Friday, December 18, 2009

Counting your eggs before they hatch

We're taking a little break from elf training today. This post will not have pictures of any of your favorite residents, nor will it be of much interest to anybody who doesn't have horses or other equines in their life. But here's a little cartoon from shoeboxblog.com to set the tone.








We're here today to discuss fecal egg counts, anthelmintic resistance, and why I was scooping poop into carefully labeled baggies one morning this week.


Just a little background in case any non-horse owners have stuck around...
All horses are infected with internal parasites (think itty-bitty worms). These evil organisms lay their eggs in the horse's stomach and intestines. The eggs exit the horse's body in the manure, the manure lands on the ground, then the horse eats off the ground, giving the parasite a free ride back into the horse. It's one great big vicious cycle. Parasites can cause a whole host of health problems, up to and including death, so horse owners go to great lengths to keep their horses relatively free of these nasty critters. We scoop poop like there's no tomorrow, we try not to feed our horses on the ground, and we squirt chemicals, called dewormers, down their throats on a regular basis to kill off the parasite eggs before they hatch.

For as long as I've owned horses, I have followed my veterinarian's recommended deworming schedule. Every eight weeks, I've alternated squirting ivermectin and moxidectin into the boys' mouths. Hank politely cooperates, Lyle cooperates too much and always tries to eat the tube, and George and Alan stand quietly indignant throughout the procedure.

At Hank's and Lyle's annual check-up this fall, our vet recommended I throw out the old deworming schedule and instead consider fecal egg count testing to determine which, if any, dewormer to use and when to use it. I had been reading more and more articles recently about horses becoming resistant to certain dewormers, but what hadn't sunk in until my vet explained it was this: the pharmaceutical companies are not developing any new classes of dewormers to use if our horses become resistant to the current batch. "If we lose ivermectin," he said, "we're in big trouble." When he said he switched his own horses to this program, that was good enough for me. There would be no more willy-nilly deworming of my boys - we would start doing the tests, treat only the worms that were present, and greatly reduce the risk of my little herd developing a resistance to any of the dewormers.

Tuesday morning, I closed Hank, Lyle, George and Alan into their respective stalls and fed them breakfast. Then I waited for them to, shall we say, pass their part of the test. I scooped up one sample from each of them, while they stood around laughing and making crude jokes. I placed the samples in my never-to-be-used-again-for-my-lunch insulated lunch sack and merrily drove to town to deliver them to the vet.

All of the boys passed their fecal egg count tests with flying colors, so there's no need to deworm them now. Going forward, we'll do the test at the beginning of each season and deworm based on the results.

There's a wealth of information over at thehorse.com about fecal egg count testing and parasite control, but your veterinarian is your best source for what deworming program is appropriate for your horse.

That's enough scoop on poop for one week. We'll be back to our regularly scheduled programming tomorrow.

30 comments:

  1. Even though I don't own horses, I still found this quite interesting, and I got a giggle or two out of how you spent your Tuesday morning!

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  2. An interesting scoop of news, none the less. It certainly makes sense that the horses would become resistant, but who'd have thunk it?

    So now that we have the poop on these guys, will elf training proceed? Love your posts, always.

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  3. Well! (note indignant tone) I suppose this isn't as bad as discussing our dogs feces at 5am!

    Seriously, good information!

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  4. That sounds like a great idea. I think I will do that asap.

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  5. Good for you! I stopped worming a long time ago along with no more vaccinations. It just didn't seem right to be putting all those poisons in to their bodies. I will be interested to see posts at the start of the new seasons as to the results of their tests. You are in a desert area similar to mine. You are just a little colder. After much research, I decided the biggest cause of the parasites is when they are eating in a lush grass pasture. It harbors the parasites. I haven't done any testing. I watch for signs of infestation. Poor coat, weight loss and such. I don't have access to any vets worth paying. Please post further results. I am very interested.

    Liz in AZ

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  6. That sounds like a great idea, I think I will be doing that myself.

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  7. Hmm. I can't see the cartoon. The poo photo overlaps it on my Mac.

    Good post, and don't I know it. Jaz is only now starting to feel like himself again. He gets sonogrammed again on Dec. 28th.

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  8. I'm going to have a chat with my vet about this. Makes sense to me. What was the cost of the test?

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  9. You may not realize it, but both ivermectin and moxidectin are macrocyclic lactones, so alternating them isn't rotating classes of dewormers.

    And some of us up north have already "lost" ivermectin to ivermectin resistant ascarids and strongyles.

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  10. That is very interesting. I've often felt that my horses don't need to be dewormed as often as the usual recommendations. Don't you feel good knowing that they are clean inside?

    How much does the testing cost?

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  11. This seems to finally be gaining momentum as the new way. We got onto this last year, and the dusty hs'ing microscope has a new purpose in its life.. :)

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  12. Not a good day to read your blog while eating my breakfast...

