>> How does using worm egg counts work in practice?

Here we look at some real life situations where worm counts can be used to improve the effectiveness of your worming programme. These are all based on real customers although we have changed the names.

Horses at home
J keeps Benny and Raz at home where she is able to manage their grazing with electric fencing. She likes to keep the fields clear of droppings as far as possible and felt that she really didn’t need to be worming so frequently. Sure enough their worm counts were clear and she is now using a targeted worming programme with them, worming both for tapeworm and encysted redworm about November, and using a Westgate Labs 4count healthcare pack to cover their counts for the year. She knows her horses are healthy and has already saved a fortune on unnecessary wormers.

A livery yard
B keeps her beloved Hugo at a livery yard where there are usually about 12 horses. Unfortunately there was no worming policy at the yard and everyone was doing their own worming or not as they chose. B was rather worried when a horse in the same field as Hugo developed colic that turned out to be redworm related. B suggested that they should get a count done on all the horses and when the results came back they ranged from clear at <50 epg right up to high, with some in between. It was clear that someone needed to take charge of worming and B volunteered to sort it out. Westgate Labs were able to help with a suitable programme that is now in use at the yard and the latest worm count showed a much better result. The yard is not yet ready to reduce worming doses but this may be a possibility in the future. Most importantly the horses are no longer at risk from worms.

A new horse
When L. bought his fabulous dun mare he got more than he bargained for. This beautiful, shiny coated show jumper looked the picture of health, but her worm count came back at 6500 eggs per gram, a very high count for redworm. Her previous owner insisted that the mare had been wormed. Thankfully she had not been allowed to join the other horses in the field at that point.

Moving yards
S was moving Charlie to a new yard. He had been wormed the previous week with a long acting wormer but the new yard were insisting that he must be wormed again before he could go out. Rightly they wanted to protect the other horses from possible contamination, but S was very unhappy about giving Charlie another wormer. So she suggested that a worm count would prove that he was not wormy and the yard agreed to accept the result instead of re-worming the horse.

Foals & Youngstock
Sally’s long awaited first foal Smartie was born without any problems in the loose box at home. Soon the two were out flying round the field by day obviously enjoying life. Sally’s worming programme had already been based on worm counts for a couple of years and she was one of those horses who never had a positive count so needed minimum worming doses. Smartie started on worm counts at two months old. Like mum there was never any evidence of worm eggs in the droppings. At first the tests were taken at two monthly intervals and this was soon extended to three month gaps. As the risk of contamination was very low Smartie was not wormed* until her second winter and then only as a precaution. What a great start in life!

* Foals and youngstock are at much greater risk from parasites than mature horses and ponies therefore it is really important to take advice before deciding on a suitable worming strategy.

Now we leave it to our customers to tell you their stories of how introducing targeted worming has worked for them... >> more