Every horse should be wormed regularly with an effective antiparasitic treatment. This is an hygienic and an animal well fare issue at the same time.
Why perform regular horse worming?
A scheduled, effective worming program will prevent your horse from intestinal parasitic infestation and defects in the intestinal wall and inner organs caused by migrating larvae and adult worms.
A worming program enhances the over-all health and well being of our horses and helps to avoid serious hygienic problems in stable and on grazings and pastures.
It is part of a horse owners responsibility for his/her horse's health.
How does a worm enter (invade) the horse's intestinal tract?
An adult worm living in the horse's gut, lays eggs. A lot of them; every day. These eggs mix and excrete in the horse's manure, which usually ends up in a pasture. Larvae hatch out of the worm eggs, trying to expose themselves on grass. Some species occur even in dew drops!
The horse ingests them during grazing and once these larvae passed the stomach, they undergo in the intestines several developmental states.
Some species will first hibernate a certain time and then continue on their stages of development. Some species migrate through the intestinal wall into different organs, while being in a 2nd larval phases, becoming 3rd stage larvae.
Once these migrate back into the gut, they undergo a last change and become adult, mature, ready-to-reproduce worms.
A horse with a severe larval infestation will show symptoms of fever, pain, colic, inappetence, diarrhea etc. , and suffer from more or less severely damaged tissue of inner organs and the gut wall.
What is on the "To-do-list"?
An important horse health issue is to manage the horse's environment, such as barn, stable and pasture/paddock.
Try to pick horse manure every day.
Keep water troughs or buckets clean.
Keep forage and horse feed in dry, appropriate storing places and perform regular pest control.
Prevention of worm infestation is the most important issue within good horse health care and management:
- establish a regular horse worming schedule
- include all horses on the premises
- know about the grade of infestation by a random worm egg count of each horse's manure and blood sampling, both performed by your vet.
- use effective horse wormer and change products to avoid worms/larvae becoming resistant to a certain product.
- keep accurate records about your scheme for your reference.
How does a horse wormer work?
A horse wormer is usually administered orally to the horse.
Mostly it is a paste in a convenient doser. It can also be fed as pellets or in fluid form administered via stomach tube by your vet.
Injectable worming drugs are usually not used in horses, as side effects can be severe.
Modern wormer will paralyze rather than kill adult worms, so they will not release toxic chemicals which would harm the horse and they are unable to resist being excreted with the manure. Outside its host, an intestinal worm will die.
The time between a worming treatment and the re-occurence of eggs in the manure is called "Egg reappearance period" or ERP.
Logically, if the specific ERP of a worming product is being exceeded (if you forget to worm regularly within the recommended time range for the product), the worm egg count will increase and again, more worm eggs will spoil the pasture and grazing and finally the horse will start ingesting increasing numbers of larvae.
Ideally consult your vet and work out a decent and effective horse worming plan customized to your individual situation.
