Worming Question?

Love

Love

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Basically, nearly everyone you speak to has different views on changing wormers. Some people change the wormer every time, others every 6 months - 1 year and some people just use the same one all the time...

was just wondering what anyones views on this were?

Love
 
You should worm egg count and then use wormers only as necessary. There are a couple of companies that do this now - you just collect a dung sample and send if off to them, or some vets run an egg count service. You do still need to be careful about tapeworm - they need a blood test to give a reliable estimate of burden, so you either need to do that or worm for tapeworm routinely (once or twice per year with either praziquantel or a double dose of pyrantel).
 
In addition to the above, you can't as yet test for encysted small redworm larvae, which should also be targeted in all horses at this time of year as they hibernate over the winter ready to emerge again next Spring. Moxidectin (Equest) or fenbendazole over 5 days (Panacur Guard) will target these, so using Equest Pramox will do both tape and encysted small redworm. This is a fairly good info sheet http://www.minstervets.co.uk/worm_control.html, although its not quite up to date with their current advice as I have a new worming info booklet from them that is slightly different.
 
These replies above are both great advice...would love it if more owners shifted to stategic worming...but you must be poo picking at least twice weekly for it to be reliable. Don't forget to use a tapeworm ELISA blood test too yearly as they don't shed eggs reliably and it can lead to surgical colic - or worm for tapeworms at least once yearly!!

In answer to the OP's question, don't rotate the chemical group of wormer more that once yearly or you will be encouraging resistance. What I mean by this is you must be aware of what the active ingredient is in the wormer e.g. vectin, panomec, and eqvalan are all the same - ivermectin. Equimax is that too with a tapewormer chucked in.
Equest is moxidectin which is very similar - a cousin if you like. It follows that if we get resistance to equest we will also have resistance to all the ivermectins too...i.e. we will be stuffed for wormers - so please DON'T overuse this!!!:p
5day Panacur equine guard is still good for use IMO but there is SO much resistance to fenbendazole the single dose is USELESS!!! Please don't use it or we will lose the 5d efficacy as well! :(

We are trying to really encourage Worm egg counting and blood tests to monitor worming. It's better for your horse, better for the drug resistance and better for your pocket too!!!;)

Hope that helps,
Imogen
 
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