Make your own Heartgard

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I am not a vet, so I make no claims that I know what the heck I'm talking about, but I am a mathematician and can vouch for the numbers below.

Heartgard is essential to your dog's health. It prevents heartworm, roundworm and hookworm. It's expensive, but could prevent death, so we pay the price.

Heartgard is $35 for six doses for a big dog, and about $10 for six doses for a small dog, with medium dogs falling somewhere in between.

The medicine is made up of invermectin and pyrantel pamoate.  I researched Heartgard on the web and found that the horse formula appears to be identical to the dog formula. 

The cost, when you mix the formula yourself drops from $5.85 per dose (for a large dog) to $1.20 per dose. For a small dog, the price will drop from $1.75 per dose to about 35 cents, but this recipe makes WAY more than you can use.  It's a great recipe to share with a friend who also has a small dog.

If you are interested, read on... otherwise thanks for making it this far.

Robert

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COLLIE DOGS may be at higher than usual risk for side effects.
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For tiny dogs, it's almost worth it to not have to mix this up, as the number of doses you get (see table below) is inappropriately large when you use the below recipe. There is no way to scale back the recipe.  If you have a lot of friends with dogs, a larger dog, or several dogs, this becomes worth it.

THE CALCULATION:

HeartGard Commercial Product For Dogs:
Blue (up to 25 pounds) is 68 mcg Invermectin and 57 Pyrantel $10
Green (26 - 50 pounds) is 136 mcg Invermectin and 114 Pyrantel $20
Brown (51-100 pounds) is 272 mcg Invermectin and 227 Pyrantel $35

Visit heartgard.us.merial.com/products/dogs/dogs.asp for more info.

For horses you use an injector feeding tube 
with increments depending on the weight of the horse.
A tube of Zymectin contains about 4,000 mcg Invermectin 
and a tube of Pyrantel contains about 3,600 gm.  
Both are for horses up to 1,250 pounds.

Now, you might say this is giving your dog sub-standard treatment, but I've carefully researched all of the ingredients and dosages, and when all is done and said, since I can mix this to exactly the weight of my dog, I think it is actually better for her than the commercial products.  (My opinion only!)

Here is the recipe I used.

1 tube Invermectin 1.87% paste for horses up to 1,250 pounds ($15.99 at your local feed store) 1 tube Pyrantel Pamoate, 3.600 gm ($7.99 at the feed store) 1 TBL creamy peanut butter (for taste) 2 TBL mesquite meal (available online) double peanut butter and mesquite meal for small dogs,  it makes dividing the mixture easier

Mix tube ingredients VERY WELL first,  then mix in peanut butter, then mesquite meal. Store in tiny zip lock bags available from ULine in quantities of 1000,  or write to me at Robert Andrews, PO Box 1490, Sun City, AZ 85372  and I'll send you as many as you want for $1.00 per dozen.

Store bagged paste in the refrigerator for up to two years. Share with a friend's dog if you have a small or medium sized dog.

Diving the resulting paste.