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Ivermectin dosing


Maralynn
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I'm wanting to use liquid ivermectin for HW prevention this year. I'm doing the math for how much to use and I was wondering if anyone would confirm it for me either here or via PM?

 

Using .08% sheep drench (so 800mcg per cc) with dogs weighing 38# and 44#. Minimum dose would be .2 cc so I would likely dose at .4 cc per dog.

 

Does this sound correct?

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Hope this helps, looks like what you want to use is in line to their recommendations. Your dosage is small enough that there should be no worry of overdosing. I use the 1% cattle and give everyone 1/2 cc each, takes care of round worms that way.

Directions for using 0.08% sheep drench

 

Ivermectin sheep drench solution contains a lower concentration than other ivermectin products, so it can be used without diluting it first. Ivemectin is given orally (never use pour-on solutions for heartworm prevention).

 

Dosage using Ivermectin 0.08% solution for heartworm prevention (you may want to double these doses for better protection):

 

up to 14 pounds: 0.05 cc (one-half of 0.1 cc, or 1 drop from an eye dropper, assuming 20 drops per ml)

15 to 29 pounds: 0.1 cc

30 to 58 pounds: 0.2 cc

59 to 88 pounds: 0.3 cc

89 to 117 pounds: 0.4 cc

118 to 147 pounds: 0.5 cc

 

Ivermectin solution is given orally. It's best to squirt it into the mouth, rather than adding to food, to be sure your dog gets it all.

 

1 cc of ivermectin 0.08% sheep drench solution contains 800 mcg; 0.1 cc = 80 mcg.

The exact dosage is 0.034 cc per 10 pounds of body weight, or approximately 0.1 cc per 30 pounds of body weight.

http://www.dogaware.com/health/ivomec.html
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I also use 0.2 cc of 0.08% sheep drench to my two ~40 lb guys.

 

I told my vet what I wanted to do (and you could tell that she sort of puckered up :):D ), and she wanted to approve my dosing regimen. Basically, she double-checked my math.

 

I bought a pack of 100 insulin syringes (syringes only, no needles) from either KV Vet or Jeffers (can't remember) and use a separate syringe for each dog --> Therefore 2 syringes per month. Works out to just over 4 years for about $11 or $12 for syringes. Only a clean, sterile syringe is put into the sheep drench container. The sheep drench is not sterile, but by using a fresh syringe, there is not possibility of contamination from the syringe.

 

Since I don't have anyone to share the sheep drench with, it will expire before I use even a fraction of it, but it is still much, much cheaper than buying Heartguard or whatever from the vet.

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Hope this helps, looks like what you want to use is in line to their recommendations. Your dosage is small enough that there should be no worry of overdosing. I use the 1% cattle and give everyone 1/2 cc each, takes care of round worms that way.

Wow. If my math is right, that dose is 25 times what I use. It would be 12.5 times a dose of 0.4 cc of 0.08% sheep drench. And no problems?

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nope, no problems, been doing it for near 10 years. It is the dosage for intestinal worms, many people give that dosage (1/10 cc for 10 lbs), but be forewarned if your dog has sensitivity they will likely react adversely to to that dosage.

 

Way way back I overdosed quite excessively and had two dogs that had temporary blindness, recovered within 48 hours. I'm not at all concerned about running a MDR1 test on my crew, have no doubt that we are clear. All my pups get that dosage at least once before they leave to be certain that they handle is fine. With so many of ours going to cattle operations that use ivermectin it's not in the best interest of our program to avoid it, rather screen for tolerance via use.

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Tea, any dog that is sensitive to ivermectin is also sensitive to ALL heartworm preventative meds; all are in the same class of drugs. No dog that is mdr1 affected will have adverse reactions to the amount of these drugs used for heartworm preventative.

 

Minimum effective dose is 2.72mcg/lb

Safe dose is as much as 27.2mcg/lb

 

This info is available in the product insert for HeartGard.

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Tea, any dog that is sensitive to ivermectin is also sensitive to ALL heartworm preventative meds; all are in the same class of drugs.

 

And these dogs can also have problems with other medications, including some cancer drugs, . Thus the name, Multiple Drug Resistant.

 

http://vcpl.vetmed.wsu.edu/problem-drugs

 

I'd thought the MDR1 mutation wasn't found or was rare in border collies. That was a number of year ago that I'd read that though. Has there been more of it found in border collies more recently?

 

OK, here's a listing of affected breeds and the incidence. http://vcpl.vetmed.wsu.edu/affected-breeds Border collies are still very low >5%, about what I'd remembered. But apparently not unheard of?

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I had a GSD get liver disease that it was suspected came from overdosing Ivomec for years, so I'm much more careful about dosing, but I love that I can use the sheep drench on my BCs.

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I use the 0.08% sheep drench at a dose of 0.3-0.5 cc/dog, depending on the size of the dog. I don't use the minimum effective dose because the amounts are so small and it apparently tastes bad so you don't want to dog missing a dose by managing to spit/slobber it back out.

 

I use the same insulin syringe over and over until the rubber starts to fail. I just pour out a capful of ivermectin, then draw from that, not so much because of contamination, but for ease of drawing up the dose. But a capful holds enough to treat all 8 dogs.

 

You can get a small bottle, which you still won't be able to use up before it expires, but art least it's pretty inexpensive.

 

I'd hesitate to regularly overdose ivermectin by a great amount. To control intestinal parasites I dose with Safeguard (fenbendazole) 10% cattle dewormer quarterly, or as needed.

 

J.

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Thanks everyone :) placed a Jeffers order this week went ahead and got a bottle of the pyrantel wormer as well so I could get free shipping. And ended up with a box of outdated insulin syringes from work.

 

So I should be set until the ivermectin expires!

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Outdated syringes? Srsly? Talk about an overabundance of caution. I've been using insulin for years and I've never seen an expiration date on the syringes I get, nor on any I've gotten for my animals.

 

But a good score for you as long as the liquid's not too viscous for the fine gauge insulin needles.

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Everything sold/stocked for human medical use has to have an expiration date. I think syringes are about 5 years from the manufacturer date. My employer had an accreditation inspection a few months ago and making sure that all outdated products were out of the building was a pretty high priority.

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Everything sold/stocked for human medical use has to have an expiration date. I think syringes are about 5 years from the manufacturer date.

 

That's apparently not universal. I just picked up my insulin syringes and asked the pharmacist about it. She looked at me like I had 3 heads and asked why they'd need an expiration date, there's nothing to go bad with them. She said she'd never heard of anything like that.

 

I'm in NY. Maybe it's different among states; it doesn't appear to be federal. Or maybe it could be something specific to your own facility's rules?

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That's apparently not universal. I just picked up my insulin syringes and asked the pharmacist about it. She looked at me like I had 3 heads and asked why they'd need an expiration date, there's nothing to go bad with them. She said she'd never heard of anything like that.

 

I'm in NY. Maybe it's different among states; it doesn't appear to be federal. Or maybe it could be something specific to your own facility's rules?

 

 

Hmm, it could be a joint commission thing. If that were the case, a manufacture who wants to sell to anywhere that's accredited (and accreditation is tied to being able to accept medicare patients, etc), there is a code or date on the packaging that they can extrapolate an expiration date by.

 

I think in the case of syringes, it's not the item itself, but the way certain medications might react to the plunger material when it's so many years old. IOW, the manufacture doesn't t want to be held liable for any possible thing.

 

 

 

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Sterilization isn't permanent. That's why syringes should have expiration dates. Depending on how they are packaged, they might not be considered sterile after 6 months, or it might be a couple years.

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