After months of thinking about it, I have decided to start learning how to do my own fecal testing.  I ordered a nice microscope that will give me up to 1600 X magnification.  What I ordered is a Trinocular Biological Microscope with USB Camera.  I got it from Microscopenet.com and they give alpaca ranchers a discount!  I also got a used centrifuge and a small digital scale.  When I opened the microscope and started putting it together following the instructions that I got off the internet, it made me wish I had learned the parts of a microscope better while in junior high school.  The instructions said things like ‘objectives’, ‘mechanical stage’, ‘variable intensity dial’, ‘X and Y adjustments’, ‘coarse focus knob’, ‘fine focus knob’, ‘condenser’, ‘iris diaphragm’, interpupillary distance’, ‘eyepiece diopter’, etc. etc. etc.  There were things that I did remember like the slides and the cover slips.  I also remember from school how cute I thought those little cover slips are!  Weird, huh?

After I put the microscope together, with some help from Chuck, I began preparing a poo sample to be viewed.  I took the sample and smashed it all together and got about 3 grams of the sample and put it in a  sugar solutioned test tube.  The sugar solution I used was 1 pound of sugar to 12 ozs. of filtered water.  I even have this cute little bottle – a flotation solution squeeze bottle, that allows just drops of the sugar solution to be added to the test tube so that the tube is filled to form a dome.  It is in this dome that the parasite eggs will float and where the cover slip is placed for a period of time to collect what is in the sample. 

I may not have left the sample sitting for the proper amount of time this first time, but I got that sample under that microscope and WOW – there is a whole world of stuff going on that we can’t see with our naked eyes!  Actually, I didn’t see any parasites, but I did get to look at some interesting stuff.

Here is my laboratory – otherwise knows as my utility room!  I have a sink, I have a countertop and I have a refrigerator – what more do I need?  Oh yeah, electricity!!!

If I can get it figured out, I will post pictures of my findings on this blog.  I do have a USB camera that came with the microscope and it would be great to share my findings with you!  And, I know you are excited to see what is in that unseen world!