Woodsmith Farm

I'm a bit freaked out.  For the first time ever I saw parasites in horse feces, and to make it worse, it was in one of mine.

Everyone has been talking about parasite immunity and doing fecal tests instead of the usual every two month rotation we have all been trained to do.  I gave the concept a try and I'm not sure I'm fully onboard.

I backed off the wormings on 5 of my horses for @ 6 months.  Multiple vets have seen our place and said they felt that the parasite risk would be low.  I kept Odessa on regular wormings but not quite the every 2 month schedule...more like every 3.

Results of last weeks fecal tests (EPG-eggs per gram):

Bluff-50
Dan-275
Emma-50
Odessa-150
Rowdy-375
Toad-0

Traditionally a horse with an EPG value of 200 to 500 would be considered a candidate for treatment. In a herd, an average EPG value between all horses of 100 to 300 has long been considered the threshold between normal and unusual levels of parasite infestation.

Rowdy is an older horse that came to us last spring and while he was dewormed several times when he first arrived, he's not had a life history of regular wormings.  The others minus Odessa have lived on our property for more than 5 years.  Odessa spent some time last month on a densely populated farm in FL which could account for her elevated count.  Dan has been an anomaly his whole life so who knows why his counts are high.

With these results, it makes one wonder why Rowdy and Dan were so much higher than the others.  I went ahead and dewormed everyone because after I dewormed Rowdy with Ivermectin, I saw dead bot larvae in his feces and almost lost it.  Ugh.  So while the EPG test tells me about several worm types, it doesn't say much about bot levels.

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