HELP - both horses have 3500 worm count !!!

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Mango_goose

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Two geldings. Cobs. One is 16, one is 11. 16 always has a higher worm burden but not massively. Never above 800 (that was once). This year they’re both sitting at 3500 - after both being read in September and being at next to nothing - they now have astronomical worm burdens!

No clue what’s happened? They have moved to a pasture that hasn’t been grazed in years - and we restrict graze where we move the fence every day so they aren’t grazing the same patch without it resting. Poo picked at least once a week in awful weather, normally every other day / every day when the weather allows.

Both horses look really healthy - first winter in years 16 hasn’t dropped conditioning and ended up all ribby - this year he looks so incredibly well and is riding so forward. He’s been a bit itchy but he’s also come down with his annual rain rot (lovely mix of his coat never being waterproof naturally and it being thick - so if it rains or he sweats mosture is trapped). No clue what to think?
 
Mild winter? Decimal point in the wrong place? When I bought my mare she came in with figures close to that but the vets put a worming programme in place and all is well. Put me off spaghetti for a while mind lol.
 
Midlifecrisis said:
Mild winter? Decimal point in the wrong place? When I bought my mare she came in with figures close to that but the vets put a worming programme in place and all is well. Put me off spaghetti for a while mind lol.
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It’s definitely not wrong unfortunately! I’m so shocked. I’ve had one for nearly 9 years and I have not ever seen this before!
 
Mango_goose said:
It’s definitely not wrong unfortunately! I’m so shocked. I’ve had one for nearly 9 years and I have not ever seen this before!
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why do you think it's not wrong? have you sent off other samples to different labs/vets? what about equ sal tests how is the tapeworm looking?
 
Might have coincidentally tested after an encysted emergence?

I’d worm in accordance with vet advice, keep the horses off any grazing for a good 48h, poo pick religiously twice a day for next fortnight. Then retest at a short interval, 3-4 weeks time.

Hopefully cycle broken, if not run a resistance test
 
Egg counts don’t correlate directly with the number of worms in the horse- worms shed eggs at different times, and the recent very mild weather could have triggered that (no advantage to the worm to shed eggs going into winter as the eggs are less likely to survive)
 
To my horror, 4 weeks ago I found an adult round worm in my horse's poo, I contacted the vets with her last 2 egg counts which were really low and the wormers she's had since then, they were also shocked at the size of it but did say they had done a couple of egg counts on horses in January and had seen really high numbers which is unusual for this time of year. We did another egg count which was zero and have wormed with a different winter wormer as a preauction. It's been quite mild this winter with us so maybe the weather is having an impact on the worm and egg numbers.
 
SEL said:
About 5 weeks after a zero FEC my little cob got into some crab apples and did cow pats for 48 hours - filled with adult roundworms.

Did the lab say what eggs they were seeing? Apparently it's been a bad year for redworm so you may have just tested at the right time (ie being shed in poo)
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My mare had encysted redworm in her 💩 before I last wormed her. Since worming I’ve seen no worms.
 
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