Have you seen an increase in the worm count results for your horse this year.
“My whole yards worm counts have come back very high! Why is this?”
This means they have not been allowed or been able to selectively graze as they would normally.
So whereas normally you’d have rough areas where they use as toilets.
But now you look across your fields, all the fields especially here in Essex, there are no roughs the horses haven’t been able to selectively graze.
And they’re grazing any tiny blade of grass they can possibly find.
Even with the little bit of rain we’ve had, they’re grazing in and around their poo!
The next reason is that the strongyle eggs which is the red worm eggs, the eggs and the larvae, mostly inhabit the lower part of the stem on grass.
So if horses are grazing next to nothing, then that is the area where the larvae and the eggs develop, or the eggs develop into larvae on the grass.
So they’re able to pick up worm burdens very quickly.
We’ve never really seen a year like this!
But that is why so many horses are picking up worm burdens that maybe never have before.
Lots of yards have got very high burdens because they just have not had any grazing.
And of course, horses that are intensively grazed where there are larger numbers of horses in a small area are more at risk because they have no selective choice of where they graze.
Hope this helps. Do you have any other questions?
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