Worming advice needed...

[ginginandtonic]

I follow my vets worming plan... and what with one thing and another I've realised that I missed Februarys wormer (should have been the Panacur 5 day course)

Nothing was due in March.

April should be 'Pramox'.

Does anyone know whether I should just carry on with the programme this month or do something about the one I missed?

Obviously I will ask my vets in the morning, but if anyone knows I would be grateful... feeling guilty and stupid for missing the last one

 

[Borderreiver]

Well Pramox will treat encysted redworm ( as well as tapeworm) which is the target of 5 day Panacur too so you don't need to do anything special.

To be honest I would have thought your vets should be revising this kind of interval dosing programme in line with BVA guidelines on reducing doses.

 

[ginginandtonic]

Thanks for replying.

I find worming so confusing, and I don't know what to do other than trust my vet. I did look into the 'intelligent worming' thing, but was advised by them that it probably wouldn't work for my horse because I am on a big yard where people do their own thing, rather than all following the same programme (which is what I've been used to - all people doing the same thing).....

 

[Borderreiver]

Ah well that situation might explain the vets advice then. It is hard to believe that there are yards with no worming policy in place and all you can do is protect your own horse as you are doing.
I think I would be looking elsewhere but I appreciate it can be difficult in some areas.

 

[soloequestrian]

Even in your situation you would be far better to use a reactive worming programme ie one based on worm egg counts. You may find that your horse has a very good innate resistance to worms and therefore won't need to be wormed as often. The only exception to this is tapeworm - you would either need a blood test (expensive) or to worm once or twice per year specifically for tapeworm, but if you use a good company to do the tests they will advise you on this anyway.
I would be interested in asking the vet why they are recommending a benzimidazole wormer (Panacur Guard) at all - a large proportion of small red worm are resistant to benzimidazole so while Guard will remove the non-resistant encysted eggs, it won't touch those that are resistant.
The latest research is showing that it is healthy for horses to have a small/medium worm burden - for one thing it means that there are worm eggs on pasture which act as a refuge for non-resistant worms. This means that after worming, when the resistant worms would have a lovely empty environment to colonise with large numbers of their resistant offspring, the non resistant eggs on pasture provide some competition and so reduce the numbers of resistant worms. Also there is a likelihood that there is a link between worms and autoimmune conditions, a it like kids who are kept too clean being susceptible to asthma.
We should all be trying to reduce the use of wormers as much as possible - it is only a matter of time before there are worms resistant to all the chemicals we have.