Mushy Poop

[chechinchillas]

I am posting this for a chin owner who is trying join, but said she is having trouble with the image verification?

Hello , I have one chinchilla named Kirby.
My chinchilla had mushy poop for about a week. Diet is the same, drinks filtered water, eats Oxbow chinchilla pellets, alfalfa hay, and loose timothy. He has a supervised run time everday 3-5 hours. He's been acting fine, but I was worried because he had giardia a couple years ago. We went to the vet and they did a test. Before the test results came back the vet prescribed .3 of flagyl. I said I was not I comfortable with this because I had read about liver toxicity and especially because he had not been diagnosed officially as having giardia. When I complained, she lowered the dose to .1. I gave him two of these and was ready to try oil of oregano instead if there was giardia. Now the test came back negative, his poop is less squishy and the dr. is denying it was my suggestion to lower the dose. She wants me to continue giving him .1 twice a day for five days. Then she said I could stop whenever the poop is normal. I am worried because I don't know whether to continue since it seems to have firmed his stool but he has no giardia. Before I took him to the vets we tried hay and water for a day and a half but he was really hungry. The medicine might be helping but I don't want to give him too much or medicine if its not designed to treat diarrhea.
Thank you. I want to do the best thing for my chinchilla because I love him so much.

 

[ticklechin]

The flagyl issue was retracted by the rescue group and their vet that broadcast it to the vet world, its heavy duty stuff but used correctly does not cause the liver damage that was stated, used incorrectly against vets orders and there can be issues. I have used flagyl many times to treat dental infections with baytril-its not just for parasites. The flagyl may have treated a intestinal infection that was bacterial rather than parasitic, its not the first choice for intestinal infection in my mind since its heavy duty , but it can be used. I would not stop it now since its being used and showing some results. What I do for loose poo is I first use pet pectillin, its kaolin and pectin-the kaolin sooths the digestive tract, the pectin binds the poo-.3ml twice a day for 2-3 days, if that does not clear it up, then its off to the vet. Also, if the poo stinks bad, is coated in mucous or when cracked open is hollow or looks like swiss cheese I know its more than just digestive upset and the chin goes to the vet.

 

[Zoaea]

Its a bad idea to cut short antibiotics when the doc/vet tells you to continue it. Thats how we get antibiotic resistant diseases. It was showing improvement so it was probably something weak to flagyl, just not giardia.