Worm Egg Counts - Conflicting Results? Anyone else?

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Horseyjen!

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I am not sure what to do and was after some advice and wondered if anyone else is having the same problem.

To cut a long story short I have had 2 worm counts done within 2 days of each other and one company has come back <50 No eggs seen and the other one has come back with Moderate egg counts :confused:

I have done this for 2 horses and have had the same results on both. One company says they are clear and the other company says they are not.

I have contacted the two companies thinking they might help to sort out who is right but both just stand by there own results!

This is very worrying when we are now being told only worm when necessary and use worm counts in between, If a very well known company is telling everyone there horses are clear when they have worms that could have serious consequences.

Does anyone know are they regulated by anyone or would it be trading standards?

Thanks
 
this is the reason why you cannot rely solely on worm counts.

You only send them a very small sample. Worms do not lay their eggs uniformly throughout a dropping therefore you may send off a bit with no eggs, or you may send off a bit with all of them!

the only way to get a true sample is to pick up an entire dropping and put it in a blender so it is made even all the way through.
 
They do tell you to take it from 5 different places and within 5 different poohs but your right its very difficult.

Interestingly the new company that has come back with eggs showing - the sample pot they provide is at least twice the size of the old companies.
 
Can you tell us which companies? PM me please if you prefer. I am currently using 2 - different one for each horse - and results have always tallied
 
Same companies - I normally use westgate but got a year free with scientifeq when my horse went to the futurity - so took advantage of that. So each horse only has one count, but different companies. Always had similar results. Although scientifeq say they have new state of the art labs. Can you just get egg counts through them or do you need to sign up to intelligent worming - this is what he is on at the moment but it is free. I'd not be willing to pay for it myself, but would be happy to pay jsut egg counts through them
 
There was a study performed in Holland and presented at BEVA Congress a couple of years ago on this subject; I'm not sure if it was ever published. Anyway the point is that they took samples from the same horse for 5 consecutive days, and found that it was common for the same horse to have results ranging from 0 epg to >1000epg.

In light of this research then your results are not surprising, and neither of them is wrong. WECs are an imperfect tool, but beyond routine dosing is the best we have. I would recommend that you worm your horse as there is clearly some burden present at the moment.
 
Minor detail, but I organise worm counts for the whole of our yard, nearly 40 horses. If I were to ask them all to collect the sample as you suggest they would complain that they are not provided with a glove as stated in the video - you only send a couple with the sample pots...
 
That videos very useful. I have alays only ever taken 1 piece of dung and put it in the box.
I really do wonder about worming. We are told to do with Panacur 5 day in Jan or Feb and now we are told in Nov. We are told to worm for tapeworm now twice, not once a year.Might as well just do this then worm once in the summer and poo pick. Change the drug every year or two to try to avoid resistance.
 
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