New Malagasy Giant- Should I deworm?

[Nanotrev]

I recently got a large subadult male (maybe 12in long) wild-caught Malagasy giant chameleon who seems to be doing rather well. He's eating a drinking regularly- along with showing a lot of activity. However, I was told I might want to deworm him, being that he's wild-caught. Does anyone have any methods about which medication I should use or how I should go about doing this?

Edit-
I would also like to add that this is my first chameleon that I've bought which has been "field collected." All the rest have been captive-bred. I've been told 'if it ain't broke don't fix it' with chams a few times, hence my reluctance to treat him. My limited past experience is that if chameleons are doing fine on their own I shouldn't tamper with things too much.

 

[jajeanpierre]

I recently got a large subadult male (maybe 12in long) wild-caught Malagasy giant chameleon who seems to be doing rather well. He's eating a drinking regularly- along with showing a lot of activity. However, I was told I might want to deworm him, being that he's wild-caught. Does anyone have any methods about which medication I should use or how I should go about doing this?

Edit-
I would also like to add that this is my first chameleon that I've bought which has been "field collected." All the rest have been captive-bred. I've been told 'if it ain't broke don't fix it' with chams a few times, hence my reluctance to treat him. My limited past experience is that if chameleons are doing fine on their own I shouldn't tamper with things too much.

There are different thoughts on how to handle the parasite load of wild caughts and even parasites of long term/captive hatched reptiles in general. The current thinking seems to be that if the animal is doing well, do not try to eliminate parasites (per my vet) .

I think a wild caught needs to settle down to captivity before you try to medicate them. They've been extremely stressed during the whole capture and export process and are usually severely dehydrated. Medicating a stressed, dehydrated animal is very dangerous. Stress will likely cause the existing parasites that your animal's immune system had kept in balance in the wild to explode.

The importer I bought my wild caughts from was adamant that they be allowed to acclimate before worming and to only worm in small doses. If I worm a wild caught and find a lot of worms in the stool, I back right off, let them get over that first mass death of parasites before I worm them again.

Expect waves of parasites depending on the different parasites your animal has--and he has them. The parasites will all be in different life cycle stages inside the chameleon, and something like Panacur doesn't touch a parasite unless it is in the GI tract. There aren't too many intestinal parasites that go directly from mouth to digestive tract and nowhere else in the body, tapeworms being a notable exception.

A typical life cycle of a round worm is ingestion of larvae or eggs. From the GI tract, they travel through the blood stream to the muscles, liver and the lungs, expelled out of the lungs and swallowed to mature in the GI tract and produce eggs. You can clear the animal of round worms in the GI tract, but there will still be parasites encapsulated in the muscles of the animal waiting to continue their migration to the lungs and the GI tract.

When these parasites migrate, they actually pierce through tissues. They pierce through the gut to get into the bloodstream. They pierce out of the blood stream to get into the lungs. If an animal if very heavily loaded with parasites, the animal is also dealing with the trauma to the body as these parasites (and possibly bacteria from the gut) break through tissues.

Some people use a shotgun approach--just worming with a wormer like Panacur without checking for parasites. I don't think trying to eliminate all parasites at once is a good idea--it is just too hard on the animal. With my wild caughts, I will worm with Panacur erring on under dosing the animal for the first few treatments. I don't expect to eliminate everything--I just want to reduce the load. Massive death of parasites can kill your chameleon, too.

I also am very meticulous about the cage, picking up stool as soon as I find it to help reduce reinfection. I'm also meticulous with hand washing between servicing cages and cross contamination. I consider my wild caughts and whatever has been in their cage to be toxic and dispose of everything carefully.

I take a lot of stool samples to the vet, multiple samples from each animal. Expect parasites to plague you for months and months with a wild caught. My vet thinks I will never rid them of parasites because there will always be something hiding in the tissues waiting to get out.

Good luck. Wild caughts are incredibly fragile in captivity. They are not the same as that same species that was hatched in captivity.

 

[laurie]

Janet and I agree on lots of things but deworming is not one of them. A lot of us bought wc chams in December. Mine were cared for by a close friend. At MY direction all of my chams were wormed using panacur. One cham out of 11 was lost. And it was lost within a few days of arrival. I don't know of anyone who can match that record. Was it luck and nothing else? Possibly, but some of the others lost all of the wc they received. One person lost all 4 of his, another lost 4 out of 9. I use a very light dose, and if the cham seems more stressed or in any way reacts badly, then stop the panacur.

 

[kinyonga]

Thorough post jajeanpierre! If the chameleon appears to be doing okay then I always delay the treatment to give them time to acclimate but if they are looking sick there's no option. Then, like Laurie said, the light dose is also what I had been told to use if one does decide to treat them.

 

[jannb]

My vets say to never treat until you know that they have something. Why put poison into him if it's not needed? Besides different parasites require different meds. I do highly recommend a fecal on all new chameleons WC and CB.

 

[JoeVet]

Stool samples may not find all parasites in a wild caught animal. They often have lung worms and filaria. Sometimes the lung worms can be found on a fresh fecal but a tracheal wash is more likely to find them. The only way to diagnose a filarial worm is a blood smear. Filaria produce live young (microfilaria) that are seen in the blood. They are common in wild caught animals. Treatment of filaria can lead to anaphylaxis due to large numbers of microfilaria dying in the blood stream. I would recommend a fresh fecal exam, tracheal wash and blood smear (buffy coat check) in a wild animal before treating so you know where you are starting from. This should be done after the animal becomes acclimatized to its new cage provided it is not showing any signs of disease. Wild animals can also carry poxvirus and chlamydia in their red blood cells so again a blood smear should be done.

