Worming Advice needed

[Kayfamily]

Hi all advice needed please I bought an 11hh Welsh A for the kids about 4 weeks ago, don't know if he was on any sort of worming programme, he did come from a fairly big yard. His previous owner said he was due to be wormed at the end of April and i'm not sure which wormer's the best to start with. Haven't had much to do with horses since selling mine when I was a LOT younger and things have changed since then.

Farriers been today and confirmed that he has had laminitis at some point in the past not suffering at the minute thank god, will this affect a worming programme?

He's turned out on his own in the day (fairly small fenced off piece of the paddock due to the lami) and stabled at night at the minute, I pick up poo daily.

Any advice would be great thanks

 

[Bethie]

This is a fairly good site for an overview of worming (remembering of course that they are trying to flog you their branded wormers!) http://www.wormingyourhorse.info/Home.html. Put simply, the best chemicals to use currently are ivermectin or moxidectin for everything apart from tapeworm, and praziquantal for tapeworm once or twice a year, so look at what is behind the brand name for the actual content. Equest Pramox year pack is handy as you get all your years worth of wormers in one box and it tells you when to use each one. Ideally the whole yard should be treated at the same time with the same chemical to ensure the lifecycle is broken and that worms do not survive and acquire immunity to the drug used. If he has been wormed regularly and appropriately up to now then he will hopefully not have a large burden and worming him now will not affect him with regard to the laminitis issues. If you want to check you could look into using worm counts from somewhere like Westgate Labs where you send off a poo sample and they will be able to tell you from that if he has a large or small worm burden at present for everything apart from tapeworm (a blood test is needed if you want to test for tapeworm being present).