modern worming practices & lami....

posie

posie

Honey's slave...
Feb 28, 2008
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Scotland
www.barkscotland.com
do you think that modern worming practices - ie keeping horses with a v low or none existant worm burden - could be part of the cause of increased lami cases? ie the higher worm burden from years gone by helped to keep horse's weights down and thus reduced the lami cases??

Discuss :p

shamelessly stolen from dog and donkey forum i'm afraid :eek: but thread went off on a tangent and didn't really get debated ;) so would like NR thoughts as i find it an interesting concept :D
 
Speaking as someone who's good-doer TB type has managed to come out of winter (which he spent unrugged and unfed in a big field) positively fat, I am looking back nostalgically at spring 2007 when he had a tapeworm problem and was the perfect weight :eek: Now where did I get those tapeworms?

BTW we only worm twice yearly, because they have a non-existent worm count - so it's a thought provoking topic ;)
 
nd speaking from someone who struggles to keep weight down i do often wonder if the victorians had it right... pass me a tapeworm someone!!!
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Gosh, there's a lesson for us all :eek: *puts down the half eaten chocolate brownie and slinks away*
 
Interesting, never really thought about it. Not exactly sure how lami works as never had to deal with it, but could it also be because in days gone by people had horses as work animals rather than the pets they are now, so they were kept fitter and leaner than they are now and as a result lami cases were lower? Was it even recognised back then? Maybe they just had them put to sleep as 'lame and not fit for use'??
 
How we manage our horses/ponies has alot to do with the increase in lammi cases...
But to be fair i dont think the worm count has much to do with it as there have been an increase of cases where moorland ponies have developed lammi
 
Errr...no, my horses are regularly wormed and I don't have any problem keeping their weight down.

Its not modern worming practices, its modern perspectives and attitudes.... people simply cant tell or won't admit to thir horses being overweight, they overfeed and they don't ride enough. There are also a huge number of causes for laminitis, not effected by relative weight.


They way we keep horses on the grazing year after year is what contirbutes to a heavy worm burden, worms are not in effect 'the natural fat-control method of a wild horse' as the argument you posted seems to suggest.
 
It must be remembered that there are more factors to lami than feed issues. Stress related lami is having a huge increase recently, more and more horses are being kept in un natural non herd, easy for humans to manage, arrangements, limited turn out, no mixed sex grazing, very poorly managed pastures, rugged all year. We're starting to get an idea of how badly horses cope in our forced living conditions.


Feed related lami is also on the increase, there are various vets and researchers who think this goes hand in hand with developments in equine feeds, making them easier to eat and with a higher nutritional value, add this to the sheer lack of owners who actually sit down and do the formula's to work out how little feed their horse needs, so by their scoop of this and scoop of that because so and so 3 blocks down does it, they are putting their horse under far greater risk simply because they dont think.

hay and hayledge is also a problem, most of the stuff sold to horse owners is grown from grass mixes produced for feeding cattle. Totally unsuitable for horses, but they lack the education to question the mix before they buy.
 
hay and hayledge is also a problem, most of the stuff sold to horse owners is grown from grass mixes produced for feeding cattle. Totally unsuitable for horses, but they lack the education to question the mix before they buy.
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This is also linked to problems with pasture - our group are all overweight this year, and it is no coincidence they have moved to a field that's been used for rearing beef cattle. I was talking to the farmer the other day and he looked at the horses and complimented us on how much beef they had on them :eek:

The worm burden is an interesting point too - IME we can have two members of the group showing low to moderate worm counts, with two others on exactly the same grazing and management testing at zero every time. There has to be a factor of strength of immune system going on - and that's going to be affected by the management - more social isolation, gender separate herds and lots of stabling and frequent yard changes = lower immunity.
 
Rips said:
...Its not modern worming practices, its modern perspectives and attitudes.... people simply cant tell or won't admit to thir horses being overweight, they overfeed and they don't ride enough. There are also a huge number of causes for laminitis, not effected by relative weight.


