Worm-Ed Quarantine Advice for New Zealand Horse Owners
When a New Horse Arrives…
New horse arrivals can be an exciting experience for horse owners. It is also often a routine event for many stud and training centres. Horses normally arrive with an unknown or vague deworming history, and it is confusing to know how to provide protection for your new horse whilst protecting your property from any unnecessary parasite contamination.
Some horse properties may perform faecal egg counts (FEC) on arrival, but this is NOT useful in a quarantine sense unless you are looking to see how well your treatment has worked with a 2-week post treatment check as well. Sometimes horses may have just been wormed and a FEC will still show positive anyway.
Worm-ed recommends in most circumstances a moxidectin based treatment is administered on arrival and the horse is kept in a dedicated quarantine paddock for 72 hours. Equest Plus Tape, Ultramox or Worm-ed Moxi Granules are suitable treatments. The quarantine paddock doesn’t need to be fancy or newly cleaned, just kept as a one-way flow for horses coming in. By keeping isolated for 72 hours this also means you have a chance to check for any other systemic illness that may have been incubating before introducing the new horse to your herd. After 10 weeks a FEC can be performed to determine the shedder status of the new horse (high, moderate or low) and your new arrival can then integrate to the main Worm-ed management portal for the year.
Keeping Records Easy
Whenever you get a new horse, pop their details and worming history into your Worm-Ed management portal before you do any FEC testing. There’s a drop-down box to make this quick and simple. This helps you keep on top of things and tailor your worm control for your herd.
Getting Your Samples Sorted
If you’re running a larger agistment centre, make sure you have plenty of sample containers (pottles) handy so you can collect FEC samples as they’re required. Send your samples in to Worm-Ed by ordering a test via the portal 10 weeks after the moxidectin treatment. A reminder will prompt you for this once they’ve been entered on the portal.
