Sweet itch or Pin worms??

mccarron6769

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Thought this might be a useful place to warn people to be aware of Pin worms.

I bought a horse last October who had rubbed the top of his tail. I had a 5 stage vetting and the vet commented on it but said there was no declared history of sweet itch.

Within a couple of months he was starting to rub his tail so much his bum was getting big bald patches. I called out my local vet who thought it may be being caused by bites because of the unusually mild weather we had last November. I commented that the tail seemed to be just in the way and it was his anal area he seemed to be irritated by.

He was prescribed cream and left at that. I happened to be near him when he went to do a poop and caught it in a skip bucket and could have sworn that a flat white worm came out at the end. I couldn't find it in the bucket so started to think I'd imagined it but caught another one a few days later and got hold of it.

I did some research on the internet and found info about pinworms which to be honest I'd never heard of but it was a perfect desription of the symptoms. I rang the vet who advised to give a particular type of wormer (despite the fact that he'd already been wormed when he first arrived), that covered pin worms and it did the trick.

The comments about pin worms were that they are often mistaken for sweet itch and yet I had two vets not even consider it.

So remember ! Vets don't always have the right answers !!!
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I injured myself coming off one of my horses a few years ago and a friend kindly offered to have one of my horses turned out with hers while I was laid up. My friend is very in to natural horsemanship and doesn't use conventional wormers as she likes homeopathic alternatives. When my mare came back home after 3 months away I thought she had developed sweet itch as she was always scratching her tail. I didn't worm her immediately when I got her back as the rest of my horses were due to be wormed 2 weeks later so decided to do them all together. I was quite horrified by what came out in her droppings after she had been wormed! Long, thin white worms which I researched and discovered that they were pin worms. Almost immediately the scratching stopped! Since then I have always mades sure that I use a broad spectrum wormer at least once a year which will kill pin worm. YUK!
 
Yep was pretty disgusting but I felt sooo awful that the poor boy had obviously been tormented for months trying to get to the irritation and was a bit annoyed that two professionals hadn't even raised it as a possibility. Seems to me that it would have been a more obvious possibility than exotic flies in the country enjoying our mild winter.
 
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