Fecal Results

[cryogen]

I can't wait to post exciting and fun things like pictures on here and not all these posts about my poor chameleon's fecal test results.

I just got a call from the vet saying that his last fecal came back positive for ascaridia galli, which is a roundworm they said. He has an appointment to get meds for it on Thursday. But I was just wondering if anyone has heard of this before? I googled it and searched on this site and couldn't find much pertaining to chameleons.

I'm starting to doubt the lab they send the fecals off to now. He had a positive one for coccidia there, took him to Dr. Alfonso and he had a clean fecal, got another one done locally and it was positive for coccidia, got treatment for that, sent out this most recent one to check on the coccidia and they report back with this roundworm one (but didn't mention coccidia, fingers crossed that means it was clean for that again!). I have no idea what to think. This little guy is stressing me out!

 

[ferretinmyshoes]

Parasites shed eggs intermittently so some of the fecals may have been from times not shedding, versus others during the egg laying cycle for that worm. And coccidia can be difficult to find. That is a lot of variety though, poor little guy! I'll see if I can find anything on that particular ascarid for you...

 

[ferretinmyshoes]

Apparently its primarily a parasite of poultry (Galli means chicken), but can be carried in earthworms. Any chance you feed your Cham earthworms? I'm still looking for more info. The species of worm is usually not terribly important because almost all ascarids are treated the same. But interesting to try to figure out where it came from!

 

[kinyonga]

It could be that ascaridia galli is very similar to a chameleon round worm and the lab missed the differences. As ferret said the species isn't terribly important.

Scan down to ascarids...
http://www.chameleonnews.com/02JulVassilievWorms.html

 

[cryogen]

Thank you everyone for the help.

Yeah, when I was researching I noticed it was common in poultry and that's why I was confused. He's never had an earthworm. The only thing he's had since we got him are crickets, superworms and silkworms. We've had him for roughly 3 months now.

Our first panther died from a severe case of some type of roundworm. He had the worms before we got him and the consensus on him was he was a wild caught passed off to us as a captive born. We sanitized the cage multiple times before our new guy moved in. But I guess it's possible he picked it up in there.