Widgeon
Well-Known Member
I will caveat this by saying that I am not worried about my foal - he is in robust health and we have a good vet. I'm just curious to hear others' experiences.
My native colt is nine months old and has been with us about eight weeks. I sent off a FEC to our local equine vet lab for him and my older horse a few weeks after arrival, and the foal's count was only 50. I was really surprised by this - being a total newbie when it comes to babies I had expected him to almost certainly be wormy. But having chatted to a more experienced friend she said that if the stud has robust worm controls in place, there's no reason why that would be true. I didn't worm him, as the count suggested it wasn't necessary. However I am planning to keep a fairly close eye on him with regular (exactly what constitutes "regular" is yet TBC) FECs.
Does anyone else worm count foals rather than just shovelling in wormers every couple of months? And if so how regularly do you do FECs? Do you find them to be useful / reliable in babies?
On a related note, my older horse is due a tapeworm blood test in January so I'm planning to test the baby at the same time.
(I've read this thread - https://forums.horseandhound.co.uk/threads/equest-pramox-and-worm-counts.840256/ - and found it interesting)
My native colt is nine months old and has been with us about eight weeks. I sent off a FEC to our local equine vet lab for him and my older horse a few weeks after arrival, and the foal's count was only 50. I was really surprised by this - being a total newbie when it comes to babies I had expected him to almost certainly be wormy. But having chatted to a more experienced friend she said that if the stud has robust worm controls in place, there's no reason why that would be true. I didn't worm him, as the count suggested it wasn't necessary. However I am planning to keep a fairly close eye on him with regular (exactly what constitutes "regular" is yet TBC) FECs.
Does anyone else worm count foals rather than just shovelling in wormers every couple of months? And if so how regularly do you do FECs? Do you find them to be useful / reliable in babies?
On a related note, my older horse is due a tapeworm blood test in January so I'm planning to test the baby at the same time.
(I've read this thread - https://forums.horseandhound.co.uk/threads/equest-pramox-and-worm-counts.840256/ - and found it interesting)
