Diarrhoea & Small Redworms.

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missmatch

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When I bought my boy he was wormed the day he was delivered. He had a huge redworm burden. He was wormed with 3 different wormers within 6 weeks on the advice of my vets. Since then he has been wormed regularly as recommended. That was 2 years ago. On Friday the 18th of January I noticed he had diarrhoea. Vets recommended natural yogurt and keep him in. He loves his stable so no problem doing that. Saturday it was much worse, rang vets again who said to worm again with Panacur 5 day, prior to that he was wormed on the 13/12/2013. The vet was booked for Monday afternoon. Through all of this my boy is eating well and drinking twice as much as normal. Monday morning I found a redworm in his pooh. In total I found 4. Turns out, hes had a mass emergence of the redworms which encysted 2 years ago. The worms I thought were long gone and forgotten about were just waiting to emerge. They wreak havoc on the horses system, theres no treatment barr supporting the horse. The good thing is my boy kept on eating. He is on veterinary probiotic paste. He had bloods taken and pooh samples. Even though we seen the redworms his worm count was 0. He has more bloods this week to see if he needs to go on steroids as his protein is low. Vet is erring on the side of caution before prescribing steroids. In this time he has lost a considerable amount of weight, his coat is not all shiny like normal, his moult has doubled and hes sluggish and cuddly. He was the second horse my vet had seen with this on that day. He is back out, hay in fields, hay at night and on topspec.
But the worrying thing is this could happen over and over again for many years. He had a couple of clear days then diarrhoea again for 24 hours, this too could go on and on.
My vet said we were lucky to see any worms at all. If you are ever in doubt please consult your vet and reworm if possible. Lots of horses dont make it with this.
 
Encysted redworms can be a really serious problem and certain wormers cover for this and should be used winter and spring. My vet told me that it was particularly bad this year - lots of cases of peritonitis about, because of the weather and many owners wormed too early as you need to wait for a frost they advised. I hope your horse continues to improve.
 
My mare is going through this at the moment. It still hasn't been completely diagnosed as this but everything you have written is the process were going through atm. Random spells of diharrrea, low protein levels which he first thought was inflammatory bowel disease but after many test it isn't. And same as you worm count zero but 8 months ago it was 200 with red worm. Didn't release how long they can hibernate for. So been wormed 3 times in the space of 6 weeks recommended by the vet. Such a worry.
 
worm with equest which will hopefully catch them when they emerge, but this in itself can be dangerous, but if you worm them in spring it should kill the adults which will then not make cysts over the following winter. its one of those ****** you do ****** you dont, if it was me, i could worm and take a chance, because if they all emerge from the cysts horse could get colic anyway.
 
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