 

[kinyonga]

Another good point...not to shotgun treat...test first to see if they have parasites.

 

[JaxyGirl]

I found this really great article about Oustalets chameleons. Had some pretty interesting info.
http://www.reptilesmagazine.com/Oustalets-Chameleon-Care-and-Breeding/

 

[jajeanpierre]

Stool samples may not find all parasites in a wild caught animal. They often have lung worms and filaria. Sometimes the lung worms can be found on a fresh fecal but a tracheal wash is more likely to find them. The only way to diagnose a filarial worm is a blood smear. Filaria produce live young (microfilaria) that are seen in the blood. They are common in wild caught animals. Treatment of filaria can lead to anaphylaxis due to large numbers of microfilaria dying in the blood stream. I would recommend a fresh fecal exam, tracheal wash and blood smear (buffy coat check) in a wild animal before treating so you know where you are starting from. This should be done after the animal becomes acclimatized to its new cage provided it is not showing any signs of disease. Wild animals can also carry poxvirus and chlamydia in their red blood cells so again a blood smear should be done.

Joe, what can you do if you end up with microfilaria? Can you even treat safely?

I've dealt with lung worms and my vet believes I have a couple others with lung worms--we're already planning their necropsies but hope that is several years off. There's nothing that can be done about lungworms. If my animals have them, my vet and I are hoping those worms live a long and happy life because as soon as they die, so does my chameleon. We worry that the extra load of eggs and laying might be too much for the one female we are worried about. If you kill the lung worms you kill the lizard because the worms are just too large for their body to cope with removing from the lungs. The animal goes into respiratory failure pretty darn quickly.

Panacur doesn't kill parasites except in the GI tract of chameleons. I think it kills parasites in other parts of the body of mammals, but not chameleons.

While I agree with you, JannB, to not treat until you do a stool sample and know what you are dealing with, I would say that every import is loaded with a lot of different parasites. Panacur is an easily tolerated worming medication with a high margin for error (but not nearly as safe as for a mammal). It makes some sense to start reducing the parasite load early to reduce the animal's overall stress. Wild caughts have a very high mortality rate. They can just up and die after months of seemingly doing well. They are not delicate in the wild but they are once we take them out of their home and subject them to the horror of export.

I've done it both ways--stool sample first before worming and shotgun approach. Sometimes there is a financial consideration. My fecals cost me $30 a pop and I don't feel confident enough to do it myself--there's too much at stake. (Joe, want to teach me?????) The male I loaned to another breeder had something like four fecals done before I got a clear fecal and sent him off. Another female I have had two clear fecals before the third showed a new parasite. If you are working with a group of animals from the same shipment, they likely have the same parasites. I tended to treat as a group, especially when I first got them. If one tested positive for something, I treated the whole group.

I did not treat with multiple drugs, though. I've heard of people shotgun dosing with Panacur and Flagyl at around the same time and I think that's too hard on them.

The other thing I did was to dose low. I really don't want a mass die off. I want to reduce the load and I'm prepared to repeat treatments. Once I had treated a few times and they were tolerating everything, I would increase the dosage to on the high side of the normal dose.

I treat my group of wild caughts as toxic and probably will until they die. What goes in their cage stays in or goes in the garbage or flushed down the toilet. I do not compost their plants and don't use the soil in the garden. I wash my hands after handling them and before handling another.

 

[JoeVet]

Microfilaria are difficult to treat and honestly may not need to be treated. Most fillarial infections are asymptomatic and only diagnosed at necropsy. Fun fact...the most commonly diagnosed filarial infection is heartworms found in dogs. It is much more harmful in dogs because the adults live in the heart. In reptiles the adults are usually under the skin or in the body cavity and cause little problems. If the adults can be seen under the skin they can be taken out surgically. For those adult worms in the body cavity they can be removed endoscopically or just left alone. If microfilaria are not present then you may be able to treat lung worms with ivermectin or levasole but lungworms also do little harm unless the animal is immunocompromised so treating is not generally needed. Another lung parasite found in chameleons is pentastomida. These are primitive insects and often mistaken for worms.

Panacur is pretty safe but use a low dose as Jajeanpierre said. It is metabolized in the liver to its active state so if there is any liver disease it may not be metabolized correctly. It can also have systemic effects like bone marrow suppression. If there are a lot of intestinal parasites a mass die off can cause problems. Levamisole may be a good initial wormer for a wild caught since it doesn't kill the parasites, it paralyzes them.

Just a reminder to take this as information as I do not treat reptiles in a clinical setting and do not claim any expertise.

 

[Nanotrev]

Oddly enough, him and another cham in for fecals today. The younger of the two had pinworms, and the older animal had no fecal parasites though his stool sample was a few days old (it was a full checkup) and thus all that's left is to have bloodwork done. I assume they must be collected from Florida to have so few parasites. The older animal had nothing turn up.
Also- I rinsed off the older animal's palm and gave it to the new one. It seems the second didn't have enough cover, and the first didn't appreciate the palm as much as I thought he would in tandem with the money tree.