Worming your horse

Hello! Good question. In the past, people wormed on a routine schedule without first checking whether the horses on the yard actually carried worms. Today most have switched to taking a faecal egg count, collecting fresh droppings and sending them off for analysis to see whether parasites are present and which ones. The aim is to use wormers as sparingly as possible and so avoid resistance building up in the parasites.

Take a faecal egg count in spring, before the grazing season, even if the horses are not moving to new grazing paddocks. You then worm only if the parasite count in the samples exceeds a certain threshold. Test every horse, because horses sharing the same paddock can carry very different parasite burdens depending on age, overall health and other factors. Good luck!