Welcome back. In this lesson, we'll give you a basic guide to the prevention and recognition of common health problems and injuries in the horse. We'll discuss preventative maintenance starting with parasite and insect control and we'll review common diseases that we can vaccinate horses for as an aid in prevention. By the end of the lesson, you should be able to recognize the signs and symptoms of common ailments and have a plan for illness and injury prevention. But keep in mind as we review these illnesses that there is no substitute for establishing a working relationship with your veterinarian to advise you on the best practices for yourself, your horse, and your region. Many of the problems veterinarians treat are preventable. Some are due to unfortunate accidents around the stable because certain safety precautions were not taken or because the horse is an inherently reactive patient. Other issues arise because caretakers did not take simple preventative measures such as deworming and vaccination, which creates a situation where a simple problem can turn into a crisis when not addressed in a timely manner. Let's get started with a look at parasite and insect control. Horses are host to a variety of gastrointestinal parasites and external pests such as biting flies, ticks, and mosquitoes. Some intestinal parasites interfere with digestion and can cause physical damage, weight loss and blood loss. Some parasites spend their whole life cycle in the horse's digestive track while others will migrate throughout the horse's body and can end up in the major organs or nervous system tissues causing life threatening conditions. Insects transmit diseases between horses and some diseases from horses to humans too. Biting and buzzing insects can be a serious nuisance that disturb horses and can cause them to stomp their legs, toss their heads and run excessively. This can cause weight loss, lameness and injury to the horse and the human. Some examples of diseases that can be transmitted between horse and human which are called Zoonotic diseases include Lyme disease, Rabies, and Anthrax. While most caretakers immediately think of deworming and fly spray as the cornerstones of control, a comprehensive parasite and insect control program has several lines of defense, most of which fall under the umbrella of the good horse care we have been talking about. The key elements of insect and parasite control include these practices: Strategic deworming based on the physiologic state of the horse and the parasites present in the environment, manure removal and dispersal, pasture maintenance, insect repellents applied to the horse, insect protection such as fly masks and fly sheet, maintaining immunity with good health measures and nutrition, grooming, proper shelter and housing practices, appropriate stocking density or number of animals on the property, appropriate quarantine of new arrivals on the farm to assure a proper deworming and vaccination, vigilant practices when showing and travelling off the farm, to avoid nose to nose contact or the sharing of communal water troughs. You most likely will not ever see an adult internal parasite from a horse. If you look in a microscope at a specially prepared manure sample to see the eggs and larva, you will see the immature adult parasites in that sample. When a horse is infested with internal parasites, the visible signs are often include weight loss, unthrifty overall condition, poor hair coat, and lack of energy. The horse may experience repeated digestive upsets commonly referred to as colic or diarrhea. The horse may also appear perfectly normal and still be infested with parasites. The most definitive way to diagnose intestinal parasites is for your veterinarian to perform a fecal flotation egg count. This involves your veterinarian collecting a small sample of fresh equine feces and performing a quantitative egg count under the microscope to determine the egg burden. Your veterinarian will likely recommend a fecal egg count before and after treatment to monitor the effectiveness of the deworming compounds used. Occasionally, horses will develop resistance to certain types of deworming agents. Occasionally, intestinal parasites will develop resistance to commonly used deworming compounds. And it's important to know which compounds are effective in decreasing worm burden. If the worming compound was effective, then the fecal egg count should go back down to baseline or negative after the horse is dewormed. And the interval between worming and a secondary egg count is usually 10 to 15 days.
