You’ve had a fecal egg count done on your horse and the results were positive. As a responsible horse owner, you’ve dutifully given your horse dewormer, crossed your fingers, and hoped for the best.
But as the folks at Horsemen’s Laboratory point out, this approach will not tell you whether or not your deworming session has been effective. The ONLY way you will know is to retest.
Horsemen’s Laboratory recommends that the horse should be rechecked in 2-3 weeks after deworming following a positive test. There should be a 90 percent drop in the number of eggs seen in the follow-up fecal egg count unless one of the following situations occurs:
- the horse is infected with a strain of worms that is drug resistant.
- the horse did not swallow the full dose of dewormer.
Without the critical information provided by the follow-up fecal egg count, you would not even be aware that either of these situations had occurred. If you have questions about deworming or fecal egg count results, Dr. John Byrd of Horsemen’s Laboratory can provide guidance and help you decide the next best course of action.
To learn more about deworming, download our FREE guide—Deworming Your Horse: How to find the best deworming schedule for you and your horse.
New Deworming Protocol
Horsemen’s Laboratory highly recommends the new deworming protocol of testing first, followed by deworming only when necessary. The new deworming protocol minimizes your horse’s exposure to unnecessary deworming, and also helps to reduce the rate of development of resistant strains of parasites.
To contact Dr. Byrd of Horsemen’s Laboratory, call 800-544-0599, or email him at hlab@horsemenslab.com.
I agree that the deworming protocol is in theory an excellent idea, however for many of us, at least among the 40 horse owners in the group I ride with, we are all very tight for money, the wormers here in Spain cost at least 14 Euros each time and in my case I have two horses. If I then have to test before, I may or may not have to worm, but at 30€ per horse per test before and perhaps after, welllllll we are talking a lot of money. So for the moment, as my horses are out on the land, I clear the manure once a day every day without fail and worm 3 times a year. I would love to be able to afford to test, but unfortunatel it is out of the question.