Worming

[Sienna]

Hi everyone - a quick note about the worming situation these days.

I'm so sick of looking at all the chemicals additives etc in worming pastes these days. And apart from the ingredients, has anyone actually tasted the stuff? It's vile! NO wonder horses don't want to eat it.

Has anyone heard of a more natural way? Or atleast a powder mix-in or something, but i refuse to use the paste anymore.

I'd be so grateful of any help or opinions!

XoXo

[ann]

The main concern with horse wormers is to ensure that you vary the active ingredient regularly to prevent resistance in the worms in the horses' guts, and to do it at the correct intervals to ensure that the horses are kept as free of them as possible. The taste of these wormers for humans is totally irrelevant.

I've been around horses for 45 years, and am so pleased that these days we have the pastes to use, supplied in easy-to-use dispensers. My horses are very easy to worm, because I always give them a treat in the form of hay or some other horsy feed after I have finished doing whatever it is I need to do with them. This includes forcing bute down the throat, worming, antibiotic needles, tetanus needles (which sting dreadfully, as we all know), foot maintenance, anti-fly treatment, and many other invasive treatments. Whatever is necessary, they come when called at any time of the day or night, are easy to catch, and put up with it all because there's no drama attached and they know there's a treat at the end. And they come back the next day, and the day after that, as long as the treatment is necessary.

I have used the old-fashioned powders etc., and can tell you that quite apart from the ingredients involved, the modern method of worming is a vast improvement on the old methods.

I can't recall seeing bot eggs on my horses' legs for ten years or longer, yet these were a huge problem in my early years of horse ownership.

[Zephyr]

Somewhere in this forum is a huge write-up on worming, worms and other equine parasites.

Unfortunately there is no reliable alternative wormer, apart from regularly removing the source of contamination (manure) and rotating paddocks (husbandry). This is all included in the write-up.

I do know a lady that used to 'worm' her horse with yoghurt and honey. Two of the horses died of colic, one directly contributed to worm impaction. I wouldn't recommend this method.

[Zephyr]

This is the link to the parasite thread (http://www.dressageit.com/bb/showthread.php?t=925&highlight=parasites)

[Sue Han]

Do you mean you have actually tasted worming paste. I don't think I would be game enough to do that. I believe just the tiniest amount can be fatal for dogs. Don't know about humans though.

[Zephyr]

Not fatal for dogs. I probably wouldn't give him a 500kg horse dose, but ivermectin is one of the safest antihelmintecs around. A small amount is certainly not going to kill a dog.

[rick]

We've worked with a well respected horse herbalist on this several years ago who worked with the state ag vets to monitor worm burden and there are two things that no herbal or homeopathic preparation can control in the testing they undertook, one was bots, and I can't recall the other parasite, but it was highly dangerous. Bottom line was we still used, and continue to use conventional worming pastes.

The other thing to consider when using a more 'alternative' approach is that the high levels of garlic that are often used can have a strong blood thinning effect which is not always desirable.

If you are concerned with conventional worming, follow up the next day with sonething like Protexin to help get the gut back in balance quickly.

[Franca]

Not fatal for dogs. I probably wouldn't give him a 500kg horse dose, but ivermectin is one of the safest anthelmintics around. A small amount is certainly not going to kill a dog.Certainly not - I believe ivermectin is still the operative ingredient in canine heartworm preventative. You lucky souls probably don't have evil heartworms down there!

[rick]

Certainly not - I believe ivermectin is still the operative ingredient in canine heartworm preventative. You lucky souls probably don't have evil heartworms down there!

unfortunately we do......

[Sue Han]

I don't know what type of wormer it was but I remember reading an article in a magazine or somewhere where a lady's dog ate a small amount of wormer that dropped on the ground when she was worming her horse and the dog had to be rushed to the Vet's???

[Zephyr]

Weeell, they're all pretty safe. They have to be, because we don't exactly weigh our horses before we dose them, we just guess-timate their weights and dose them. I reckon a lot of us would be a good 100kg or more out on our calculations. So horse wormers have a really high safety margin.

[Zephyr]

Heartworm is absolutely rife in Qld, and pretty bad everywhere else. I've had to treat a large number of dogs afflicted wih HW disease, and its not fun. Its expensive and really dangerous, because as the worms die they cause emboli which can lodge in vessels and cause all manner of problems. They reckon HW is the number one cause of sudden death in cats. My mother-in-law told me the other day the breeder she got her dog off told her not to bother HW-ing her dog because they don't get HW down near Dubbo. I nearly had a fit. HW is everywhere, NZ, Aust, everywhere. The other one I get told is that people's dogs never leave their yards, so they don't need to HW them. Yikes! HW is spread by mozzies, so it can get anywhere.

Revolution, the flea/HW spot on is an ivermectin-type compound also.

[Sue Han]

Oh okay, I had always had this article in my mind and can remember discussing it with friends and us all being very careful with out dogs when worming the horses.

