Worms in drinking water? Eeeeeooooowwwww!

MiJodsR2BlinkinTite

MiJodsR2BlinkinTite

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I'm gonna throw this one out coz somebody here will no doubt know the answer. Sorry no photographs available, but a few days ago I noticed something strange in the drinking water of a livery pony here. Pony is aged (21) and thinking retrospectively, as the owner has now removed said animal (subject of another post!!! - grrrhh!), I wonder just what was going on.

Unfortunately I didn't get any pictures of it, but will nonetheless try to describe:-

At the bottom of the pony's drinking water, inside the stable, there were some horrid wriggly things wiggling around. They were about the same size as earthworms, but more redder in colour and their bodies looked more segmented, if you see what I mean. I don't think they would have been earthworms coz surely these would die quite quickly if immersed in water, and anyway, I can't understand how they'd get there anyway if these were earthworms.

The owner in question has now left the yard, and I do not know quite what her worming regime was like; she was only here a month and left suddenly. The livery agreement she signed stipulated that horses must be regularly wormed, but in retrospect I'm not sure she'd done this as the pony came straight from its previous location in a riding stables to here.

Soooo, my question is; has anyone any idea what these worms were in the water tub? And bearing in mind that my horse is in the stable next door to where this occurred, should I be concerned? My boy is under a regular (vets) worming programme. I'm not turning him out where this particular pony has been, but I'm worried about the drinking water in that particular field - but can keep mine away from there and keep him in another field until I know what's what.

If there is something nasty in the drinking water - is there any disinfectant I can use to clear it up?

Help please! these things looked absolutely gross.
 
I freaked out one morning when I found a small red coloured worm, about an inch long, in my horse's automatic waterer. We worm regularly, and clean out the waterers each week.

We cleaned everything thoroughly, wormed the horse again and never did find another one.

I think actually that it had either fallen in from somewhere else, (we have birds sometimes pop in for a drink so one of them could have dropped it in) or come through the water pipes somehow, or had been transferred from my horse's mouth after he came in from the field at some stage. It has never happened again on the yard so I guess we'll never know.
 
We used to get them quite regularly on our old yard, the stable doors were open of a night and the waters were kept outside. Our horses were wormed regularly and the waters were emptied everyday buckets scrubbed and filled with fresh water i always wandered where they came from, glad im not the only one to notice this tho.
 
I've noticed lots of different types of worms in water troughs. I know that they are predominantly earth worms of which there are several types. I think that they tend to look a bit different to normal because they have been immersed in water for a period of time. I know that folk panic and think they are some form of intestinal parasite, but I've never seen this sort of worm in a water trough.

How they get there is a bit of a mystery, but I'm sure birds must play a part. In the summer months lots of other creatures take up residence in our troughs, the worse in my opinion, mosquito and knat larvae. I have in the past put a couple of goldfish in the water troughs, and they live quite happily in there and eat all the bugs. You have to remember to take them out before the water freezes in winter though.
 
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