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  13. Oh my, if that idea had only been around when I had my horse! He was a pain, pain, pain to worm.

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  14. I'm not sure yet on the cost for the tests - it was $25 for one, and the vet is giving me a quantity discount on the others.

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  15. Santa Claus never did bring me my pony, but I am interested anyway, so read the whole post. Good for you. Those fellows are in good hands.

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  16. This is so great. I am glad more people are discovering fecal counts. Last time I wormed Indigo I used a natural product called para-X. There are no chemicals in it. My vet really likes this product. A friends horse was really sick earlier this year they thought he was going to die he was so emaciated. Turns out on their farm they have a resistance. He was severely infested with several types of wormes. They were tripple dosing him with all sorts of wormers with no luck. Out of desperation they tried the Para-X and before they were even done dosing him (5 days on, 5 days off and 5 days on every 3 months or as needed) he was gaining weight back noticeably. The fecal count came back negative and to think they were fighting for months and almost lost him over that. Crazy.

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  17. What is the impact of the parasites found in wild horse populations? Is it less of an issue because the horses have a presumably larger area in which to graze and do their business?

    Consider reading _Parasite Rex_ by Carl Zimmer. It is a fascinating book detailing the relationship between parasites and their hosts.

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  18. There are several herbs which can be used to worm horses, but caution must be used, and it's best to use a herbal product which has already been formulated for horses. I haven't done the fecal count yet, but I do feed garlic and am looking for a good herbal product.

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  19. I have been hearing a lot about this topic as well. How does the cost of the testing compare with the cost of wormer? Not that it makes a difference to me, I'm just wondering how alluring this would be to the masses. The inconvenience of collection/delivering is already on strike against it for many horse owners.

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  20. Poo has a lot to 'tell'. I am always looking for it, and yes, going through it to see what is coming out. I am going to call my vet and see how much the test is. Never hurts to ask. I only worm twice a year here. So far so good. Thanks for a great post.

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  21. That was an excellently worded and informed post. I don't own a horse myself...yet. Good stuff to know. Any creature can develop an immunity to drugs, so this sounds like a very wise choice. And, it gives the boys a break from all the dosing, too.

    BTW, I must be a die-hard fan to actually enjoy a post about poop over breakfast...

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  22. Michelle, I've been spending an average of $35 per horse per year on dewormers - and that's buying it online with quantity discounts, because I order for my neighbor's two horses at the same time. Anyway, there's no doubt that testing adds to the cost of horsekeeping. But when I weigh the potential costs of more health problems should my herd become resistant, testing becomes priceless.

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  23. Over here in Europe, worming is not done every 8 weeks like back home in the States. I was considered odd by some local vets, cuz I kept buying wormer. (And I even did a Fenbendazole power pack which was unheard of!) Most people here worm two or three times per year. (And you cannot buy wormer at the supply store, you have to get it through your veterinarian.)

    Finally one vet convinced me to just hold off and do a fecal egg count. I was concerned about different worms not showing up in the test (encysted small strongyles don't) and different stages of the lifecycle also showing false negatives. And how few worms do they find to say "clear" when horses should always have some population of worms?

    So, I need to learn more about the testing. How often should it be done?

    BTW, all the vets I've had here in Germany agree that Christmastime is Ivermectin time. Strange, cuz back home I did a 3 way rotation (Strongid, Anthelcide, and Ivermectin), so I never had a pattern about what wormer goes with what Season.

    More to look into, I guess!

    Thanks for the post, it was neat that you went through the same thing I did, with the poop ziplocks in the fridge: )

    ~lytha

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  24. Lytha, thanks for the European perspective. Fascinating.

    There is so much information available to us on deworming these days, it's difficult to sort it all out. When it comes to my horses' and burros' health, I read as much as I can, then trust my vet's advice implicitly.

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  25. Wonderful post! My vet recommends the same thing =)

    But... just for Lyle's sake, maybe you could dose him with applesauce from a syringe. I'm just saying....

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  26. And in the headlines today, they found really old horse poop proving horses had been here right along with mammoths.

    Poop. It's just amazing.

    I'm going to link to this post, I think it's fascinating!

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  27. sounds like a real pain to have to monitor poo....hahah....got your note today...so glad the little burro has a new and loving home!! Merry Christmas!

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  28. Very interesting. Good vet.

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  29. I read the same article on thehorse.com. I got from that article that this would only work in a high desert area or an area where the horses are on a dry lot with limited pasture.

    On a personal note: It's DEworm.

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  30. Fascinating - I've been giving this a lot of thought lately because I recently took Pete (my goat) to the vet for a nagging cough. She told me (almost verbatim) what your vet did...that there are NO other wormers out there. We've got what we've got and it is much more effective to worm based on need and not on a schedule. Sadly, as you mention, the cost of doing the right thing is spendy. A fecal exam for my dwarf goat in Oregon was $35.
    The lady I got my rescue llamas from does her own fecal exams. Maybe we can learn, too?

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