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Phoenix has always been what my vet calls a high shedder, but it's getting annoyingly bad.

Over a year ago, maybe even two years ago, I started her on a daily dose of Strongid C2X because she was constantly having high counts on her fecals. She's on a dose for a 1250-1500 lb horse. Its mostly worked, and maybe about once a year I've had to do a 5 day power pack to knock the numbers back down.
But this year, she's had high fecals TWICE and I'm looking at a second round of Panacur Power Packs. Her Strongyle counts were over 200 and I'm fairly certain we did a power pack just a few months ago in the spring. I don't understand how they're this bad when she's on a daily dewormer.

I'm starting to wonder if I'm wasting my money keeping her on the daily wormer. But I'm at a loss for what to do. Do they make a stronger daily formula? Should I increase the dosage? Should I give it up all together and go back to using only tubes?

Have any of you dealt with high shedders? What did or would you consider doing?

you are totally wasting your money. you have basically created a healthy population of resistant worms. power packs are also basically burning money and creating resistant worms which are now happily populating her gut.

high shedders should be treated 3 times a year. in the fall ivermectin with praziquantel to kill bots and tapeworms too. moxidectin once and a , a fecal egg count reduction test (FECRT) should be performed. This is a simple test that can be done by your veterinarian. A fecal sample is collected prior to deworming and another one is collected two weeks after the anthelmintic is administered. The number of eggs in each sample is calculated and a percent reduction is determined. A 90% reduction in eggs means there is no resistance to that anthelmintic and it should be efficacious to use

Well that makes total sense!
My vet is the one who has been telling me to use Power Packs after running her fecals... I’m both annoyed and not surprised. I’ve been having issues with him and will probably stop using him entirely soon. I’ve already started using a different vet for other services but have continued with this one for fecals and shots because he’s local.

I think I‘ll contact one of the vets I like more and work with them on the reduction test.

My older gelding also was a High shedder on occasion.

I tried the Strongid daily and it did nothing to help the situation, total waste of money.

My vet had me give him Equimax every 30 days for a few months. We retested a few times And his numbers dramatically decreased.

the idea should be to reduce worm load avoid illness but not to completely eradicate worms because horses should be given the opportunity to develop resistance. high shedder = less resistance. your horse is a mustang so she should be genetically primed for resistance.

Whose horse is a mustang? Not mine

I did call the other vet this morning and they sent me their handout on deworming schedules and low-medium-high shedders.
I'm going to work with them on a reduction test after trying a different dewormer. According to their handout she's actually a "medium" shedder, at least for this round of fecals. I don't remember off the top of my head what her past results have been.
Unfortuntately the handout didn't specify which dewormer to try if there is suspected resistance, not that I see at least, so I'll call back and ask that question again.

PhoenixRising wrote:Whose horse is a mustang? Not mine

I think only Exvet and I have mustangs from the usual posters!

These 2019 AAEP guidelines provide a lot of information.

https://aaep.org/sites/default/files/Do ... 3.19_0.pdf

PhoenixRising wrote:Whose horse is a mustang? Not mine

I did call the other vet this morning and they sent me their handout on deworming schedules and low-medium-high shedders.
I'm going to work with them on a reduction test after trying a different dewormer. According to their handout she's actually a "medium" shedder, at least for this round of fecals. I don't remember off the top of my head what her past results have been.
Unfortuntately the handout didn't specify which dewormer to try if there is suspected resistance, not that I see at least, so I'll call back and ask that question again.

I apologize, I admit I was thinking of Blob's horse. after all PhoenixRising and Blob are such similar names i got them mixed up . mea culpa.

You may still need to PowerPac after a high fecal count, but you need to do the recommended Quest Plus or Equimax at the appropriate time of the year, do the fecal at the right time (definitely not right after deworming), and if you PowerPac, you might need to do another fecal X weeks after to see if you have resistant parasites.

If you have resistant parasites and your vet(s) are not recommending other dewormers or deworming protocols, you'll need to do some research to find other protocols for resistant parasites - COTH has some good resources and threads.

I think the important thing is to re-do the fecal the right time after deworming if you have a high-shedder to determine which dewormers are not working.

It could also be useful to find out what kind of fecal results others at the barn are getting. And what wormers people are giving atOften the most successful worming programs are one where the whole barn is more or less on the same schedule of dewormer.