New research changes everything that we thought about horse worms

Horse worms might be “euwww” but they are no longer the enemy.

New research on horses and parasitic worms has produced surprising results.  It turns out that horse worms are actually beneficial to the horse’s immune system.  And that worming reduces the natural bacteria in the horse’s digestive system, which are an essential part of a horse’s healthy and robust immune system. 

Please note:  This is NOT a “don’t worm your horse” article.

The research is a very technical read so an equine specialist vet friend has translated for us.  I’ve put the links below in case you enjoy that kind of reading.  The more I read, the more I realized that the old recommendations for horse worming have been thrown up in the air and we need to re-think everything.

Here’s what they’ve discovered about horse worms. I’ll put the quote and the translation into normal language together.

• That horse worms are an active beneficial part of a horse’s immune system.  “High shedding upregulates genes involved in B-cell activation and IgA synthesis.”  Translation: the horses with more worm eggs in their manure, have a more active immune system.

• High small strongyles egg counts and lots of happy and active digestive bacteria are found in the same animals. “High cyathostomins egg counts relate to richer and more dynamic gut microbiota”

• Removing worms shifts the system of digestive bacteria and its positive effects on the immune system, towards an unstable state – i.e. not as robustly healthy.  “Parasite removal shifts the gut microbiota interaction network toward unstable states.”  

• That each use of worming chemicals drastically reduces the horse’s happy stomach bacteria in the short term but has a limited response in the overall blood physiology.  “Parasite removal has a drastic and short-term effect on the gut environment and microbiota composition, but a limited response in the host blood transcriptome”
  

My mind leapt to a different place

The research paper went on to discuss the possibilities of adding probiotics and prebiotics to the worming process, to mitigate the adverse effects of getting rid of the worms, but my mind leapt to a different place.

Here’s my big question.  If horses shedding lots of worm eggs had more and healthier digestive bacteria and a better immune system, what is it that’s REALLY at the root of the illness that’s caused by worms, like this poor little guy in the photo?

Or is that the whole story?

My vet friend brought another research paper to my attention that found the opposite – that a high worm burden was associated with a less diverse microbiome and that worming those horses actually improved the microbiome at day 2 and day 14.

So… is it some kind of imbalance between the worm population and the digestive bacteria that causes the disease state?  Is there a fine line to walk between a healthy population of worms and unhealthy population of worms?  It doesn’t look like the veterinary researchers have answered that question yet.

My mind leapt straight to stress, for this reason…

But my mind leapt straight to stress – it’s so often the root cause of any imbalance in the body.  Mental, emotional and physical stress. I’ve seen first hand that what health issues aren’t actually caused by stress, are made worse by stress.

I’ve also seen the reverse is true.  In 28 years of working with alternative health therapies and deep diving into the wondrous possibilities that exist within the horse human relationship, I’ve seen so called miracles of recovery from all kinds of things happen over and over again when a horse’s old stresses and tensions have been released and the new stresses reduced dramatically, by simple communication between horse and person.   I hadn’t thought about it before, but would an imbalance of worms be any different?

Whatever conclusions we come to about contributory factors to diseased states, we’ve sure got some stuff to think about worms differently.

The first thing I’m going to do is to stop looking at worms as if they’re the enemy.

When digestive bacteria are missing or not present in large enough numbers, you can get all kinds of disease states – from diarrhoea to the inflammation behind things like arthritis and Equine Metabolic Syndrome – to horses that are more vulnerable to viruses and infections because of a reduced immune system. 

Logic tells me that anything producing a vigorous and robust immune system is a GOOD thing – right?  And anything that decreases the health and robustness of the digestive bacteria and reduces the effectiveness of the immune system is a NOT GOOD thing hey? 

Whether those assumptions are true or not, this research means that our friendly little horse worms are not the enemy that we thought they were. 

Yet, we also know that worms can cause ghastly and even lethal damage in a horse’s body – so what to do?

The first thing I’m going to do is open my eyes wider and look further to what else might be contributing to a horse failing glow from mental, emotional and physical well-being – noticing and taking action where I can on ANY aspects of mental, emotional and physical stress.

