tinymwoods wrote:I need help. I have been worming my pups every 2 weeks with Durvet 2X wormer (pyrantel pamoate). It is the same strength as Nemex 2 and the same dosage. I noticed last week (5 weeks old) they had really white gums. I decided to buy the Nemex 2 and I gave that to them Tuesday. Well, today (Thursday), we had a heck of a rain storm that made the pen a little muddy. I saw 4 or 5 piles of white, round, "spaghetti" looking worms in the lot. They were round worms. I don't know if the generic wormer did not work or if they acquired the worms after the fact. My question is, when is it safe to reworm them and do yall have any recommendations of a different wormer that is safe for a 6 week old pup? I am going to ask my friend that is a vet technician Friday, just wondering if anyone had any ideas???
What you are seeing is the product of
worm resistance, combined with the inherent weakness of Nemex II as a means of giving
pyrantel. If the Durvet product you're using is the same dosage as Nemex, then it is too weak also.
As stated in my book, not only Nemex II is more than 30x more expensive than the brands I recommend, but it is only 1/10th as strong. Nemex II (and I am assuming Durvet) are dosed at only 5mg/ml. There is no sensible reason to buy these cheap and overly-expensive versions of
pyrantel, when there are generic brands you can get from any online vet supply company that are 5
0mg/ml,
or 10x stronger, and are less expensive to boot. It would literally cost you $1000 to buy the same amount of
pyrantel in Nemex as you could get from $30 buying Anthelban or Pamix (which is
pyrantel labeled for humans).
What happens when you use these cheap (and weak) products, and especially if you give too little of it, is the worms
build resistance to the drug. This is why I always triple-dose my
pyrantel. Ten years ago, the dosage for the concentrated 50mg/ml of
pyrantel used to be
1ml per 20 lb of weight. Now the dosage is
1 mg per 10 lb of weight, which means now
twice as much product must be used to do the trick. (The same is true with Panacur now, which also has to be double-dosed compared to the recommended dosage a decade ago.)
This means, if you're using Nemex (or any other weak 5mg/ml product, which is 1/10th as strong) that you must give 10 ml of product for a 10-lb pup ... or 5 ml for a 5 ml pup. That is a lot of wormer! By contrast, if you bought the 10x-greater-strength version, you only use 1 ml per 10 lb or 0.5 ml per 5 lb. What I do, however, is use THREE TIMES this recommended dosage, as
pyrantel is a very safe drug, and this way I am sure NOT to have a resistance problem in my dogs. Not only that, but 3x the 'normal' dosage is
required to kill hookworm (the dose on the label won't work for hooks, only rounds).
In closing, there is a lot of info out there to be read on the subject of worm resistance and the usage of rotational wormer schedules to combat this ever-growing problem. A person who doesn't want this to happen really needs to weigh his animals, check the concentration of his meds, and give the FULL required amounts of each wormer---and he needs to stay current on what that 'full amount' is, as the dosages for all wormers are constantly changing.
What I would recommend is never to use the diluted 'name brand' wormers. They only waste your money and offer the weakest form of the drug you need. However, be aware that some wormers (like moxidectin, piperazine, etc.) should NOT be over-dosed even a little bit, as adverse reactions can and will happen. But with
pyrantel you can safely triple-dose without ill effect.
If you have a serious problem, you might want to try another kind of wormer like
piperazine. You don't want to overdose
piperazine, so just make sure you know the proper dosage, you know the exact weight of each pup, and that you administer properly. "Guessing" and just giving "some" wormer to each pup is a major cause of how worms can build resistance in the first place ... and the best worming schedules always rotate between different kinds of wormers anyway, precisely so that worm resistance does not happen.
Good luck,
Jack
.