Giardia and Worms

[piggieminder]

A fecal analylis on my sick piggies has come back and they are infected with Giardia and worms (sorry was so shocked I have forgotten type of worms). Vet thinks these have come from grass from our garden. I am picking up meds tomorrow from vets, I have started washing all fleece bedding on 90. I have F10. I am assuming I need to throw out all wood accessories, ramps etc and be as vigourous on cleaning as with a Ringworm outbreak? Should I give piggies first dose of meds then strip everything out of all cages and disinfect before they go back in
and then disinfect again every 2 or 3 days for length of treatment? Do I need to wash the grids, I think to do this I would have to take all the cages apart which is a bit complicated but will obviously be done if necessary, I could wash spare grids and make new cages from those. Sorry for all the questions but I can't pick up meds until after 3 tomorrow and I want to spend the time before we go getting as prepared as I can.
I am going to have a riot on my hands when I tell them their mainly grass diet is no more for a while!

 

[Wiebke]

A fecal analylis on my sick piggies has come back and they are infected with Giardia and worms (sorry was so shocked I have forgotten type of worms). Vet thinks these have come from grass from our garden. I am picking up meds tomorrow from vets, I have started washing all fleece bedding on 90. I have F10. I am assuming I need to throw out all wood accessories, ramps etc and be as vigourous on cleaning as with a Ringworm outbreak? Should I give piggies first dose of meds then strip everything out of all cages and disinfect before they go back in
and then disinfect again every 2 or 3 days for length of treatment? Do I need to wash the grids, I think to do this I would have to take all the cages apart which is a bit complicated but will obviously be done if necessary, I could wash spare grids and make new cages from those. Sorry for all the questions but I can't pick up meds until after 3 tomorrow and I want to spend the time before we go getting as prepared as I can.
I am going to have a riot on my hands when I tell them their mainly grass diet is no more for a while!

Poor you! Worms are pretty rare, but they can unfortunately happen. I assume that your piggy has been put on panacur?

I would strongly recommend that you thoroughly disinfect soon after you start treatment (give it a few days to kick in and may its way through the gut - best ask your vet for any recommendation on that) and then deep clean again after the end of the treatment to make sure that nothing can slip through.

Unfortunately, like with ringworm, a deep clean means washing all the grids and connectors as well. I usually put my piggies into their lawn runs in the kitchen for the day and if possible choose a dry and sunny day so I can dry the grids outside (and with nearly 100 grids plus assorted connectors myself, I fully appreciate your pain!)
You do the big clean with the grids only once, either after you have removed any infectious piggies under treatment from the room for quarantining reasons and your others are have had their safety treatment to prevent an outbreak or, if treatment is the same for all your piggies, you do the big deep clean at the end of the treatment so you can restart with a clean slate and no longer infected piggies. for that reason, I would also recommend to give them all a bath, just to be on the safe side that nothing is stuck in the fur.

 

[piggieminder]

The meds won't be ready to pick up until 3pm so I don't know what we've got yet.
Thank you so much, this more or less confirms what I thought although I could find nothing very helpful on the internet. I started following the Forums very helpful advise on Ringworm. Luckily I have disinfected all my spare grids which are enough to make pens for all the piggies once they have been on meds for a few days. I can then F10 wash all the corex. We are not going to rebuild lofts or anything like that, just keep it to simple pens so I can give a really good clean every couple of days, I'd rather go over the top than not get on top of this straight off. My life was already on hold so I could be home with little Bracken who is post bladder stone op, and medicating the other piggies who were ill but we couldn't work out why. At least now we know, we can deal with it and hopefully one day soon get back to enjoying piggies rather than stressing over them which we have been doing for the last 3 weeks.

 

[VickiA]

It’s s big step in the right direction that you at least now know what you are tackling. It’s so hard when you are battling something unknown. Sounds like you have the deep clean in hand. Major task - I don’t envy you, but so worth doing to the nth degree to nip this in the bud. It’s amazing that grass (a natural product and a requisite of their diet) has been the cause of this.

 

[piggieminder]

@VikiA it's going to be so hard not being able to give them grass they look for it every day. The vet wants me to be very strict with Bracken's diet as we are already on a low calcium, filtered water, very small amount of pellets regime I don't have much room to change, and now no grass! The vet who did Bracken's op does a lot of stone ops in piggies and she says many of them come back again within months if not weeks. I don't feed spinich or kale and she thought by the state of his bladder I was going to say I fed it regularly if not daily.

 

[furryfriends (TEAS)]

Our vet, Simon Maddock, now prescribes 1/8 of a bendrofluazide tablet, per day, for piggies who have had bladder stones removed. It’s been really successful in stopping the recurrence of stones. He also advises to stop pellets completely and to feed porridge oats instead.