When you deworm your horse, you naturally want to be sure that the treatment is actually working. A manure follow-up test gives you that confirmation. In this blog, you’ll learn why this timing is important, which active ingredients it concerns, and what a new American study says about follow-up testing after moxidectin treatment.
Why is it important?
The recommendation is to perform a worm count 14 days after administering a dewormer. This control test helps determine whether the treatment was effective and whether there may be resistance to the active substance used.
Why 14 days?
For most dewormers, a control test is recommended 14 days after treatment. This timeframe allows you to see whether the number of worm eggs has sufficiently dropped. If not, resistance may be present—meaning the worms are no longer responding to the active ingredient. This is a serious issue: the more often deworming is used unnecessarily or ineffectively, the faster resistance can develop.
American research
Are you using a dewormer with ivermectin, pyrantel, or fenbendazole? Then you may already know the advice is to send in a sample after 14 days to check effectiveness. For moxidectin, the traditional advice was to test after 6 to 8 weeks. However, recent U.S. research suggests it is better to do the control test already at 14 days for moxidectin as well. The study showed that egg counts had already dropped significantly after 14 days. We’ve also noticed similar trends and now recommend testing 14 days after moxidectin treatment.
So the new advice is:
Perform a follow-up manure test 14 days after every deworming—including those with moxidectin.
Source: AVMA-Journals
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