Surgeries Offering Equine Services

Stone
Eccleshall Road
Walton
Stone
Staffordshire
ST15 0HJ

Tel: 01785 813955
Fax: 01785 817311

Eccleshall
Stone Road
Eccleshall
Staffordshire
ST21 6DL

Tel: 01785 850218

Shires Veterinary Practice

Advice on Worming Horses

There are currently two ways of ensuring that your horse is free from worms.

Regular worming done at set time intervals.
Strategic worming done only if laboratory testing shows a horse has worms.

Regular Worming

There are many complicated worming regimes available with a multitude of different wormers. One of the simplest and most effective is the Fort Dodge Equest and Equest Pramox programme. All you need to do is worm your horse every 13 weeks alternating between the two products.

Strategic Worming.

The aim of strategic worming is to minimise the amount of wormer you give to your horse. The advantages of this are that the chance of worms developing resistance to wormers are decreased and the level of drugs administered to your horse is decreased.

It is important to realise from the outset that to be successful all horses sharing the same grazing must adopt this protocol.

Every 3 months worm egg counts are performed on faecal samples to check for the presence of roundworms.
Every 6 months blood samples are taken and analysed to test for tapeworms.
If either type of worm is detected then the appropriate wormer is given.
All new horses entering the yard should be isolated for 48hours and given a broad spectrum wormer (that covers both tapeworms and roundworms) or be egg counted , blood tested and kept isolated until results are known.
“Poo picking” should be carried out on the pasture every day.

In summary this regime aims to minimize exposure of horses to worm eggs and only uses anthemintics (wormers) if an animal is proven to have worms.

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