Fur Mites -- How long do the eggs stick around?

[Lynx]

Okay, I imagine it´s time I admitted I´m a fraud. I´m unsure if my pigs have ever had mange mites (but they shouldn´t now) and I don´t even know if my treatment to get rid of fur mites is working or not. At least that´s what I think they are.

What I want to know (Teresa, maybe you can tell me your experiences) is how the darn things go away. What I have are cocoon like eggs stuck on the hair shafts and the hair is strange, stiff and kind of sticks together. Since what I see are the eggs and only the emerged bugs would be killed by the topical ivermectin I´ve been using, I don´t know if it is working or not. How long does it take before they go away? I´ve been cutting off some of the hair -- it is really nasty.

If anyone has battled these things (a picture is on Guinea Lynx of Nina´s fur mites), I´d like to know what you used and how long it took before it looked like there were no more eggs.

It´s one thing to read about it and another to try to get rid of it.

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Oh, this is what they look like:

[lisam]

Wow. So those are what the eggs for fur mites look like? They look just like the nits (eggs) of human lice.

[KarasKavies]

When I treated my girls with Advantage it took about a month for the "casings" to be gone. The vet said they would go when the hair fell out. He was right. I was concerned that they were still nits after about 2 weeks so the vet looked at some of them under the scope and said they were just empty casings. Slowly, but surely, they fell off. I suppose you could pick or srape them off, but I just waited. Gross, I know.

Kara

[KarasKavies]

Lynx... they like like lice to me. Look just like the lice nits and casings my girls had.

[KarasKavies]

Have you tried Advantage?

[Lynx]

They are pretty large and visible to the naked eye. I never saw a bug. Some of the parasites I´ve read about I have never had -- Teresa had some of these and thought they were fur mites. The very first guinea pig I had that came from the pet store was covered with lice. You could see them moving in the fur and around the eyes. You can´t see a thing on my pigs (they have been treated with ivermectin). I guess this means I´ll just have to wait for them to go away. Pretty nasty looking though (the picture doesn´t show how the hair texture actually changes -- Kitten has a small area with some and the hair looks brownish).

I haven´t used Advantage because the ivermectin ought to work (and that´s what I have). And I don´t see any bugs at all, just the casings.

It is almost like moths have set up home in their fur.

[KarasKavies]

Poor piggie! When my girls had lice, I only saw moving things on one of them. What your pig has looks very odd.

Hey, Teresa is my mite Goddess! She thought Penny had them MONTHS before I actually decided everything else had been ruled out. I treated for mites and she was a new piggie in 2 weeks!

Have you given her a bath? I used Hexadene shampoo. That seemed to help A LOT. I hate all these "vermin" all the pigs get. It makes me think all the people who have pigs and have NO idea about these things and the pigs suffer a lifetime of pain.

Kara

[Evangeline]

Lynx-
One of my rescues came in covered with these things. I did Ivermectin orally and they went away within the first week.

[Lynx]

Really? These look like casings -- they aren´t bugs and don´t move. So they went away that fast, eh? I sure wish these did (I even put tiny droplets on the fur back there -- part of the standard topical dose I was giving).

[Evangeline]

Well, you don´t have to believe me, but that´s my experience. I only had the problem once, though, so maybe it´s a fluke.

[Lynx]

I do think it´s hard to positively identify something from a pic like I put up (get size, etc.). And if they were lice casings, I´m thinking they would be smaller. These are fairly noticeable.

The "really" was an "oh-that´s-good-to-hear" kind of really.

[J-LPigcard]

One of my girls was heavily louse-infested when I first got her. She had truckloads of those casings on her that persisted for a couple of months, at least, even after the lice were eradicated. It seems the eggshells are pasted onto the hairs to stay, until the hair falls out, and the shell with it. I tried using the louse egg comb that you can get in drugstores, but I lost patience with them, since there were so many eggs, and they tended to cause a pulling sensation on the poor pig, anyway. The combs do seem to work, though, if you want to try one. I think they only cost a couple of dollars at Wal-Mart.