Faecal Egg Count (FEC)

 A faecal egg count (FEC) is great because it can give you an insight into the health status of an animal without being invasive. They are a cheap, easy and quick way to ensure healthy animals.
We offer:Mobile counts performed at your yard - Same day resultsCollection of samples from your yard - results within 48 hours
A FEC looks at your horse's poo (mixed in a special solution) under the microscope to identify the type & number of parasite eggs to see if you need to worm your horse or not. Depending on the type and number of eggs, your horse may not need a wormer at all!
If you do need to worm you will then be able to make a more informed choice on the correct wormer to use. Not all wormers are the same, different classes of drugs will treat different worms. how long they last for and the frequency of treatment is different for each. It’s important to get the right wormer to treat the CORRECT parasites and without testing you may not be targeting the right parasites.
Worm count healthy horses every 8-12 weeks to see if drug treatment is required.
We can also repeat faecal egg counts 2 weeks after deworming to do a Faecal Egg Count Reduction Test (FECRT). This test determines whether the worming product has been effective or if there is resistance present.
Redworm & Roundworm are most commonly found in a FEC, it‘s rarer to find Tapeworm & Pinworm eggs in FEC (but they do appear). Separate tests are available specifically for Pinworm and Tapeworm detection.
FECs allow you to tailor any treatment necessary to the specific parasite and at the same time helps resistance to not become an issue.
 

Although there are many wormers out there, they all come from only five different chemicals.

 Regular exposure to these five chemicals has helped the worms evolve to become more and more resistant to the drugs. They aren’t as susceptible to the medication and we can now no longer give a wormer and expect it to work. No further wormers have been licenced for horses and there are no more on the horizon.

This means we have to be extremely careful with how we handle parasite burdens.

– Not trying to eradicate all worms as this is impossible, rather aiming to manage them at acceptable levels that aren’t going to have a damaging effect on the horse.

– This means testing before treatment to target wormers only where they’re needed to reduce exposure and slow down the development of chemical resistance.

– If we do need to treat, choosing the drug carefully by being aware of which parasites the chosen wormer targets and the time of year.

- Conducting reduction tests to ensure that treatment has been effective.