RE: SMART equine worming campaign from Merial

Hannah Wynne Richards — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 10:42:48 GMT

Despite theoretical concerns about over-worming and development of resistance, I'm not aware of any proven resistance to the Eqvalan class of wormer. My reservations about this scheme is that owners may be tempted to wait until ova are seen b4 worming-by this time the emerging larvae will have already caused intestinal damage !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

We now take it for granted that we will have our beloved horses with us until their mid-twenties. When I was a child, a 14/15 year old horse was considered aged. At this stage it became very difficult to prevent weight loss due to malabsorption. Pre fenbendazole, it was impossible to kill redworm b4 they had emerged, and already caused the damage !!!!!!!!!!!

All we could do was pasture-rotate, graze with cattle/sheep, and worm every month to reduce the number of egg-laying redworms.

I'm scared that this idea of testing b4 worming, as opposed to just worming regularly, will result in horses' healthy longevity decreasing. The problem is that repeated damage now will not show it's effects for many years

Wynne