Do I really need to worm my horse?

mutants. The more that we use wormers when we may not need to the stronger this selection pressure is we kill the worms which are susceptible to the wormers allowing the few worms which can survive to reproduce in an environment with less competition. Thus new wormers need to be developed all the time a laborious and long task. How can we slow or stop this resistance developing? By being responsible owners and avoiding overworming saving our horses and wallets in the process!
Moving away from wormers we need to look to management. As we can see in the lifecycles it is the output of eggs in faeces that are responsible for providing a suitable environment for parasites. Poopicking fields is one of our biggest weapons in the battle of the bugs deploy it often! Quarantining new horses prior to turnout can help to minimise worms on a busy yard moxidectin and praziquantel can be used 24 hours prior to turnout.

What wormers are available?
There are macrocyclic lactones ivermectin and moxidectin tetrahydropyrimidines pyrantel and benzimidazoles fenbendazoles and pyrazinoisoquinolines praziquantel. We must treat with what is most efficacious for the type of worm and also only when it is needed. Faecal egg counts FECs give a picture of what worm eggs are being put out in your horses faeces when the FEC exceeds 200 eggs per gram it may be justification for worming. If that sounds a lot we need to get our heads around the fact that horses will always have worms whilst this is not a pleasant idea unfortunately our horses will never have a totally wormfree body and we shouldnt strive for that in our worming regimes. Further to this we want to keep a certain worm population in refugia this means we want to keep some worms unexposed to wormers because then we are not selecting for worms resistant to the wormers. It is only when worm burdens get too high and will damage our horses wellbeings that we should use wormers. FECs can reduce the selection pressure that help those resistant worms to thrive as well as being a costeffective means of targeting the individual horses who need it most