Probably the most graceful and loyal pet, horses are the sweethearts of many animal lovers. These beautiful animals are highly affectionate and loving towards their owners.
All this makes you want to take the best care of your four-legged best friend. Unfortunately, that not as easy as it sounds, and parasites and worms can prove a serious hurdle for your horse’s health and wellbeing. Therefore, we have put together in article to explain everything you need to know about parasites, and give our opinion of the best dewormer for horses.
Common Horse Parasites
Parasites are organisms that generally live inside a host and take nutrients from them. And in turn, they hurt their host by producing dangerous chemical compounds that can make them seriously ill. All tapeworms and intestinal worms are parasites. Following are the four most common parasites that affect Horses.
- Roundworms
- Small strongyles
- Large strongyles
- Tapeworms
How to treat a horse with worms?
Horse parasites are usually treated through deworming, a process in which the parasites are killed by medical agents known as Anthelmintics, also known as dewormers.
Best dewormer for horses
As evident from the above account, choosing a deworming agent is no easy task. Therefore, it can be of great value to you if we recommend a product that is not only tried and tested but is also easily accessible and quite economical.
The best dewormer for horses is the Durvet Ivermectin Paste Equine Dewormer.
The Durvet dewormer is very effective against a wide range of parasites including: strongyles, pinworms, ascarids, stomach worms, lungwormes, and threadworms.
The Durvet dewormer comes in the form of a paste that is apple flavored. This makes it very easy to administer to your horse. Best of all, the paste can treat your horse for worms in a single dose, which means a lot less work for you.
On amazon, the product has a rate of 4.7 out of 5 with over 2,000 ratings.
Types of horse dewormers
Anthelmintics are generally divided into four distinct classes, which are as follows.
- Macrocyclic Lactones
- Tetrahydro pyrimidines
- Benzimidazoles
- Prazion-izoquinolines
- Disclaimer.
It is essential for horse owners to know that not every class of Anthelmintics is effective against every parasite. There is no one solution to every parasite problem in horses. Some classes do particularly well against Roundworms, while some are specifically manufactured to tackle Strongyles.
In fact, administering your horse with the wrong class of anthelmintics can actually do more harm than good. Therefore, we highly advise you to visit your vet if your horse shows symptoms of parasitic infections instead of trying to self-medicate them. There are many factors that contribute to deciding which deworming agent to use, including Age, breed gender, and reproductive status.
- Deworm according to your region.
One should keep their region in mind while looking for a deworming agent as different regions have different parasites to offer, and therefore an Anthelmintic agent that worked before might not work this time. This is especially true if external environmental conditions are not the same.
Therefore, the best thing you can do while shopping for a deworming agent is to consult a local veterinarian as their knowledge and skillset will be of great help to you.
