Deworming medication?

[DeFishy]

Hi all, I'm finally getting the pygmy chameleons I've wanted, Iv'e everything set up for them, however I had to compromise and get WC ones. So, I'm going to ask everyone, what is a good medicine and process for deworming the chams. I've not done this before, but I have given other reptiles medications before. Any help is appreciated. Thanks.

 

[Syn]

Reptaid does work well with a lot of parasites.. but I am honestly not to sure which parasites it works with.

Might wait for someone who has experience using it. I haven't had to yet.

 

[PardalisGirl]

Fecal test....

You need to get a fecal test done. They could have something other than worms....

 

[Brad Ramsey]

Ask your vet for panacur powder. You just need one little envelope.
dust one feeding of crickets with it. Make sure the chameleons are hungry (one or two days w/out food).
I put 4 panacur dusted crickets per chameleon in the enclosure (I have 4 so 16 dusted crickets went in)
I chose to only do this once and I'm not going to bother with fecal floats or anything like that.

-Brad

 

[kinyonga]

Syn said..."Reptaid does work well with a lot of parasites"...what does it do for parasites??

DeFishy...If you don't get a fecal done you won't know if the chameleon has parasites or even if you are using the right medication. Not all parasites are killed by panacur.

 

[Eric Adrignola]

reptaid claims to be effective on all parasites. It uses ingredients of dubious medical benifit, such as seed-extracts. I cannot reccomend it without some sort of scientific basis.

Too many herbal, natural treatments turn out to be snake oil. If it works, it should be easy to prove. No offense to the people behind it, or the people who sell it - but I would love to see some actual results, backed with real data,

For roundworms, I just get some fenbendazol paste from the horse stores. It is not hard to dose, and lasts forever. And for your roundworms, it absolutly does work.

 

[kinyonga]

Reptaid...contents listed here...
http://www.chameleonsnorthwest.com/reptaid4.htm

Pau D'Arco
http://www.bccancer.bc.ca/PPI/UnconventionalTherapies/PauDArco.htm
"The toxic effects of orally administered lapachol were studied in rodents, dogs, and monkeys... Death occurred in monkeys after six doses of 0.5 g/kg/day and after five doses of 1.0 g/kg/day. Signs of toxicosis in both dogs and monkeys included moderate to severe anemia, reticulocytosis, normoblastosis, pallor of mucous membranes, bilirubinuria, and proteinuria. Additionally, transient thrombocytosis and leukocytosis, and elevated serum alkaline phosphatase activity and prothrombin times occurred in dogs." (Morrison)

The rest of the ingredients listed don't seem to be bad.

 

[jannb]

I feel that it's very important to have a fecal on my guys. I have them about every 3 months. Panacur does not work on cociddia and Luie has had coccidia twice......if I'd not had him checked he could be dead by now. Albon was prescribed for this but it made Luie very sick so I ended up using an alternative drug called Appertex, which worked great with no side effects. Now there's another alternative drug out, Ponazuril which is supposed to be even better for the animal than Appertex. I am extremely careful with my animals and Luie still got coccidia. When I bought Camille, captive breed and hatched, at 5 months old (from a very reputable breeder that it spoke very highly of here on the forums) she was loaded with pinworms and hook worms which panacur was prescribed for. My daughter has bought 2 different chameleons, both captive breed and hatched, from this same breeder and both were young and loaded with coccidia. You just never know if you don't have a fecal.

 

[Brad Ramsey]

I think the problem here is the size of the chameleons in question.
I considered not treating my WC pygmies at all, I know Tom Routhouska had wild caught animals that he didn't treat.
Eggs and babies can be kept in a separate "clean" enclosure.
I am very careful to wash my hands well after doing anything with the brevs, or in their enclosure.
I believe the treatment for parasites may be worse for them than the actual parasites themselves. I wasn't too nervous about dusting with panacur, but I think anything further might be too hard on them.

-Brad

 

[Dunnigan]

Im not going to treat mine unless i see them going downhill soon. I have only had them a few weeks and they are still acclimating. Once they are acclimated i feel that they are capable of living "happily" with the parasites they may or may not have.

I do wash my hands and use hand sanitizer every time i do anything with the cage, just to be safe.

 

[DeFishy]

Alright, thanks for the advice everyone What i'm going to do is take them to my vet after they get settled in (I'll keep an eye out for any signs of sickness and such). I'll also list all the medications suggested here and will present them to the vet for a second opinion. Hopefully they are healthy.