Lg roundworms, youngsters, worming programme?

Queenbee

Queenbee

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Hi, was looking for some ideas/advice, I moved my two onto a new pasture on feb 1st, they are both regularly wormed their last worm was just after they moved. I worked with equestrian pramox 2 nights ago and this morning was appauled!!! Whilst my old girl was clear of nasties, baby Ben (3 in June) had about 25 very large round worm in his poo!! Bleurgh! In all my 20 odd yrs I've never experienced this, but I've not had many youngsters and from what I know as yet he would be more susceptible due to undeveloped immunity. I have taken pics to send to vets Monday for worming advice but was wondering if anyone else had experienced this and how they managed/ wormed for it. I've had Ben since he was 6 months and he's never had a problem till now, I heard the other day that the people who used to have my paddocks never wormed and never cleared or rested their paddocks so I suspect there is a heavy worm burden there, and that even though I poo pick this will do little to affect the pasture in relation to that specific worm. Advice and experiences please?
 
I had the same problem when I moved to my new grazing - mine had come of really clean grazing and onto a property that in the past had been heavily grazed.

I stepped up my worming programme for the first year - back to six weekly worming. So far we are clear of roundworm.

Also with my youngsters I keep an eye out for a snotty nose or cough as this is often a sign of migrating roundworm. A worm dose clears all, worms, coough and snotty nose.
 
How long between last horses on your paddock and yours moving there?

I would wait 10 weeks, faecal egg count and worm again accordingly. But don't worry, equest has done its job.
 
Tnavas that's interesting as Ben had a cough the day that I wormed him.
Naturally: there was no rest period for the field unfortunately, it just wasn't possible. I suppose I should explain a bit more of its history. The people who were grazing before me did worm and poo pick, it's the people that
Were there before them (a couple of years ago) that had it for a number of years and just didn't bother. Yeah I suppose on the bright side there aren't any worms in him now, I'd post the pic I took but it really is gross!
 
Hmm I wouldn't necessarily blame the new pasture then... is it possible for you to rotate and rest some of the field, and/or graze other species like sheep or cattle?
 
Lime on any pasture you can rest for whatever the appropriate time period is, could help too.
 
I'm assuming it's the new pasture because I've never had this problem before, I am rotating as much as possible but it's not possible to fully rest it as it's only just over 2 acres and it's all they have, at the moment I'm stabling them and have sectioned off an acre which they have during the day and resting the other half, I may be able to get it treated when the hay fields cut, the yo may let me move them there, problem with resting and rotating is that from what I've read lg roundworms will stay on the land for years! Bleeding horses lol!!
 
You may need to step up your worming programme for a while. Worm eggs can indeed survive on pasture for a number of years. We will never totally eradicate worms but we can try to control their numbers so they don't become a challenge to the health of the horse. The good news is Equest has done it's job, the worms are out!!

I would suggest a worm count in 14 days time and see if anything comes back on that. If low then don't worm but take another count in 6 - 8 weeks time and so on until the autumn when you will have to give a dose for tapeworms (or a blood test to test for tapeworm antibodies) If you get a med/high count then worm - I would use pyrantel (strongid p or eqivalent) as this will happily deal wirh roundworms allowing you to keep Equest (moxidectin) for use against small redworms, we really don't want to overuse moxidectin if we can help it.

What will happen over the course of time is that you will be destroying the adult egg laying population of worms and thus breaking the life cycle. If the pasture is contaminated this will take a while to clear and if you can beg, borrow or steal (actually, don't steal them!!) some sheep this will really help clear some of the infective L3 larvae from the pasture.

When starting with your counts make sure you keep them up for the first grazing season as it is easy to get a false negative if a horse has a large population of juvenile worms not yet laying eggs - so you may even want to pop a couple of routine roundworm doses into your schedule over the summer months.

Contact Westgate labs for details of wormcounts and free helpful advice!!
Good luck - I'm having fun with redworm in a youngster at the moment!!
 
Yeah, thanks for that, was thinking of worm counts etc for additional monitoring, just spoke to yo and he's going to lime the field around the time he cuts his hay field so they can go on the hay field while their paddock rests a but :)
 
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