They way we keep horses on the grazing year after year is what contirbutes to a heavy worm burden, worms are not in effect 'the natural fat-control method of a wild horse' as the argument you posted seems to suggest.
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Agree. Think there's also a link with modern reliance on nitrogen fertiliser to artificially improve poor grazing for land-strapped owners, whereas in days passed land would have been rested/set aside for hay etc.
 
I dont think there is any connection atall. Laminitis can affect any horse or pony whether it is fat or thin. If it is not brought on by shock or concussion, then metabolically it is caused by a change in the gut. The reason why is was previously thought that it was a disease of fat ponies is that they are often grass ornaments and do very little work or the fact that they are fat has predisposed them to EMS (Equine Metabolic Syndrome). This causes the cresty necks and laminitis which is quite often very hard to control in such animals. I know - I have one !!

A horse would have to have an extremely high worm burden for a prolonged period of time to look ill and thin. BTW tapeworms do not actually do alot of damage to the horse. The problem with them is that they congregate in a narrow section of the gastrointestinal tract and this is why alot of colics are the cause of tapeworms as they can block the passage of food. When they detach themselves from the lining it will scar but that is about all.

Hot chocolate and cookies if you got to the end !!!:p
 
Personally I think there is a kernel of truth in the idea.

However, its not as simplistic as mere weight; it's rather more to do with the immune response and the 'switching on' and 'strengthening' of the immune system by a series of natural challenges - of which internal parasites are a very important part, and which modern worming techniques have almost eliminated as an effective challenge.

It's a very difficult question, and the answer to it currently remains a mystery.
 
ooh - just to add - spoke to a horse owner last night who's had serious trouble keeping her highland laminitus free... this year however hes had a high worm burden (vet was also there discussing this as they are currenlty investigating this as the worms seems to be ones that no one had seen before - v v odd!) anyway - he has not had any lami this year - the first year in ages she's had absolutly no symptoms - although he is looking a little lean - shes got to look out for the worm she saw and have it sent off for analysis as everyone is scratching their heads at the mo.... unfortunatly she didn't think to keep the origonal worm as assumed it was something obvious - but from her description the vets said it sounds like nothing they can think of...

AND - ran this idea past the vet - who said it was a v interesting concept and he can understand the theory behind it and will have a think = but didn't want to bug him any further than that lol
 
I think that worming has an impact on laminitis rather than the worms themselves reducing laminits - wormers are toxins introduced to the horses system and so could trigger laminitis by putting the horses sysem under stress.
 
See, I look at it slightly differently. I llive in Wales and if you take the Welsh pony for example. It evolved to live on windswept, barren hillsides constantly on the roam and therefore wearing their own feet down and exercising, and eating pretty poor grasses. Look around here and you'll see them rugged up to the eye balls, on very verdant, well kept, fertilsied (and therefore extremely lush) paddocks, being ridden for a few hours a week. In a sense, we "improved" their lifestyles to a dangerous level
 
touchstone said:
I think that worming has an impact on laminitis rather than the worms themselves reducing laminits - wormers are toxins introduced to the horses system and so could trigger laminitis by putting the horses sysem under stress.
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No, it's not 'the worms' that reduce laminitis.

It is immune response (which is affected by various things - including a worm burden) which may well have a bearing on the incidence of laminitis.

Horses have evolved over millennia to cope with - to live with - a considerable parasite burden. It is only reasonable to expect that the effective elimination of that burden within a few equine generations could have a profound effect on the horse's physiology.

Given that in the past a pony who had laminitis more than very slightly would probably have ended up being shot, they would not have passed on any predisposition to laminitis to any significant degree., The situation has been somewhat different over the past say 25 years, and I am sure that many brood mares are ex-laminitics. If a tendency to laminitis is to even the smallest degree genetic, then we have a time-bomb ...

We can speculate all we like, though; there is little in the way of hard evidence as to where to lay the blame.
 
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