u/Imaginary-Shoe-530

I just made one post about advice/concerns with parasite and medication, but wanted to make another to talk about the positives of Elmer so far.

He has grown so much which I am so happy about since he has had some stunted growth from parasites, he was 8 months when we got him and weighed 52 grams, he is now 10 months and just hit 100 grams :) He is sooo active and loves exploring and loves to eat!! He loves his dubias and has started noticing when i walk over to where his dubias are that i’m getting some and he runs over to the front of the enclosure (I always feel so bad when I need to go over there for something else and he thinks he is getting fed) He eagerly eats his greens and veggies as well and loves to be handled. At first having him out he would avoided getting too close to us but now he runs all over us, sleeps on us, poops on us 🤦🏻‍♀️ it’s been so good to see his personality open up.

Even though he still is getting through these parasites i am so proud of him for being so strong and growing so well despite having parasites and being on medication.

Hi everyone! I have a 10 month bearded dragon Elmer who we got about 2 months ago and after first vet visit we found out he had pinworms and coccidia :( which has stunted his growth a bit, he was only 52 grams when we got him at 8 months, he just hit 100 grams last week so we are certainly seeing improvements. Besides having stunted growth and some messy poops, he’s shown no symptoms of the parasites (very active, hungry, and curious) however, his first round of treatment for parasites showed barely any changes in his levels, so we just started round 2. I know coccidia specifically can be very hard to fully treat, but we have been doing F10 and steam cleans of the enclosure and items plus he actually has not pooped in his enclosure once. he only poops when he has some out time with us. so it was pretty disheartening to know that we tried so hard to prevent reinfection during the first round and he still had high levels :(

However, i gave him his medication by dosing it and then getting small bits of greens and putting one drop of the medication on a green and then tong feeding it to him, the dose was so small so it was literally like 2 drops. this worked really well and im sure made it a little less stressful than doing a forced syringe dose for him. However this second round of treatment is almost twice the dose (since he is abt twice the size) and it has made the whole process messier and more difficult. i’ve been doing the same thing but splitting the dose onto four pieces of greens and then tong feeding them. He seems much more bothered by them this time than the last. he always takes these big swallows after giving them and then sometimes will gape for 10-15 seconds, i always get so scared that he aspirated on the medication but then he seems to be fine. He is much more aggressive about his food recently (he’s always been eager for food but recently it’s been like attacking it) so when i give the piece of green with the medication he fully attacks it so quickly, yesterday he bite down on the tongs so hard i couldn’t get it out of his mouth (i use rubber tip tongs which i know are safer but i still am very worried he got injured from that)

Sorry for the long post i’m just curious if anyone has any recommendations for administration of medicine that isn’t forced syringe administration. I have a bad experience with giving medication through a syringe with a past beardie so I really don’t want to put that stress on him or myself if i do not have to. Thank you all in advance for the help 🥰