giving the amount as a single bolus.

3. Keep a close watch on the snake's condition. After the first two to three doses (depending on which condition you are treating), do another fecal exam. Is the parasite load reduced, or holding steady, or increasing? This is information you need to be able to titrate the doses appropriately. If you stop giving drugs before the parasites are eliminated, all you do is encourage a resistant strain of parasites which will multiply and cause even worse problems later.

Shotgunning drugs is a bad idea unless you are dealing with a number of snakes from a single wild population where all individuals are known to be carrying a specific type of parasite load. Diagnostic tools are very important if you are giving medication.

Giving drugs along with food does spread out absorption time, but that is not necessarily a bad thing with antiparasitical medications. You want to give a fairly small bolus of food. I use subcutaneous or intracoelomic injections into pinky or fuzzy mice when snakes are voluntarily feeding. Minimizing stress to the patient is an important benefit to weigh against some delay in drug absorption. Adding water (half a percent to one percent of body weight is good) is almost always suggested when giving oral meds, and this does not cause any significant uptake delay.

You can find dosing schedules for many of the commonly used antiparasiticals in the books at the links below. None of them are absolutes, and all can and should be adjusted to the individual case with the help of repeated fecal exams.

The rule for getting a snake really clean of parasites is to throw everything that it produces under a microscope until you have three clean fecals in a row. This takes about 10 minutes every couple of weeks if you have your own microscope.

If you do not have your own microscope, and you aren't really sure what the problem is with your snake, find a helpful vet who will at least do the fecal exams even if they don't want the snake in the clinic.
Recommended reading - reptile veterinary books