Horse Health - horse worms, worming and wormers. All you need to know for your horses worming programme.

Treat horse worms by always using a good worming programme that includes a wide range of commercial de-wormers.

Worming your horse
New horse on your stable yard
Know your enemy
Horse wormers
The worms life cycle
Horse worming programme

How do horses become infected with worms?

In every case, a horse becomes worm-infested by taking either worm eggs or infective larvae into its mouth. This occurs when grazing contaminated pasture, eating contaminated feed, drinking contaminated milk (foals), or licking a contaminated coat.

The horse’s environment — the stable, the yard and the paddock should always be considered to be contaminated with worm eggs or larvae and the opportunity for infection or re-infection is continuous.

Use good branded horse wormers in a worming programme to minimise the worm problem that your horse has to cope with, and to help optimise your horse's health and performance and use a wide combination of horse wormers to make the pasture safer for the horse to graze on.

Parasitic worms can cause fatal colic, weight loss, poor performance, rough coat, pot belly and stunted growth.

Get good advice.

It is always worth getting advice from your vet on developing a worm control policy using a combination of wormers. This will be based on many factors, including

your geographic location
the types and ages of the horses you have
your stocking density and the frequency that horses come and go at your stable yard.

Effective parasite control depends upon both management of your grazing, to minimise worm egg and larval contamination and the use of horse wormers to remove parasites from the horses intestines. You cannot deal effectively with one, without dealing with the other.

Best practice is to worm your horse every six to eight weeks. This is known as interval dosing and works within the worms life cycle. There are a number of ways that you can reduce the frequency of treatment with horse wormers without putting your horses at risk of parasitic disease:

Read the dosing instructions on the wormer packet carefully.
Never use more than the recommended dose.
Use a diagnostic test, to find out whether your horse needs worming.
Use pasture hygiene methods (pick up droppings) to help stop the spread of worms

Expecting a new horse on the yard.

Use the following basic worming guide when a new horse is brought onto your stable yard.

New horses should be wormed and kept stabled for the first 48 hours.
To get the majority of parasites use a double dose of Pyrantel on day one
Then use either Ivermectin or Moxidectin on day two.
If there is a risk of Small Redworms use a 5 day course of Fenbendazole.
48 hours after the final dose, the new horse can be turned out and included in the worming programme.

Click the worming programme link to download and print a free worming programme worksheet with our compliments. Use it to record & plan your worming programme.

Know your enemy.

Different worms affect different age groups of horses depending on the life cycle of the worm.

For example; Your horse can build up immunity to some worms over time, and so a particular worm group may only be seen in young stock.

The following table is a guide to the common worms found in the different age groups.

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