I was going to give you a comprehensive list of things that cause each of mental, emotional and physical stress, then things that cause emotional stress, then things that cause physical stress – then I realized that it was too easy to make ourselves wrong and that’s the opposite of useful (one of my dry Aussie understatements there.)   So I’m going to suggest that you sit quietly with your horse, with the meditation I’ll put at the bottom of the page and find some stress relief for yourself and your horse in the gift three days that I’ve set up for you.

Current veterinary recommendations before this new research.

I’m told by my equine specialist vet friend that what they’re currently taught is to worm all horses once per year, even if the egg count is zero – because zero egg counts doesn’t necessarily mean zero worms – and to do that worming Spring or Autumn depending on the local environment.    Then to do fecal egg counts every three months (test the manure) and only worm high egg shedders every three months (which she says is usually the same horses.)

So what to do about this new information and the conflicting research?

Personally I tend to use more natural methods and resort to chemicals only when I think I need to.  But even so, as far as I can see the worm issue deserves more than a simple “get rid of every worm”. 

I’m not willing to make any suggestions beyond giving you the means to relieve stress in your horse and yourself (at the end of the article) but I AM willing to share the kinds of worm reduction that I have been doing with my own horse herd – knowing that I’m going to be looking much deeper at BALANCE because of this knowledge that worms have a benefit to the immune system.

• I’m going to add probiotics when I do a chemical worming.  Even though I’m predominantly organic, I do a chemical worming if I get alarm bells that they need it.  That can be anything from one to two years apart, depending on circumstances. 
• I do natural worming methods starting three days before most full moons – for example garlic from a jar or a big dose of seaweed or Diatomaceous Earth (only human grade) added to their feed for a few days just before and just after the full moon.  Why the full moon?  Like women’s menstrual cycles, worms are affected by the gravitational pull of the moon.  Wise old horse people tell us to worm three days before the full moon to get the best result and when I’m using natural methods I’ll usually do it for 3 to five days in a row.  
• Important note about garlic.  It’s a powerful and useful herb and because of that power can cause damage if used for prolonged periods of time.   Here’s a great article I found for those who want to know more about the pros and cons of garlic.  I had my horses ask for garlic in their water a few months ago and they drank that water in preference to the two other sources of water for many days.  Whether that was for worms or a boost to the immune system at the change of seasons, or some other reason, I don’t know.  I just LOVE the easy communication that makes it possible to give them what they ask for, when they know what they need.
• I planted a wormwood bush when we first moved here, that the horses can browse on, but I put it in the wrong place – I should have planted it where they would have access any time. 
• A homeopathic is also one of my options that I use from time to time.  If you discovered a parasite in the manure, you could make a homeopathic from it.  Or you could use bot eggs to make a homeopathic to interrupt the bot cycle.  I’ve got instructions here on my website for making a homeopathic medicine.
• I brush diatomaceous earth over bot eggs and that dries them out and stops them from hatching.  I came up with that idea when I had twelve horses with the odd bot fly buzzing around and didn’t have time to scrape bot eggs off 12 horses.  Be VERY careful with Diatomaceous Earth  – it’s finely ground silica.  DO NOT breathe it.  The DE people use an N95 mask when they’re working with it and I find a P2 with a carbon respirator comfortable that I bought from the hardware store.
• And if anyone shows signs of pinworms, I brush diatomaceous earth around the top of their tail and broadly around their anus and the rest of their butt in order to kill the pinworms in their migratory stage, which here I’ve noticed seems to happen around the new moon time of the month.  Again, like womens’ menstrual cycles, worms are influenced by the moon.

Here’s a stress relieving gift for you and your horses, from me and my horses – and a special offer afterwards that will knock your socks off with its generosity. Click on the heading below.

Journey to Feel Day 1 as a gift

Here’s those links to the vet article and the actual study itself:

Effect of anthelmintics on the gut microbiome.

Species interactions, stability, and resilience of the gut microbiota – Helminth assemblage in horses.