What are the signs of worms ?

Patchy coat around the dock for pinworms and little patches all over for ringworm too. Been there done all of these in the last year, it's been a massive learning curve for me as someone who used to know all this and forgot after taking a break from horses.
 
There sometimes aren't any signs, but the little b****rs are doing damage nevertheless. A Fecal Egg Count will tell you the proportion of eggs present but there are still some that don't show up, tapeworms and encysted red worms for example, so best treat for those in winter every year anyway. Gill at Westgate is very knowledgeable, as are the people at Abbey Diagnostics.I don't know how reliable it would be after the sample spending a long time in the post - are there any labs doing it in your area, maybe even your vet offers the service, some in the UK do. We have someone who comes on site to do them - how you collect the sample is important, as is how fresh it is, and how she mixes and prepares the slide. It was really interesting looking at the slide.
You can test for resistance - FEC, wormer, then FEC again to see if there has been a significant reduction as a result of the wormer.
 
As the others have said there can be no signs even when a significant burden is present. You need to look at the whole picture, discuss dose sizes, timings, products used, age of the horse and background. Wormed horses can certainly still have worm burdens and all types of worm control programmes need monitoring to make sure they are working. The lab will help with timings for this so that you don't waste the test, and your money.

Samples sent in the post are perfectly reliable as long as no more than a few days old and packed well to exclude air. They will be tested in a proper lab using a centrifuge to prepare the sample. Whilst some of these 'mobile' labs might be fine, I would be very wary of results. We have personal knowledge of a yard we tested in the lab (at Westgate) which had a few significant counts. They also used a mobile service which gave them the all clear.
 
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