What Can a Fecal Smear Identify?
Worm Eggs – A fecal smear can identify many types of worm eggs. Many are large and plentiful and easy to identify even at 100x magnification. Some are smaller and less plentiful, and may require a fecal float (dissolving the dropping in a supersaturated saline or sugar solution in which the worm eggs will float but the fecal material will sink). Fecal floats remove background material from the slide so that the worm eggs can be more easily detected, and they allow you to analyze an entire dropping from larger birds, but they cannot be used to identify yeasts or protozoa. Yeast – Yeast organisms, such as Candida (photos below) and Avian Gastric Yeast (photos below) can also be identified via fecal smears. These organisms can be seen at 100x, but are much easier to identify at 400x. Protozoa – A fecal smear can also identify some protozoa. However, a high magnification may be necessary here (at least 400x, and even better, 1000x). In order to view slides at 1000x, an oil-immersion lens i
