The importance of knowing that your worm control program is effective was emphasized by Professor Jacqui Matthews when she spoke at the Thoroughbred Racing and Breeding Seminar at Cheltenham.
The cyathostomins (small strongyles) are the most important group of intestinal parasites of the horse - both numerically, and through their ability to cause disease. They are becoming increasingly difficult to control as they develop resistance to the drugs used against them.
“Not enough of us are thinking about the level of burden individual horses have in terms of giving them worm treatments. When we treat horses with viral disease we don’t usually treat the whole group. And we don’t do that with antibiotics.” So why not just deworm the horses that need it?
In the spring and summer, fecal egg counts can be used to identify which horses to treat. But encysted worms in the gut wall in winter cannot be detected with fecal egg counts. So we also need to detect horses with high larval counts.
Prof Matthews’ team have been working to develop a blood test to measure the antibody response to proteins released by these encysted stages within the gut wall.
Detecting resistance is also vital. The research team at Edinburgh has just received funding to update and refine the fecal egg count reduction test (FECRT) that is used to detect resistance to anthelmintics. Hopefully this will lead to better thresholds for resistance levels to individual drugs.
They are looking for studs with large numbers of young horses to help in the research. The project will involve a questionnaire, treatment with ivermectin and a FECRT, which will be provided free of charge.
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