And your horses' poop! Save a bundle; worm with the drug appropriate for what you find, vs. a blanket worming with chemicals you don't need.
Miss Veronica Lake, a registered Appendix Quarter Horse and all around great gal
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-Kathy
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And your horses' poop! Save a bundle; worm with the drug appropriate for what you find, vs. a blanket worming with chemicals you don't need.
Miss Veronica Lake, a registered Appendix Quarter Horse and all around great gal
And your horses' poop! Save a bundle; worm with the drug appropriate for what you find, vs. a blanket worming with chemicals you don't need.
Miss Veronica Lake, a registered Appendix Quarter Horse and all around great gal
First picture looks more like a strongyle type egg if it is an egg - the magnification that you mentioned makes theses eggs small compared to strongyles type - the 2nd picture looks like an ascarid more than any coccidia but again - the magnification is throwing me off - you can usually see most parasites with 100x mag - 10x ocular plus 10x objective - the coccidia will be very small at 100x and the ascarids will be prominent. the last picture is pollen, you will see different types of UFOs depending on type of year and what your birds are eating.
Disclaimer: I'm a vet so I make a living looking at poop (among other things
Above picture - not an egg. I'll have to refresh my microbiology on calculating size of object based on magnification in order to answer your question about size. Suggestion #1 - don't float so long - try 10 min that will prevent some of the crystallization also increased ambient humidity will decrease crystallization - so that may change based on your environment Suggestion #2 - don't cheesecloth the first few times - it will increase some of the debris you see but if you have low parasite loads you will increase chances of finding them - I only use a open piece of gauze to filter out the really big stuff - but in chickens you usually don't have a lot of fibrous material Centrifugation is going to be the key - 10 min w/out cover slip and then add enough solution to create miniscus on top and add the coverslip let sit for another 60 - 120 seconds and then read. Don't forget, not finding things in your animals' feces is a good thingLast night's attempt at identifying parasites...4 hrs, pollen, and figuring out what I thought were worm eggs were probably bubbles containing crystallized flotation medium, eyestrain and a headache. I tried a different method for the prep - Previously, I had been using Fecalyzer vials (e.g., http://www.pet-informed-veterinary-advice-online.com/fecal-flotation.html#float-performed). For last night's prep I mixed poop in a paper cup with flotation solution strained it through 3 layers of cheesecloth into a vial floated a cover slip on the fluid meniscus for 20 min put the cover slip on a slide scanned the slide at low power [10x ocular x 10 x objective = 100x magnification] switched to higher power (10x ocular x 43x objective = 430x magnification] First, here are the poop samples (click on photo to see larger version) Sample 1 foamy poop Sample 2 large wet plop (size reduced) sample 3 different foamy poop sample 4 extremely fresh "normal-looking" poo, author known. Inside I found a chunk of gut the size of the cotton swab of a Q-tip sample 5 another wet plop (size reduced) Here is a photo of what I had thought was a worm egg - magnification 430x. The object is about 340 µm (did I do that right paccmanranch?). After I looked at this, I found a huge long narrow bubble that contained the same stuff. I'm now thinking it was crystallized flotation medium. In slides of the first 4 samples I saw nothing but bubbles, and the stray bit of grass/feed. In the last slide, which was getting old, I saw the "not a worm egg" above and pollen. Perhaps the cheesecloth contributed to the blank samples (too many layers?) and froth. I'm hoping you did better KSKingBee! Suggestions gratefully accepted.
Above picture - not an egg. I'll have to refresh my microbiology on calculating size of object based on magnification in order to answer your question about size.
Suggestion #1 - don't float so long - try 10 min that will prevent some of the crystallization also increased ambient humidity will decrease crystallization - so that may change based on your environment
Suggestion #2 - don't cheesecloth the first few times - it will increase some of the debris you see but if you have low parasite loads you will increase chances of finding them - I only use a open piece of gauze to filter out the really big stuff - but in chickens you usually don't have a lot of fibrous material
Centrifugation is going to be the key - 10 min w/out cover slip and then add enough solution to create miniscus on top and add the coverslip let sit for another 60 - 120 seconds and then read.
Don't forget, not finding things in your animals' feces is a good thing. Ask a neighbor goat for some feces - guarantee you will find some eggs in those. I'll try and take pictures of some parasites as I find them.
I am so frustrated! I prepared two slides tonight and once I had found something to take a pic of I could not get my camera to work. I had downloaded the drivers last night and installed them. When I plug the camera in nothing pops up. I did some exploring and found that the drivers were not found so I went to the downloads and reinstalled them. That part worked, but I still can not find the camera on my laptop!
Anyway, I found both cecal eggs and cocci on the same slide and another egg I can not identify. The other slide had one roundworm egg and two cocci. Very clear and concise, I really like this scope!