Parasite management

[Snowstoatie]

Hi,

I'm new to the forum and wondered if anyone would like to share their opinion/experiences with regards to a discussion we have been having at our yard.
A new horse arrived and it became apparent that he was infested with worms. He has now been treated. The discussion now is when should he be turned out, should we wait for the next worm count to ensure his count is low (my preference) but is that the most sensible?

Cheers

 

[paddy555]

I am in exactly the same position (except they are my own horses on my own land)
I took on a pony I knew had a high count. It counted at 800. It had to be let out. Simply not possible for it's mental well being to be kept in 24/7 so I wormed it and turned it out with it's companion and I remove the droppings twice daily. I keep them on a relatively small area so as not to contaminate too large an area of grazing. I worked on the basis that the companion, previously with a low count, would also become infected. The pony will be counted 3 weeks after the wormer to see if there is a reduction and the companion will be counted and wormed regularly until I get them both under control.

I did ask Westgate labs this question when they did my counts and I was told that until it was wormed and retested clear there was still a risk.

 

[PennyJ]

Turn him out and poo pick daily/twice daily.

Keep up the worm counts and the worming until his counts are in the acceptable range. Don't forget to sort out tapeworm too.

Poo Picking really does work.

 

[Pauli]

I did worm counts myself on many horses and from my experience I can say that a horse that is not resistant in the slightest will respond to the chemical wormer (unless it is panacur) withing 24hours. Once the chemical wormer is given the worm count should go down to under 25 and should stay there for a good few months. But every horse is different in its immunity to worms and some may show slight resistance. Keeping your pasture clean as already said is very important for all pastures and not only the one where the horse with high egg count is on. From doing egg worm counts, I know that worm counts can vary a lot within one batch or within a few days. So even your horse has a generally low egg count, there might be a few high ones (especially in the summer) which you will not detect as you wont do egg counts every week. So keeping pasture clean is very important for all horses. I personally would turn the infected horse out after it has been wormed because if resistance is really there it may take a while till the problem is going to be solved which means the poor pony would be in for quite a while. Maybe you could make a little paddock for it. I personally had a horse with high count in our herd and before she was tested we did not know she had such a high count as she did not show any signs. But we cleaned the fields anyway twice a day and none of the other horses got infected. All horses were always wormed at the same time, so we did not expect this one horse to be so high.

Hope you get the high count under control quickly.

 

[Snowstoatie]

Thank you for your replies. We clean the paddock daily anyway so may be we should turn him out and do twice daily poo picking. I do feel really sorry for him. He has had a full vet inspection and had all possible worming treatments he can have. I think making him a small paddock could be the answer