Sunshine Rabbits
Koren Family Farm LLC
I'm pretty sure some of my rabbits have pinworms. How should I go about treating this? I dewormed a few rabbits that were showing symptoms yesterday, but that's the extent of my treatment plan so far.
Pinworm treatment
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Safeguard (fenbendazole) is a dewormer marketed for pinworms as well as several other types of roundworms and strongyles. While pinworms are believed to be species-specific, fenbedazole will work for most or all of them. As far as I know, my rabbits have never had any type of worms, but I've used fenbendazole for other situations in my rabbits and it is quite safe. I used the horse paste.
If I felt sure that my rabbits had pinworms, I'd deworm all of them that are living together, as well as any that are living in an area that the wormy rabbits lived in the recent past. You might consider getting the rabbits off the ground, because you most likely can't kill all the worms and eggs on the ground. But if you raise them in a colony, you may just have to worm them all regularly now that you know you've got worms (and their eggs) in the area. Someone who has experience with colony-raising may have more to offer on that; I sometimes temporarily raise grow-outs in tractors, but I keep my breeders up off the ground in wire cages.
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A very nice judge at a show I attended said my rabbits "lacked condition". He could feel that by passing his hand over their topline; too bony for young rabbits. When I asked him if he suspected they had worms he said "yes" and said fenbendazole would take care of it.
Sunshine Rabbits
Koren Family Farm LLC
I looked at the label on the safeguard dewormer and it says not to use for horses intended for human consumption. Does this go for rabbits as well? I raise meat rabbits, should I not eat the ones that I deworm?
Fenbendazole is Fenbendazole. Unless you’re allergic (which I haven’t heard of happening, but who knows?), Fenbendazole is safe for (and used by) humans, for deworming and other applications. The rule of thumb I’ve seen is to wait two weeks before butchering to allow the rabbit to process the Fenben out of its system. If the rabbits have had or may have had worms, you’ll want to freeze them for at least three weeks and/or make sure to cook them thoroughly.
Drug use and withholding time suggestions regarding meat animals vary with the source. Though fenbendazole has a long history of safe use in animals and humans, my practice is to treat breeders (if necessary), but not meat grow-outs. Essentially this practice is based on my preference not to take any medicines myself unless they are needed; although the FDA gives withdrawal times for many drugs, personally I don't want even a "safe" level of drugs in my meat.
Worms are rarely a lethal threat, and while pinworms and other nematodes can actually be transferred from infected animals to humans (blecchh), I always cook meat well, usually in a pressure canner, and wash my hands after handling animals, alive or dead. We handle and eat a lot of wild game. (There are worse things out there than pinworms...!)Most anthelmintics have withholding periods if milk or meat from treated animals is intended for human consumption. According to the Merck Vet Manual, fenbendazole has a suggested withholding period of 8–14 days before slaughtering for meat and 3–5 days before milking for human consumption, :
https://www.merckvetmanual.com/phar...hholding-periods-after-anthelmintic-treatment
On the other hand, the swine vet association suggests no withholding time is needed when fenbendazole is administered to pigs:
https://www.aasv.org/shap/issues/v17n6/v17n6p330.htm
Albendazole (a benzimidazole drug in the same class as fenbendazole) is commonly prescribed to treat pinworms in humans. Fenbendazole and other benzimidazole drugs have a long history with broadly, though not exclusively, positive affects on everything from to secondary parastitic infections to immune system function, and including possible anti-tumor/anti-cancer activity (https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/new...arasitic-drug-slows-pancreatic-cancer-in-mice). The results are consistently mixed, but problems with these drugs often seem to be associated with larger-than-therapeutic doses, and/or prolonged use.
There is only one report I've found of toxicity in rabbits, which was also associated with high dosages and/or prolonged use:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1557506314000469
Here's an overview of the research on benzimidazoles in rodents:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9413524/
Actually, it really depends on the formulation. There are inactive ingredients and/or carriers in meds; many formulations for livestock mammals are 10%, while that for turkeys is 20%, and fenbendazole granules for puppies are 22.2%, all of which suggests that there is something besides fenbendazole in there!
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My rusty memory on waiting times for wormers says 30 days (sheep, horses), but also EU laws here and those are stricter on residues in food. Also if you worm animals you want to eat that means you want them to gain weight so they are worth the work. That means they'll need some time to turn the groceries into meat. Makes a month sound about right for animals you notice the problem early enough in.
