The Battle on Worms

    What's your worming program like at your barn? Do you have monthly fecal egg counts done or do you buy a random tube and hope for the best? Over the years, a lot of conflicting advice has amassed. Here are some general considerations you should have when it comes to choosing your wormer:

• Two times the normal dose of wormer containing Strongid kills tapeworms.
• Panacur is a pretty mild wormer, therefore it can be used on sick, undernourished, or high anxiety horses.
• Ivermectin kills worms on contact and should be used primarily in the winter months. In the summer, horses will have lots of migrating larvae in their bloodstream. If Ivermectin is administered, the horse could have massive internal blockage that is fatal.
• Another reason Ivermectin is a cold weather wormer is it promotes hair growth in horses. Panacur, on the other hand, helps horses shed out quicker in the spring and summer.
• Pay close attention to dosage in order to prevent parasite resistance to a particular wormer.
• Lastly, did you know that a horse can spit out 1/3 of their wormer up to four hours after you administered it? And that's after we stand there and make sure they swallow it...

Hopefully you can incorporate some of these tips into your current program and see better results in the future.