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?
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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.
