Worm egg counts are the recommended route to diagnosing a high worm burden in horses. Legislation and veterinary recommendations are that your horse should undergo a worm egg count before you consider whether or not to use a wormer.
Whilst all horses have some level of worm burden, in most cases it isn't problematic and should not be treated. Over-worming horses is causing serious problems with worms becoming resistant and if this continues, we will end up with no way of treating worm burdens in horses.
Carrying out a worm egg count simply requires you to take a sample of your horse's dung, following the instructions in the pack we send you, and bringing it in to our shop in Spalding for analysis.
Once we have carried out the analysis, our in-house Registered Animal Medicines Advisor (SQP) will contact you with your horse's results and a treatment recommendation. If your test results indicate that your horse needs to be wormed, our SQP can take your horse's clinical history and prescribe the right wormer for your horse, if you wish.
Whilst a worm egg count won't pick up all worms, it will tell you whether the level of small / large redworm or ascarids is high enough to need treatment. A separate test is available
here for tapeworm.
Included in the pack is:
- Instructions
- Sample bag with label
- Analysis request form
We also offer a postal worm egg count kit
here, whereby if you cannot bring your sample in to us, you can instead post it to Westgate labs, who will carry out the analysis for us and send us the results, for us to talk through with you.
