guinea pig medical

Question
We have a 7 yr old Abyssinian guinea pig. He was treated from May - July with Ibervectim every 2wks at our vet. He told us the piggies had lice - 4x treated during this time. We also took him to a lady who has 17 guinea pigs of her own and she bathed him with a mite/lice treatmt in June. I noticed that the black looking eggs have returned and they seem worse than before. When the vet put him on the table, they were falling all over the table. They told me at the first treatmt this time (Sept) that he had a 10 legged mite, something they had never seen. He wasn't sure what the rest even was but gave a treatmt of ibervectim. I just took piggie back for his 2nd treatmt of ibervectim-2wks later and to a new vet. New vet didn't know what the black looking eggs were-looked under a microscope and said nothing was moving, so didn't think it was even lice, but said it just looked like a brown blob. I also shampooed him again too during this time. Any ideas on what this is? THANK YOU!

Answer
Hello Lisa,

First of all I'm glad you found a new vet because the other doesn't seem to know much about those particular parasites. Lice don't have loose eggs that fall off (and if I remember correctly, they aren't black either). They attach their eggs to the hair shaft, just like human lice do, with a powerful glue and they are very difficult to get out so there is no way lice eggs were falling on the vet's table without the hairs they were attached to falling out too. Mites are arachnids, they can only have 8 legs. What he possibly was mistaking for the 9th and 10th legs were most likely the creature's palps. (I suspect it may be the Cheyletiella parasitivorax because they tend to have the largest palps of the several mite species Guinea Pigs get.) At any rate, even though your piggy probably doesn't have some weird freak mites, if he did see mites, treatment needs to continue until they are gone. Some species of mites can be deadly. As for the black egg-like things, I'm not sure what those are. They sound a bit like flea dirt. Flea dirt is flea poo and it's basically digested blood. I'm not sure if lice or mites produce the equavalent of flea dirt in a size large enough to see. Has your piggy been in contact with any dogs or cats? Fleas are typically species specific but they can live on piggies if there is not a more suitable host available until they can find one. Is this a possiblity? There usually won't be a full blown flea infestation on a piggy because they aren't the perfect host (usually, not always) but just a few can produce quite alot of flea dirt. These parasites have different treatment needs depending on the species (though thoroughly cleaning the cage often is reccommended for all of them) though most can be treated with ivermectin given in one of its various forms. I reccommend keeping the cages very clean to prevent the parasites from dropping off in the cage and reinfesting and continuing the ivermectin treatments. Hopefully this will take care of the problem. Also you may want to suggest to your vet having the treaments done every week instead of every 2 weeks. The Ivermectin doesn't kill the eggs and depending on the species, you may be giving them too much time to hatch and grow up enough to lay eggs of their own before killing them and if that's the case, you'll be treating him over and over forever. Good luck. Parasites are a nightmare and I hope you can get rid of them.

-kkat
www.geocities.com/abyssinianguineapigs