A Norbrook survey has revealed that only 10 per cent of UK horse owners are prescribed worming medication by veterinary surgeons, prompting the launch of the Golden Rules of Worming campaign to encourage practices to offer testing for horse owners and provide professional advice on worming.

Norbrook is offering practices free faecal egg count kits and access to a national worming database for veterinary surgeons who exclusively use Noromectin as their equine ivermectin wormer and Noropraz as their equine ivermectin and praziquantel wormer.

Lizzie Barnard, Norbrook’s product manager for equine, said the level of understanding of anthelmintic use among horse owners is low and education can be a challenge due to the confusing nature of information available.

“Often horse owners will take information from unqualified sources. They generally won’t speak to their vet until there is a serious problem identified such as colic or a suspected lack of drug efficacy.”

Ms Barnard added: “There are a few strategies we can employ to reduce the amount of anthelmintic resistance in the horse parasite population, including education for horse owners on better hygiene practices, faecal egg counts and tapeworm testing, plus the correct dosing of horses with the appropriate treatment for the time of year.”

Norbrook is working in partnership with Rainbow Equine Labs, to run the tests for veterinary surgeons who don’t do testing in-house.

“Pre-paid envelopes are provided for horse owners to send to the lab, who then enter data of the faecal egg count and email the results to the veterinary surgeon. The veterinarian then sends these results to horse owners,” Ms Barnard said.