From: Johanna
Hello Ms Jahiel, I hope that you can do a clinic near Western Washington, your information is fantastic and to see you speak in person would be great! I am the lady who wrote about physitis, working on it and getting it under control. I have another question, this time abut Tube Worming a horse. I have never heard of it, my experience is with paste wormers. My current veterinarian is pretty old school and says that the best way to avoid colic is lots of water and tube worming. My yearling, who was wild when I adopted him, he's a PMU foal, takes it like he's been doing it all his life, I am lucky I have quite a character. But... I wonder if I need to tube worm? What about the daily wormers?
I was told by a very "au current" vet that you combine daily with paste to deal with larvae and adults respectively. My old school fellow says that the daily wormer takes the killing power out of the wormer so that it doesn't affect the worms so much. Is there a case for tube worming? The lady I board with tube worms her horses and never has colic problems, and her horses look like Halter Class candidates even at the end of winter. My fellow has blossomed there, growing strong, healthy and the bloom on his coat as he sheds out really looks great. I guess I am just not sure why no one still does the tube worming, also if there are advantages to paste or paste and daily. I think costwise, it all averages out.
Once again, thank you for your amazing resource, I am so glad that this kind of wisdom is out there for horse folk! Johanna
Yes, there is a case for deworming by tube, but you'll have to decide for yourself whether it's something that you want for your horse.
Using a naso-gastric tube to deworm a horse is effective, but it's something seen less and less often these days. Some older veterinarians complain that many young veterinarians do it badly or don't feel competent to do it at all - but to be fair, many young veterinarians simply don't get the opportunity to practice this particular skill. Many horse-owners have taken their horse's deworming program into their own hands, and use a rotating series of paste dewormers and/or a combination of daily dewormer and a series of paste dewormers. This means that a lot of horses that would once have been added to the vet's "to tube" list aren't on that list anymore.
This isn't necessarily a bad thing. Horse-owners should make themselves responsible for their horses' health, and new developments in dewormers have given us the ability to keep parasite levels low with less toxic doses of drugs. Whether you use paste dewormer only, or combine daily dewormer with the periodic administration of a paste, you can keep your horse healthy and shiny without risking its health by allowing the parasites to build up in its system and then performing a sudden, dramatic parasite kill.
The biggest problem with the pastes is that many horse-owners are less than careful about administering them. The great advantage to the naso-gastric tube is that ALL of the deworming product ends up in the horse's stomach - and that's not always the case if paste products aren't given with care. Horses are very good at spitting out wads of paste, especially if you attempt to deworm your horse at a moment when it is still chewing a mouthful of hay or grass. If you dance around your horse waiting for the magic moment, and then quickly put the tip of the tube in its mouth and push the plunger, you're likely to be placing the wormer at the tip of its tongue - just where it will be very easy to spit out. In fact, if you do this, the horse won't have to do anything but drop its head and open its mouth, and the paste-and-grass mix will hit the ground.
If you're careful, you can use paste very effectively by ensuring that the horse swallows ALL of the dose. First, be sure that the horse's mouth does not contain food - rinse it out if you need to. Second, hold the syringe in the corner of the horse's mouth, lying along the horse's tongue, with the tip pointed all the way back toward the back of the horse's mouth. Third, expell ALL of the paste on the very back of the horse's tongue, so that the horse's first action will be to swallow. Then watch the horse for a moment to be sure that it doesn't drop a wad of paste. Most horses, if handled in this way, will swallow the paste, pull a face or two, and then go calmly back to whatever they were doing before - grazing, or contemplating distant cloud formations.
Some horses, because of rough or tentative handling by previous owners, are reluctant to accept the syringe. If your horse is like this, take some time, over a period of weeks, to change its attitude. All you will need is a clean, empty deworming syringe, a jar of applesauce, and patience. It usually doesn't take more than half a jar to persuade even the most anti-paste-syringe animal that standing calmly with a lowered head is a good way to get more applesauce. (This will also be useful if you ever need to give the horse any other medication that can be powdered and mixed with applesauce.)
There can be a case for tube deworming if it's done well - it's undeniably an effective way to get the deworming medication into the horse - but, like paste deworming, tube deworming is not always done well. A vet who has had a lot of practice using a tube can snake the tube into the horse's nostril, down its esophagus, and into its stomach (NOT into a lung - and a good vet will ALWAYS check!) without hurting or worrying the horse. But - perhaps because so many people no longer ask the vet to tube their horses - some vets are less than perfectly adept with a naso-gastric tube, and the result can be an uncomfortable horse, an unpleasant experience, and sometimes a little bleeding.
I think that your old vet is right about water - horses that never get dehydrated are less likely to colic. Poviding plenty of forage around the clock is also a good way to prevent colic. I'm not at all convinced of the benefit of occasional "shock" tube deworming, when compared with either a planned rotation of paste deworming products or a combination of regular paste and a daily feed-through dewormer.
It sounds as though your horse is in good shape - and in good hands. As long as you and your vet are both happy with his condition, there's probably no urgent reason to change his deworming program. In fact, there may be one very good reason to continue his current program. At any good boarding barn, there will be a requirement that all horses be dewormed on a regular basis. Sometimes the most practical way to achieve this is to have regular "deworming days" when the vet comes out and uses a tube on every horse on the property. If this is what your barn owner does, and it's working well for all the horses, then you may want to leave well alone - it's a case of "if it ain't broke, don't fix it."
Jessica
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