Stoll Egg Counting Technique

A method for determining the number of nematode eggs per gram of feces in order to estimate the worm burden in an animal. The advantage of this technique is that it requires no specialized equipment, the disadvantage is the counting takes a long time because of the amount of extra (non-egg) material on the slides.

1. Weigh out 3 grams of feces.
2. Measure out 42 ml of water and place it into a dish. Using a tongue depressor, push the 3 grams of feces through a sieve into the water. Lift the sieve and hold over the dish. Push out any remaining water from the feces.
3. While stirring the water-feces mixture, take 0.15 ml of the suspension and spread over 2 slides. Cover each slide with a long coverslip (or 2 regular size coverslips).
4. Examine both slides for worm eggs, the total number of eggs counted X 100 represents the number of eggs per gram of feces.
5. Since 0.15 ml is 1/300 of 45 ml (42 ml water and 3 gm feces) then the number of eggs in 0.15 ml X 100 is equal to 1/3 of the total number of eggs in the original 3 grams and thus equal to eggs per gram (EPG).