[Sue Han]

here (http://www.mikatura.com/poison.html) is a site I found (seems to be about a particular breed) which also says the same thing - way down under the flower list. I wonder if they have documented proof.

[Zephyr]

Its a bit of a fallacy.

I have Border Collies, so I'm pretty aware of what drugs they're sensitive to.

The problem with BCs, and other collie-type dogs (shetland sheepdogs, rough collies etc) is that they tend to have a more permeable blood-brain barrier than other breeds of dogs (not all, but some). They are exquisitely more sensitive to some drugs than other breeds, and you have to approach these drugs with more caution. Ivermectin and Selemectin (revolution) are still well within the safety margins for a sensitive dog, as is a small amount of horse wormer. As I said, I wouldn't go dosing them for a 500kg horse, but licking some up off the ground certainly won't be a problem (and will probably deter them from ingesting any more - yuck!).

The drugs I do use very much with caution in these dogs are organophosphates. OPs are usually found in tick or flea collars, or Proban tick prevention tablets. I have seen toxicity in BCs and shelties even when dosed for their correct weight. The other thing you have to watch is doubling up on drugs ie Proban tablets, + and OP or carbamate-based tick collar (eg. Kiltix) or flea shampoo in ANY breed of dog. The saftey margin in OP products is not as wide as with IVM's. IVM is a great drug that has been designed really to only cause problems in insects, it works very specifically on a part of insect, not mammal, anatomy. I have also found BCs to be very sensitive to the induction anaesthetic Thiopentone, which is a barbiturate, and I use it with care or not at all in collie dogs (and never in greyhound-type dogs). I have never seen an IVM toxicity in ANY breed of dog, even the staffy that ate an entire 6 pack of Heartgard showed absolutely nothing.

Let me take the opportunity to remind you PLEASE never put dog products on cats, especially that cheap crap that supermarkets sell (it says not for use in cats on the packet. I wouldn't even put that junk on my dogs. You get what you pay for IMO). Never use Advantix on cats. Never keep your cat Advantage and dog Advantix on the same shelf (the packets are similar, and its easy to put the wrong one on the cat). Never EVER dose your cat with paracetamol. Thanks!

[Talaki]

Oh dear Zephyr, I had heard that we dont get heart worm in Armidale (from the puppy pre-school which was organised by a vet clinic), we were told though that if our dog went to a warmer area it was very important to treat the dog for heart worm... Lucy has had one HW treatment after we came back from Bellingen only as this was her only trip away from home. Perhaps I will give her a heart worm tablet tonight!

[Phoebe]

Yeah, we have rough collies and shetland sheepdogs, and the vet has mentioned the collie's sensititivity to anaesthetics, and did tell us to keep the collies away from ivermectin. Probably just a precaution. Thanks for the further info Anita.

Never EVER dose your cat with paracetamol. Thanks!

People do that??? :icon_eek:

[Sue Han]

Thanks for that Anita, yes it was very interesting reading when I did the search on poisoning and animals, I was nearly late for work. I never knew Lilies were so dangerous to cats and I think there was a mention of a cat having eaten paracetemol whose head had blown up to twice the size, quite horrifying really. I can't believe what some people give their animals and that people think its okay to give either human medication or other animal medication to their pets.

[Zephyr]

Sure do. Very rarely, though. Most people seek advice before self-medicating their animals. I've only seen two cases. Really sad. It sends them into total acute liver failure, and yes, their heads swell. Really expensive to treat (neither owner had the money to treat).

Lillies are very toxic, to dogs and cats. It sends them into acute renal failure. Grapes are also believed to be toxic, to dogs anyway, but its unpredictable. You can feed them a bunch of grapes today without problem, and then 2 grapes tomorrow gives them renal failure. Same with chocolate. They can eat a whole block without problem today (apart from a sore gut), then 4 squares tomorrow sends them into heart failure. While I'm on common household toxins - onions and garlic, anything from the Allum family of plants, can cause a nasty hemolytic anaemia in dogs and cats, so avoid them in homemade diets.

Also, we had a really cute puppy in last week that ate part of a kebab skewer which pierced the oesophagus on the way to its stomach and gave the dog a really nasty pyothorax, which is essentially a chest full of pus. The owners had no money, so we couldn't go looking for the source, but the puppy responded really well to antibiotics, so we sent it home. It came back last week with a lump on the side of its abdomen, and we could feel the stick. We did the surgery for free and removed the stick from the dog's stomach. It had pierced the stomach and started making its way out through the abdomenal wall. Moral of this story - please don't let your dog have access to sticks - iceblock, kebab, trees. We're constantly stitching up dogs that catch thrown sticks with their throat, or getting really sick dogs in only to find they caught a stick with their throat and no-one noticed, and a few weeks later a massive twig is removed from inside the dogs neck.

How did I get onto this topic???