Goat Fecal Float DIY

[tmas]

Any of you do your own fecal float tests?
I haven't de-wormed my goat for several months and decided to run a fecal on my own before I wormed them....maybe I need to worm more often haha!

I saw 4 different types of eggs, but this was my very first time doing it so I could have missed others. There seemed to be a lot...when I have a bit more time I was planning on attempting to count how many of each I saw, but they were primarily one type of egg. The other three I only saw 1-2 eggs of each. I will de-worm tonight with VetrimecPlus and then run a test again in 2-3 weeks and see the difference!

Here is the egg I saw by far the most of...


Here is a few others of what I believe is the same type of egg...




Here is one of the other eggs I saw...


And the last one...

[Nanno]

Try uploading them as attachments (likely they'll need to be shrunk) or else post them to Photobucket or another photo hosting site and then post the image urls. Hope that helps!

[tmas]

That worked, thanks Nanno.

[Dave-Trinity-Farms]

Hey Tmas, to correctly worm, you do the first round and then another round 10 days later. The first round kills the adult and hatched. The next round kills the eggs that have hatched since the first round 10 days earlier. Wormers do not kill the eggs. Some even do it again a 3rd time 10 days after that.

[Nanno]

I'm glad you got the photos working because this is awesome! Thanks for sharing. Do you have a book or online resource to help you identify the eggs? Certain wormers often work better for certain parasites and not at all for others, so it's best if you can identify exactly what worms are there and choose your wormer accordingly. I can't wait to hear the follow-up on this!

[tmas]

Ive found a few websites that have some pictures but its tough for me to identify for sure... I think the numerous one is a Threadworm, but it also looks similar to a lungworm (however I am guessing if there was that many lungworm present i'd have some coughing going on) , and I think one of the others is a tapeworm. I have a friend who is a Vet stopping by later today and I'm going to see if he is familiar with them and what he would ID them as...

[tmas]

I had the vet look at the slides when he stopped by earlier...he said that overall my count is quite low and looks pretty good for our area. The numerous eggs were Strongyloides, or Threadworms, with possibly a couple lungworm in the mix. He didn't look long and didn't see any other types, but looking at my pictures he thought maybe tapeworm and he said one other one but I couldn't remember it.

Dave, thanks for the heads up. I plan on worming again in 10 days or so and then running another fecal float in 3-ish weeks.

When should I run my first de-wormer on my bottle babies? I got two new Alpines that are a week old now...

[Dave-Trinity-Farms]

I dont think we really worry about babies till after 3 months.

[michael]

Awesome post!! I'm guessing a microscope is in my future. What equipment is needed for running these test?

[tmas]

Awesome post!! I'm guessing a microscope is in my future. What equipment is needed for running these test?

A 25ml test tube, I picked one up off ebay for $4, and i bought a little $2 strainer to strain the larger debris out of the sample. You'll need some slides and slide covers as well...and some "float solution", I just used epsom salt from the dollar store. There is some great deals on Microscopes on Ebay, you don't need a fancy one just one that has around 4x-40x objectives. Mine has 4,10,20,40, I didn't really use the 4 or 20 much I mostly searched with 10x and zoomed with 40x.

Type in "goat fecal float" on google and there is a few pages that have a step-by-step guide to doing it. It's really pretty interesting.