Effectiveness of egg counts

[tuscanyD]

My livery yard owner has her horses egg counted regularly and believes that she will never have to worm her horses again.

I have been told that egg counts don't cover bots and/or encysted larvae.

Anyone got any info/experience or links to good sites about this?

I had my horse egg counted and her result was zero but I want to be sure that this covers everything

 

[spaniel]

Theres no such thing as a true zero count and you are right, some species will not show up in a faecal count (tapes being one of these).

Have a look at he site for Westgate Laboratories (I use them for my faecal counts and they are very good) they give loads of useful info there.

http://www.westgatelabs.co.uk/

 

[ihatework]

The worm counts don't account for encysted and tapeworm, although your vet can do a blood test for tapeworm.
As a bare minimum you should be treating annually for encysted red/tapeworm but better is twice a year spring and autumn.

 

[spaniel]

Take issue with you there B+J. IMO there is far too much worming going on which is actually unnecessary when you start having tapeworm antibody tests carried out.

Id rather pay out for blood and faecal counts than pay out and use wormers which arent required.

 

[ihatework]

No problemo spaniel

The biannual equest/equitape suits me fine with a couple of worm counts inbetween

 

[Theresa_F]

I use worm counts in March and July but I do worm December with equest to kill bots and encysted larvae. I then use a wormer for tape in September and if the last worm count showed any worms, will use a dual purpose wormer in September unless the count was high in which case I would immediately worm.

This works very well for me and I have normally have zero counts apart from last March with Chancer when he came back with a high count of worms from encysted eggs - hence the need to use something to kill them at some point in the year.

I only have my two in a paddock and poo pick normally 4/5 time a week in summer and clear the field weekly in the winter.

 

[Gillb]

I think I might say that the point of using egg counts is that you can worm your horses correctly, for your situation, rather than not at all. They are a very effective tool, but of course we still need to use some wormers and thank goodness we have such effective ones easily available.

This may not always be the case if some people keep on giving masses of un-necessary doses, often of 'the wrong' wormer, mistakenly thinking they are doing the best for their horse.

If you would like to read more about reducing doses in an informed way please read our website, especially the sample reduced worming programme page. If you have questions then I always try to answer them.