All You Need to Know about Splitting Parasite Prevention Products

One of the pleasures of your relationship with your pet probably won’t be administering preventative care or treatment. The ideal situations are when you can combine the treatments into a treat or hide the tablet and they never even notice. The best-case scenario, however, appears to happen considerably less frequently than the less pleasant option for many pet parents.

Some pet parents cease administering treatments completely in order to lower the expensive expenses of treatments and preventives, endangering the health of their pets in the process. To save money, some people cut or split tablets in half; nevertheless, improper pill splitting can be extremely harmful. But when handled carefully (and with your vet’s clearance), it’s generally alright.

No matter where you and your pet are on the success ladder for preventive and treatment administration, there are critical things you, as a responsible pet parent, need to understand about parasite prevention treatments and providing them to your pet.

Let’s start by discussing a few reasons why a pet parent might want to split their parasite prevention tablets or chews.

Cost Cutting/Saving

 A large dog chew can be purchased at a lower price and divided among several little dogs or other animals living in the same home. Perhaps the cost of purchasing one packet rather than several seems more reasonable because your dogs are different sizes. Or perhaps you only have one dog and want your single dose treatment to be used twice. It is simple to believe that if you have a little dog that weighs 5 kg, you should be able to purchase a tablet for a 10 kg dog and cut it in half; this is especially true if the treatment dose appears to line up as an even double. Manufacturers often advise against doing this, with certain exceptions.

Easy and Convenient Dosing

Perhaps you merely want to divide a chew into smaller pieces to make it easier to administer even if you don’t plan to divide the dose. Or perhaps you wish to pulverize a tablet into digestible nourishment for your pet, like wet food. Generally, as long as you can ensure your pet will receive the whole amount, this is acceptable. There are several situations, though, where it is not advisable to do this. An easy method to tell is to look at whether or not the treatment is supposed to be chewed. When compared to some pills or capsules or tablets, which may need to be administered whole with an intact outer coating, a chewable treatment will be crushed up by the time it reaches the stomach anyway. This solely pertains to preventing parasites. We advise you to first speak with your veterinarian if you want to crush any other treatments, like antibiotics or painkillers, into food.

In what instances you can split the parasite preventives or treatments

Treatments or preventives may be split if:

• The middle of the tablet is clearly marked with a graded line, indicating that the manufacturer intended for the drug to be “acceptable to split.” Additionally, a split line makes it simpler to break evenly, lowering the chance of overdosing or underdosing.
• The drug comes with instructions for splitting; this is a frequent feature of various wormers, such as Milbemax and Drontal pills.
• The leftover portions can be consumed within a fair amount of time. When tablets are taken out of their packet and broken, many of them will fall apart. This occasionally lessens the drug’s effectiveness.
• Although you wish to divide the drug into smaller bits to make it easier to administer, you still want to provide the entire amount. If your dog or cat won’t eat a chew, for instance, or if a tablet is too big, it’s typically okay to break it up into tiny pieces or blend it into food, as long as you can ensure that your pet eats the entire thing. As was previously said, this only applies to parasite prevention, thus we still advise consulting your veterinarian before doing anything else.
• Your veterinarian has given you the go-ahead to do this. This might be true for some topical treatments, which can be administered in modest doses to small-sized pets like rabbits or guinea pigs.

Discover More: All You Need To Know About Milbemax For Dogs

In what instances you should not split the parasite preventives or treatments

• If the drug is not “scored” with a distinct graduated line down the middle, you should never cut it in half. The majority of chewable, pill, or tablet doesn’t have a “score” line and is meant to be swallowed whole.
• For various weight ranges, the drug comes in a variety of pack sizes. It’s usually preferable to adhere to the weight range that suits your pet if the brand has one for “small dogs” and another for “big dogs.”

Bottom line

There are numerous reasons why you shouldn’t split preventives or treatment that isn’t scored with a distinct line, according to the manufacturers. These include inconsistent dosing, the promise that contents are distributed equally, and the fact that some tablets are intended to be administered whole and intact for gradual release.

Because of this, you should always give your pet the recommended tablet, pill, or preventative according to the indicated instructions. And if you are still unsure about splitting the treatment or preventions or have any other questions about specific treatments or preventatives, we strongly advise you to seek your veterinarian’s guidance.