Equine Health Feature
The Horse Report
Know how to deal with worms correctly  From page 13 MYTH BUSTER Just because you can't see any worms in the manure it doesn't mean the horse doesn't have them. THE RESISTANCE PROBLEM So what do we do with this information? You would think that it would be an easy answer but you would be wrong. Various groups have been trying to get people to think about their parasite programs for years and years, with varying degrees of success. Once again social media, uniformed horse forums and owners who just think it's easier to drench, have perpetuated myths and just bad advice on how to handle a worm problem in horses. Tapeworm near ileo-cecal valve. So not only are people being misled by misinformed opinions but they continue to believe treated with an appropriate product to reduce dotal information tells of resistance in most the "information" being put out by the compathe counts to very low or nil. families becoming a huge problem. nies producing anthelmintic wormers. Faecal testing and product advice service 4.USE OF NATURAL FEEDING - the VF The worm every 6 - 8 weeks or perish propaKim Dawson is offering my clients inexpensive Natural Diet provides a good basis for helping ganda is still going strong in the horse commufaecal testing at only $7 per horse - cheaper to keep worm nity without any valid reason in many cases for than a worm paste - as an incentive to join the burdens low by promoting a healthy gut. Some such high levels of anthelmintic treatments. program. of the feed items appear to inhibit worms Present treatments have their place but must be It's easy to participate - if you are an existing French white millet, boiled linseeds and fresh used in conjunction with more targeted client email me and I will email you the chart to raw Garlic. The VF Natural Diet provides all responses or the horse industry will end up like the essential nutrients in the form of raw, naturcomplete & return with faecal samples to Kim. the sheep and cattle industries, rampant resisal feeds and herbs as well as providing prevenYou will then be provided with a report by tance to the anthelmintic in the parasites. tive nutrition. This promotes disease resistance, email, with copy to me, and product recomThere are several ways that a correct program prevents illness and disease and strengthens mendation for horses that need treatment, both can be instituted that combines knowledge of the immune system veterinary chemical products and VF herbal the parasite problem, correct interventions or 5.MANAGEMENT - of your horse and pasture products will be advised, including dosage treatments (anthelmintic and herbal) that can can play a huge role in delaying or saving you schedules, so you can make a choice. provide owners with confidence. from a problem with full blown resistance in If you are not an existing client - get your diet 1.TEST BEFORE YOU TREAT - a simple faecal the worm population in your horse/s. consultation at this link. egg count can be conducted on your horses to Such as fencing off manure piles to prevent https://www.victoriaferguson.com.au/naturalascertain the actual problem. There are many horses grazing around that area, harrowing horse-feed1/ laboratories conducting these tests and paddocks to break up dung piles and expose although the prices range it is a good diagnosthe eggs to either hot sun or freezing air to tic tool to determine if your horse needs to be hopefully desiccate them so they die, provide treated. hay off the ground so that the horses are not These tests can pick up strongyle and ascarid "hoovering" the ground. eggs easily and also tapeworm and pinworm Ideally collect manure regularly from paddocks eggs if the infection rate is high enough (some and yards and introduce dung beetles. Remove labs are better than others at detecting tape and bot eggs from horses' legs with a bot knife regpinworm eggs). ularly thus preventing from from getting into If you have only a few horses per paddock it is the stomach in the first place. Dispose of eggs an easy matter to test all the horses and then in the rubbish. The idea is to break the cycle of only strategically treat the ones with a treatable the worms and to provide owners with an outegg count. If you have a heavy stocking rate, come they have confidence in. you can use the horses as the test subject to see It can't be stressed enough that testing before how wormy your paddock is, doing this you you treat in the long run will provide the horse would only test a percentage of the horses in community longer access to commercial treatthe paddock and treat accordingly. ments. If the animals have a high count treat the lot Treating horses that don't have an egg count and realise that that paddock is wormy and because it's due is as stupid as hoarding toilet either spell or rotate into clean paddocks. paper because someone on social media said Many horses have a natural resistance to worm that we were all going to run out. ABOUT KIM DAWSON burdens and testing shows these individuals If people actually think about the parasite and Kim Dawson graduated from Hawkesbury usually have nil to very low worm counts. how they can protect their horses from over use Agricultural College with an Advanced Diploma in 2.REFUGIA - this is the concept of leaving a of chemicals not to mention what these chemiGrazing Animal Husbandry and has worked in endo certain amount of larvae to be retained by the cals do to the soil fauna like dung beetles, both and ecto parasitology in domestic livestock for over animal. It works on the idea of a population the horse and the owner will be better off. 33 years. curve, if you kill off all susceptible worms it Recommended program In that time Kim was heavily involved in the only leaves the resistant ones and before you Our recommended program is to faecal test research and development of many of the commercial know none of the commercial products work every three months, preferably at the beginning parasiticides currently available. and you may not be able to graze horses on of each season. This enables you to tailor your Kim has worked extensively in the equine field in those paddocks for many years or you have worming program to each individual horse. both a laboratory setting and in the field and has dead horses. Many horses never have worms at all, so don't designed, conducted and reported on these studies as 3.ROTATION OF ANTHELMINTICS - not need to be given a worming product. well as authored and co-authored many articles. changing brands but changing the anthelmintic Horses with consistently very low counts don't Kim has advised Victoria Ferguson in her quest to family, from ML, such as Equimax to the benzineed to be given a worming product either. find efficacious herbal wormers by conducting a madoles, such as Strategy -T. This rotation can Horses with medium to high counts need to be number of in vitro and field worm trials. be used to slow down any resistance but anecPage 14 www.thehorsereport.com www.thehorsereport.com - Ph 07 55909721 - mob 0413 733 294 - Email: cobakibob@bigpond.com