Where have worms come from?

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Equi

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Yards got a very good worming programme including FEC. I’ve always got a 0 or under 40 FEC and big man was wormed a few weeks ago, but today his FEC was 900!

Im just a bit baffled. There has been no changes in yard, herd, horses and we had a mad two week long frozen field.

Am I being silly to think it could come from grass nuts as that is the only thing that has changed in the last few months… lol
 
Horses shed different numbers of eggs at different times. I actually wouldn’t be surprised if a cold snap followed by very mild weather triggered some activity.
There is a correlation between worm egg counts and actual worm burden, but they’re not the same thing
 
SEL said:
What type of worms came up in the count? I wonder if the wormer wasn't effective
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I assume round? I think the wormer was an ivermectin based one but can’t remember. I think I’ll stick to equest in future in case he’s had ivermectin ones his whole life

TheMule said:
Horses shed different numbers of eggs at different times. I actually wouldn’t be surprised if a cold snap followed by very mild weather triggered some activity.
There is a correlation between worm egg counts and actual worm burden, but they’re not the same thing
Click to expand...

Its just bizarre that he’s always been low then suddenly verging on high and no other horses are. Hence me wondering if it’s come from grass nuts lol
 
Many years ago we (kind of accidentally) egg counted a herd of horses once before worming and then again about two weeks after. A substantial number of them showed very much higher egg numbers on the second count - we speculated that something about the wormer had triggered a mass release of eggs (a signal that then environment was empty and food availability would be good??) but we never really got to the bottom of it. I wonder how often it does happen because so few horses are tested after worming.
 
soloequestrian said:
Many years ago we (kind of accidentally) egg counted a herd of horses once before worming and then again about two weeks after. A substantial number of them showed very much higher egg numbers on the second count - we speculated that something about the wormer had triggered a mass release of eggs (a signal that then environment was empty and food availability would be good??) but we never really got to the bottom of it. I wonder how often it does happen because so few horses are tested after worming.
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A friend of mine did this years ago (worm counted shortly worming), she immediately moved her horses thinking the fault was the busy livery yard they were on.
 
Don’t worry too much. Worms are endemic in horses and cyclical.
900 epg isn’t actually that awful in the grand scheme, just indicates horse needs worming. This is one reason why they need to be done for encysted in the winter.

If it makes you feel any better I’m pretty anal about testing and worming. I pride myself in continual low burdens. Imagine my horror when I got a call from the vet - one of my horses had gone in for a GA and it obviously triggered emergence of a massive encysted burden, because as he recovered from the GA his poos were literally alive ??
 
HG95 said:
How long ago was he wormed? Your supposed to leave a few weeks between worming and egg counts
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would have been about November from memory.

ihatework said:
Don’t worry too much. Worms are endemic in horses and cyclical.
900 epg isn’t actually that awful in the grand scheme, just indicates horse needs worming. This is one reason why they need to be done for encysted in the winter.

If it makes you feel any better I’m pretty anal about testing and worming. I pride myself in continual low burdens. Imagine my horror when I got a call from the vet - one of my horses had gone in for a GA and it obviously triggered emergence of a massive encysted burden, because as he recovered from the GA his poos were literally alive ??
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I’ve been avoiding looking too closely at poo I might faint if I saw it move ?
 
Cold weather followed by a mild spell will trigger encysted worms to develop (cyathastomiasis). Exactly this happened to my boy a few weeks after I bought him (March). When you say you assume round, does this mean you don't know how to id worms? Small redworm will actually look white if they haven't fed, so if the worms were 1-2 cm and thread like, they were probably encysted redworm (which wouldn't be treated by ivermectin). If they were more than 2 cm and 2-4 mm thick, they were possibly roundworm, but these tend to be much lower in numbers. Cyathastomiasis results on 100s or 1000s of the little wrigglers in a few poos, over a day or two.
 
For some reason I can't edit. Just re-read and seen that you didn't actually look at the poo. FWECs are for ascarids (roundworm), but given the time of year, I'd worm for encysted as it will cover both. The 'responsible person' where you buy the wormer will advise.
 
It could well be that the wormer triggered the remaining unaffected worms to shed far more eggs than usual, as their ‘home’ suddenly became a volatile environment.
I’d expect a weird high FEC after worming, than before, as i doubt we’d ever kill them all, and the remaining worms would sense the change in environment due to the wormer.

Its a phenomenon of nature that when there’s a ’threat to life & longevity’ - reproduction efforts begin furiously, desperately!
In the plant world, if a plant is deprived of water, due to dehydration and risk of possible death, it’ll soon shoot to produce flowers then produce seed.
To get flowers to bloom, rather than just grow lush leaves, growers of blooms know the technique of depriving it of water will induce flowering, as the plant senses ‘lack’ and gets on with producing flowers for pollination and seed, ensuring it never dies.

Humans do it too, subconsciously. The poorer social demographics worldwide have the highest child-rearing numbers.
I was astounded looking at genealogical family trees, that it was extremely common for American/west european couples to have at least 10 children in the 1600-1800’s. Average were 15. These were not ‘well-off’ families at all, and even by todays ‘working class’ standards were poorer. Whereas the ‘gentry‘ of those era’s didn’t have so many children.

Reproduction for ALL species ‘ensures’ we never really ‘die’ - essentially its a solution to ‘death anxiety’ that every living thing in life experiences, mostly unconsciously - even the worms in our horses guts! ?

Also, i dont believe worms are laying eggs like clockwork, constantly, 24/7 - i think like all other creatures egg production is cyclical/seasonal - which accounts for the common experience of having low FEC but a horse with ‘wormy’ symptoms and even worms in their poop. The droppings were taken at a particular point in the parasites cycle that was ‘non egg laying’.

Old almanacs would say to worm near times of full moons as worms are ’more active’. It would be interesting if droppings taken around these lunar times did yield higher FEC than other days of the month. A study could be done to highlight knowledge of parasite egg-laying cycles.

There’s been scientific revelations that might help support the old almanac theory of full moon worming protocols, as serotonin is produced at higher levels in the body of mammals around a fuller moon, and parasites are attracted to serotonin, so more likely at that time specifically, to bite into the gut wall for a good blood-feed of ‘happy neurotransmitter’ from their host!
If we worm then, they’ll get a serotonin boost aswell as the lethal wormer - at least we’re killing them-off in a blissful state!?
 
My horse and pony have always been 50 or <50, This month my shetland has tested 200, will waste alot of the wormer tube as he is 172kg. It must be the weather, we are oddly mild for January
 
I think you might well be right Hollylee the grass, the horses and the worms do not know weither they are coming or going!
I do not give much hard feed but l have taken to giving my boy 3 handfuls of sanfoin a day for extra protein , it has also been proven to help reduce worm burdens.
 
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