How Often Should You Worm A Horse

If you are in the know, then you will know about the dangers that parasites, or commonly known as worms, can bring to your horses. Indeed, gastrointestinal problems is one of the main problems that affect owners who are absolutely clueless about the dangers that it can bring to your horse. Of course, you can always deworm your horse. The process is actually pretty simple, but we still can many queries such as “How do you deworm your horse” or “How often should I deworm a horse”. In this post, let us answer a few the commonly asked queries when it comes to deworming your horse.

In the horses’ lifetime, there will be different variants of parasites that live in the horse’s intestines. Darwin’s Theory has dedicated that a number of them shall thrive in the intestines. They are definitely meant to be present in the intestines. Of course, they will cause no ill effects if the numbers are low. However, the problem comes when the worms start to reproduce in large numbers.

Should the horse have too many worms in the intestines, it can cause your horse to fall sick, or even causing them to have performance related issues. There are worst cases of the horse perishing because of that too. So yes, you should always deworm your horse whenever possible.

There are many ways at which the parasites can exist in horses. One of the most commonly known sources is from previously infected horses. It can be spread via fecal contamination. This is common, given that horses nowadays are being pastured in the same field. When an infected horse defecates in the field, the unaffected horse might inevitably eat the eggs that dropped on the pasture. Of course, once the horse consumes the eggs, the eggs will hatch and evolve into worms, which can create more eggs. This then becomes a vicious cycle, unless an intervention is brought to it.

Essentially, not all types of parasites are harmful to horses. After speaking to veterinarians and experts, we deduced that there are four main variants of parasites that you should be mindful of.

Redworms
The medical terminology is Strongyles, or more commonly known as blood or red worms. This infection occurs when the larvae of the parasite evolve as they move through the horse’s internal system. The main problems that the redworms can give includes causing damage to arteries. This will lead to colic, gangrenous enteritis and the eventual rupture of the artery. Other minor problems will be anemia and diarrhea.

Tapeworms
Tapeworm larvae are indirectly consumed by the horses during grazing. This is because the tapeworm larvae are consumed by other organisms in the pasture, and when the horses graze on it, they indirectly become the host. Once they evolve, the tapeworm sticks themselves to the gut wall at the ileo-caecal junction. This is dangerous as it increases the risk of intestinal issues and hence inflammation. This can potentially lead to rupture too.

Roundworms
The roundworm, or known as the Ascarids, is the worst of the lot. It can grow within the small intestine. It is highly mobile, and it moves while laying eggs, through the liver, lungs and the throat. Usually, roundworms affect horses younger horses as they are typically yet to go through immunization again the roundworms. When there is a heavy infection of roundworms, the infection can lead to weight loss and muscle deficiancy. This is detrimental to the horse’s growth, and it will lead to severe problems when the horses are older.

There is often no clear indication of the onset of the problem. Usually, by the time you notice that your horse is off color, they would have already been infected for quite a while already. But nonetheless, it will be good for you to keep an eye on your horses, especially if they display symptoms such as lethargy, diarrhea, lack of appetite or even loss of weight. Do note that these symptoms are homogeneous across all ages and breeds.

To confirm if your horse is suffering from a worming infection, we highly recommend you to bring the horse to the vet. The vet will perform a fecal egg count and blood test. The test results will show, if any, the type of infection, the type of parasite that is involved as well as the severity of the infection.

There are several ways and processes that you can take if you want to prevent, manage or even stop the worming infestation.

Preventive measure- clear the pasture of all parasites
The very first step that you should take is to ensure that the pasture is free from eggs and larvae. To achieve this, you should first remove all feces in the pasture. This will greatly decrease the amount of eggs and larvae in the pasture. Keep the pasture short too. Once this is done, ensure that you do pasture rotation. This means allowing the pasture to stay dormant for a period of 6 months or so. Larvae cannot survive any longer than that, and by allowing the pasture to stay dormant, you are effectively clearing the remnant eggs and larvae while allowing the pasture to grow.

Other effective measure is to limit the number of horses to 1 horse per acre at the bare minimum.

Monitoring measure – Check if your horse is infected or not
In this step, you should be monitoring your horse’s fecal. This is to determine if the horse is suffering from any infestation or to check about the effectiveness of the worming program.

Eradication measure – Deworm your horse
In this step, you should be deworming your horse. This removes all the worms in the intestines. When this happens, the chances of infection is drastically reduced.

If you seek help from the veterinarians, they will usually recommend that the horses should be dewormed once every 2 months. Having said that, like all medications, we should not use the same medication too often, or else the medicine will lose its effectiveness. A study did show that pathogens are evolving much faster than our medicine develops. To prevent that from happening, we recommend you to talk to your veterinarian about a proper deworming schedule.