FECC

What wormer to use for this upcoming late autumn/early winter worming treatment??

There is a lot of conflicting information out there about which wormer to use and it can be confusing.
FECC is recommending you use one the brands pictured and listed below. These wormers will target the most amount of parasites for this time of year, importantly Strongyles (including encysted), Bots, Tapeworms and many more.

But other companies/Facebook/blogs etc say not to use a wormer with Moxidectin (which the wormers pictured/listed do contain) why is FECC recommending the use of them? FECC advice is led by the recently released Australian guidelines for equine internal parasite management which were developed by leading equine parasitologists and vets. Within these guidelines it recommends once yearly use of a wormer that contains Moxidectin and this is the time to use it. Moxidectin has a higher efficacy in penetrating the intestinal walls and targeting encysted strongyles and the larval stages of small strongyles. Which are one of the parasites we focussing on in this worming.

However, we do want to limit the use of wormers with Moxidectin to once a year. This is so we can "preserve" this drug class and not overuse it which will lead to resistance developing. As part of this monitoring for resistance and efficacy we suggest all horses get a FEC and a follow up FEC 14 days post worming (called a FECRT) we can monitor the effectiveness of the wormer and monitor for resistance.

Another reason we do not recommend the Ivermectin/praziquantel wormers at this time of year is because we are trying to encourage and preserve our winter dung beetle species and their populations. Ivermectin is the most lethal of the wormers on dung beetles with toxic level being observed up to 1 month after worming. Moxidectin's aren't as lethal and have a shorter toxicity and are safest for dung beetles.

Recommended wormers: Ultimum, Equest plus Tape, Neovemox plus Tape and Equigel with Tape. These are the wormers that have a Moxidectin/Praziquantel combination.

Which horses should be wormed in late autumn/early winter.
And the easy answer is ALL of them! - regardless of what their current FEC result is.
Now for the longer answer - One of the goals of evidence-based worming, the practice FEC tests fall under, is to reduce the number of times a year a horse is wormed. We do this by carrying out FEC tests throughout the year which helps us determine if a horse needs worming. 80% of horses will fall into the Low shedding category and therefore can sometimes be reduced to being only wormed once a year, with FECs carried out throughout the rest of the year to monitor for changes. The other 20% of horses will more than likely need to be wormed twice or more throughout the year as they will fall into the medium and high categories.
The critical worming period to target as many parasites as possible and help to break their lifecycles is the late autumn/early winter period. Therefore, if you only worm once a year that is the time to do it. If you are worming more often because of FEC results and shedding categories then this is still the time of year you need to worm your horse.

Our next post will cover which wormers we recommend using and why.

FECC has reopened for the year 🎉 and all of our drop off locations are now open and ready to accept samples.
A few worming reminders:
Summer is generally when we don't worm our horses as the high temperatures are enough to kill eggs and larvae, there are exceptions to this - foals/young horses, horses with health conditions, high shedders etc.
The best way to know if you need to worm is get an egg count done.
Bot flies are out and about - now is NOT the time to worm for them as they are not in the correct part of the horse. Instead removing eggs from your horse is the best thing you can do. See our recent post on this topic.
Reports of pinworms infestations have been seen - remember just because your horse has an itchy tail does NOT mean it has pinworms. There are other signs that need to be observed, and it could be another reason. See our recent post on this as well.
As always test before you worm, and if in doubt contact FECC and we can talk about your options.